Word: ubico
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Dollars & Blood. Visitors from the U.S. have loudly praised Guatemala's Dictator Jorge Ubico. They have admired Guatemala's orderliness, its clean-swept streets, its impressive public buildings. But these observers did not see, or else ignored, the real Guatemala behind this façade. Last week, after a stay in Dictator Ubico's realm, a TIME correspondent reported in detail on one of the world's most flagrant tyrannies...
Back in the days of waning dollar-diplomacy, Dictator Ubico was "elected" President with U.S. blessing. Guatemalans noted that at the same time (1931) the potent United Fruit Co. wanted a juicy concession which the previous regime had refused to grant on United Fruit's terms. Ubico's first important act as President was to force the Assembly to pass the concession bill...
Three years later Ubico entrenched himself, canceled all legal limits on his tenure. Guatemalans never forgot the massacre which took place at that time in which scores of students, workers, prominent citizens suspected of plotting a rebellion were seized in their houses, killed without formality. Hundreds were thrown into prison, tortured, executed. Cried Ubico, admirer of Hitler's 1934 bloodpurge: "I am like Hitler. I execute first and give trial afterwards...
Guatemala resembles a neat, well-run model prison under President Jorge Ubico, who thinks that he looks like Napoleon and postures accordingly. Foreign interests find him cooperative, admire the trembling honesty of his minor officials. Guatemala's atmosphere of all-pervading terror is probably the worst in Latin America...
...When Ubico became Dictator, La Maciste moved up with him. She imitated her boss in every way, smoked the same cigarets, drove the same make of car. The Dictator's license plate is No. 5; La Maciste...