Word: guatemala
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...matter how much they sympathize with the aspirations of the poor they serve, U.S. missionaries abroad have traditionally avoided taking sides in any partisan political conflict. The rule has been broken in Guatemala, where three priests and a nun of the Roman Catholic Maryknoll order have openly sided with the country's left-wing rebels...
...black Ford carrying the four American military men swung away from the headquarters of the U.S. military mission in Guatemala City, and headed down Avenida de las Americas. Ten blocks from the mission, a dark green sedan carrying three men pulled alongside, and one of them suddenly opened up with a machine gun. "I instinctively hit the dirt," recalled Sgt. Major John R. Forster, who was wounded in the hand. Chief Petty Officer Harry Green caught a bullet in the spine. Sitting in the front seat, Colonel John D. Webber, 47, head of the mission and driver...
...Webber and Munro were the victims of Webber's own success in Guatemala. When the tough career officer arrived in Guatemala 18 months ago, 200 Communist guerrillas were terrorizing the countryside. Webber immediately expanded counterinsurgency training within Guatemala's 5,000-man army, brought in U.S. Jeeps, trucks, communications equipment and helicopters to give the army more firepower and mobility, and breathed new life into the army's civic-action program...
...Toward the end of 1966, as civic-action teams pushed ahead with new roads and schools in the interior and established the first real rapport with the campesinos, the army was able to launch a major drive against guerrilla strongholds in the Sierra de las Minas in north eastern Guatemala. To aid in the drive, the army also hired and armed local bands of "civilian collaborators" licensed to kill peasants whom they considered guerrillas or "potential" guerrillas. There were those who doubted the wisdom of encouraging such measures in violence-prone Guatemala, but Webber was not among them. "That...
...been relatively quiet. Then, early last month, President Julio César Méndez Montenegro ordered an increase in the sales tax and bus fares, and the terrorism that had been largely confined to the countryside flared up in the capital. Communist fire bombs exploded in Guatemala City's two largest department stores, causing more than $1,000,000 in damage...