Word: ubico
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...Smart Subaltern. Jacobo (pronounced Ha-coe-boe) Arbenz was born in Quezaltenango in 1913 of a Ladino mother and a moody Swiss immigrant druggist who failed in business, walked out on his family and later killed himself. Another Swiss in the town intervened with General Jorge Ubico, the country's all-powerful ruler, to get the blond youth a scholarship at the national military school. Quickwitted and lithely muscular, Arbenz played polo and boxed while pulling down the highest grades in the academy's history. But when school triumphs were over, he was just another impoverished subaltern with...
...foreign nobody. Arbenz brooded because his aristocratic young wife had to do her own housework and even tint photographs (at $1 each) to eke out his $60-a-month lieutenant's pay. He seethed at social injustices-especially his own-and whetted up a sharp hatred for Ubico, who despised most of his officers and carefully confined them to quarters whenever he left the capital. "You can't imagine what it is like to live under a dictatorship," recalls Arbenz, whose police last week were freely murdering and jailing his political opponents. In 1944, sick of Ubico, Arbenz...
...lashes. The viceroyalty threw off the rule of Spain in 1823, later crumbled into five warring states. In the 105 revolution-torn years that followed, 18 dictators ruled Guatemala, beginning with the swineherd Rafael Carrera (1839-65) and reaching a savage climax under the megalomaniac General Jorge Ubico, who took power in 1931, held the Indians' wages as low as 3? a day, and was overthrown and exiled in 1944. Jacobo Arbenz is the country's second elected President since then...
...compares favorably with the picture only 20 years ago, when Machado ruled in Cuba, Gómez in Venezuela, Ibáñez in Chile and Leguía in Peru. It does not compare unfavorably with the picture a dozen years ago, when Vargas was dictator in Brazil, Ubico in Guatemala, Martinez in El Salvador, Carías in Honduras, Benavides in Peru, Busch in Bolivia, and Terra in Uruguay...
...Here in Mexico City, occupying 45 chairs in as many different cafes on any given day, are the 45 generals who used to command Ubico's army in Guatemala. They have an odd habit of snorting through their noses as they tell you what they will do to the current Guatemalan Government once they get arms...