Word: guatemala
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...same scene was played out at barracks across the country, and, with few exceptions, Guatemala's junior officer corps closed ranks behind the insurgents. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and 105-mm howitzers appeared in the plaza before the ornate, colonnaded National Palace. As some 500 infantry troops encircled the area, the coup's chief planner, a boyish, clean-shaven captain named Carlos Rodolfo Muñoz Piloña, set up his field headquarters in an arcade of shops on the far side of the square...
...sudden turn of events in Guatemala came at a critical moment for Central America. The coup took place just five days before the elections in El Salvador, which the U.S. had hoped would shore up the authority of centrist President José Napoleón Duarte and help him put down the violence of both right-wing extremists and leftist guerrillas. At the same time, the Reagan Administration had been feeling out the possibility of future negotiations involving Nicaragua and Cuba to reduce tensions in the region and end the bloodshed in El Salvador...
...Guatemala's coup at first raised some hopes in Washington that the new regime might be sufficiently moderate to permit a resumption of U.S. military aid, which was cut off in 1977 because of the country's appalling human rights record. Government forces need U.S. arms to fight an escalating insurgency by leftist guerrillas that Washington charges is backed by Cuba. Thus the coup makers' initial statements in favor of democracy seemed to offer a chance for positive change in Guatemala, and closer ties with Washington...
Although they knew of the unrest in the officers' corps, U.S. embassy officials in Guatemala were totally unprepared for the coup. When word of the action first arrived by telephone, few staffers believed it. Finally, embassy officials went to the National Plaza and were astounded to find it surrounded by soldiers and artillery. Grumbled a U.S. analyst: "Our intelligence here was about as good as four ladies playing bridge...
...What Guatemala now appears to have is a pragmatic, anticorruption government with heavy religious overtones. "It will not be enough for them to cast themselves as moderate," insists a top U.S. official in Washington. "They have got to demonstrate results." Still, he adds, "there is an element of hope where previously there was none." That much, at least, could be said for the coup that got away...