Word: ubico
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After this blood bath Dictator Ubico met little serious opposition, although he often refreshed his people's memory by preventive drizzles of blood. An efficient administrator, he kept tight rein. Plots melted before his pervasive spies, his alert police under shrewd, ruthless Roderico Anzueto. No Guatemalan felt free from secret observation. Today, even Cabinet ministers are under close surveillance...
Touring Solomon. Dictator Ubico likes to parade around the country on "trips of inspection." With a military escort, a couple of Cabinet ministers, a mobile radio station and an official biographer, he tears along the roads at breakneck speed. Landowners greet him with floral arches, sometimes line up their Indian laborers days in advance to await his coming. During brief pauses in the villages, he judges intricate cases of law in a minute flat, fires judges, reverses court decisions, releases prisoners, slaps others in jail. Often he makes up his mind simply by staring at a prisoner. Over the portable...
...Economist. A firm believer in low wages, Ubico keeps them down by decree. Only skilled workers in the capital city earn as much as 50? a day. Farm workers get 12? to 20?. Food prices in Guatemala are fairly low, but hardly low enough for such wages. Most Guatemalans live in hunger and rags. Ubico often reminds callers that two Guatemalan revolutions (1898 and 1920) coincided with local prosperity. Says he: "If the people have money, they will kick...
...Ubico's famous Ley de Probidad (Law of Honesty) requires officials to register their property on taking office, explain each new acquisition. It has undoubtedly enforced a kind of terrified probity among underlings, but it has one flaw: in practice, it does not apply to Ubico. On becoming President, he declared himself worth $89,000. Now he owns 75,000 acres, is the largest individual landholder in Guatemala. Much of his property is valuable coffee and sugar land. He lists his acquisitions under the Ley de Probidad at ludicrous valuations. No one dares to challenge his figures...
...Ubico grows richer, he grows more solicitous for property rights. His latest legal masterpiece (Decree #2795, April 22, 1944) "exempts landowners or their representatives from criminal responsibility for acts they commit against trespassers caught gathering game, fruit or firewood. . . ." In practice, a landowner may kill a hungry Indian caught plucking berries; he may kill a refractory laborer, no questions asked...