Word: ubico
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Ubico claims to protect the humble, peaceful Indians who form the bulk of the Guatemalan population (total: 3,284,269). Actually, he grants these subjects no rights at all, controls them by arbitrary vagrancy laws, makes them work three weeks a year for the State for nothing. Hundreds of these forced Indian laborers have died on a road which Ubico is pushing through the pestilential jungles of Peten...
...Ubico has no children, legitimate or otherwise. "I slave day and night," he complains to intimates, "and I haven't even a son to leave my fortune to." But he tries. At 65, he continually boasts of his virility...
...Germans, who grew much of Guatemala's coffee, had a big stake in its export trade, have been shipped to the U.S. for internment. German properties have been impounded for the duration. A special tax on enemy business eats up the profits. But most Guatemalans do not take Ubico's anti-German gestures too seriously, expect him to return the holdings to German ownership after...
...Ubico has heard the murmur. For years he planned "to leave the Presidency only for the cemetery." After El Salvador's revolt, he said: "A ruler should know in the seat of his pants when he ought to get out of his chair...