Torture
and death have been the decisive arbiters of the Guatemalan society, the gods
that determine behavior. Fear torments the oppressor and the oppressed. Fear
erodes even the upper class: fear to the communists and fear to the Indians,
fear to the military, and fear to the future. Guatemala is ruled by a culture
of fear. (Piero Gleijeses, 2005, La Esperanza Rota).
Introduction
“Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution
and the United States, 1944-1954” is a masterpiece of the Guatemalan
political historiography. Piero Gleijeses, the author, places us on the first
row of the American imperial decision-making and taking processes, and their
subsequent implementation in Guatemalan, at the beginning of the Cold War. He provides us with the view of the petty
interests of the United Fruit Company and the locally based State Department’s
officers as well as the views of the top of the chain of command of the
American empire.
But
Gleijeses’ work is not only about imperial history, in his own words, his main
aim was to unveil the silenced past[1],
especially the interests and actions of the Guatemalan acting crew. Why did the
Guatemalan Army’s officers didn’t defend former President Jacobo Arbenz’
government against operation PBSUCCESS in the summer of 1954? Who were the main
Guatemalan actors involved in this play? Which were their actions, and why
these led to a shameful defeat of the Guatemalan army, and the overthrown of
the second revolutionary government (1951-1954)?
All
of these questions are answered by Gleijeses, based on archival, and
bibliographical research, as well as on interviews done to some of the main
surviving protagonists of this play. Among these were former Guatemalan
President Jacobo Arbenz’ widow, Maria Vilanova, the once Secretary of the
Guatemalan communist party, Jose Manuel Fortuny, and retired Guatemalan army
generals who participated in the events. Their stories produce a collage of
ideas, interests, and decisions, that together make a sequence of events which
shows how the fear of the Guatemalan
army officers, and the weakness of the Guatemalan communist party –the Partido
Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT)-, were the main national conditions that allowed
for the regime’s overthrow.
In
this sense, this historiographical analysis will piggyback on this interest of
Gleijeses of unveiling the hidden motivations, interests, and beliefs of one of
the main actors during the Guatemalan Revolution: the Army’s officers. This
will be done as part of the doctoral dissertation of the author of the present
analysis, and which deals with the culture of the Guatemalan Army’s officers
during the Cold War period (1944 – 1986)
The relevance of focusing only on this actor –the
Army’s officers- is that it will allow discovering what Gleijeses’ perceived as
its main traits, and on the methodology to find them. It will also provide us
with material to compare his perspective with that of other important authors addressing
the Guatemalan military.
Sovereignty
For
Piero Gleijeses[2], the
Guatemalan army had a dual function during Jorge Ubico’s administration
(1931-1944), and during the revolutionary governments (1944-1954). First, it
helped to maintain the social order, either be impeding social manifestations
of discomfort, or by imposing a social order through the militarized
bureaucratic instances of the State. Second, the army had a role as arbiter of
last instance in either keeping the political order from change, or in changing
it if it felt disaffection towards the political authorities. And, although the
position of the military changed within the political structure between these
two periods, its functions didn’t change, as mentioned by Gleijeses[3]:
“Until 1944
they [the Guatemalan Army officers] had been the instruments of the dictators;
after 1954, they were the bride of the upper class. While the Army fought
successfully against the guerrilla, the marriage experienced a subtle
transformation. “[T]he army grew a mustache and developed strong muscles.”
During
Ubico’s time, for Gleijeses[4]
the Army was a servile and decadent institution that protected the interests of
the dictator. Obsequiousness towards the
president was the main trait needed to advance in the chain of command
replacing merit which is usually the case in the military. The incentives
created by the system provided the dictator with: 1) Keep the allegiance of the
army officers by controlling the access to the main political positions, which
were prizes that Ubico gave to those who were obedient to him; and, 2) it
allowed him for a militarized public service, which in turn imposed an illiberal
social order. This was true for functions such as education, communications,
infrastructure, the handling of criminals, and the local control of Indian
labor for the country’s plantations.
 |
| Former Guatemalan President Jorge Ubico |
Gleijeses[5]
only describes one event, at the end of Ubico’s mandate, in which the Army
became the arbiter of last instance in a moment of power vacuum:
“The Guard of Honor had lead the insurrection
and the army officers had directed the rebel forces during the fight. The purge
that happened in the army after the surrender of Ponce [the general that replaced
Ubico] was made without civil interference and it was limited to the group of
generals, who were dismissed, and also to many colonels.”
This
passage is relevant because it shows the change mentioned by Gleijeses at the
end of his book: starting in 1944 the Guatemalan Army began a process of
freeing itself of its role as the safekeeper of the economic elite of the
country. This was paired with a change in its political status –described by Héctor
Rosada-Granados in his 2011 book “Soldados
en el poder: Proyecto military en Guatemala (1944 – 1990)”-: 1) The Army’s
high command was divided among the Minister of Defense and the equivalent of
the Joint Chiefs in the US military; and, 2) the High Command was to be elected
by bodies of low, medium, and high ranking officers, creating a schism between
those who supported Arbenz, and those who supported Arana, and also weakening
the chain of command within the Army.
The
majority of the army officers instinctively mistrusted Indians and labor unions[6].
This was exemplified by the demand that Colonel Francisco Javier Arana made to former
Guatemalan President Juan José Arevalo to oust of the country several labor
union leaders whom he deemed especially dangerous[7].
These beliefs were also the cause of the growing uneasiness of the Army’s
officers towards Arbenz’ government policy of agrarian reform. At the end,
their role as first instance arbiters of the Guatemalan social order was
fulfilled when they refused to defend the Guatemalans from the invasion that
overthrew Jacobo Arbenz’ government in the summer of ‘54.
 |
| The then Mayor Francisco Javier Arana |
Colonel
Arana believed that the Army should have kept the political power after the
overthrown of General Ponce’s government. He gave money to promote his
candidates for the Congress during Juan Jose Arevalo’s administration, in 1948.
And if he refused to give a coup d’etat to Arevalo was because he wanted to
seize power in a clean and democratic way[8].
But, the risks that he entailed for the revolutionary governments ended with
his death in 1949, in unclear circumstances.
“Jacobo
[Arbenz] wasn’t anxious to buy weapons for the army”, said Arbenz’ wife, cited
by Gleijeses[9]; “he was afraid that they could feel stronger,
and use them against him or the people”. In the whole time of his
administration Arbenz tried to maintain the allegiance of the Army’s officers,
either by rewarding them economically, or by securing them their monopoly over
the use of force, or by keeping them clean from communist influences. But, in
June of 1954 they decided to leave Jacobo Arbenz alone while the
Counterrevolutionary troops of the Guatemalan Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas,
aided by the CIA, entered Guatemala, and kicked the president out of the
country, as well as other government officials, and union leaders. At the end,
the Guatemalan Army decided who would rule the country, and under what
conditions they would do it.
Servility, fear, and anti-communism
Piero
Gleijeses’ approach to the Guatemalan Army is one of at least three others that
have been studied in the past decades. His perspective on the Guatemalan military
is negative, psychological and ideological; servility, fear, and anti-communism
are the main traits that he identifies as part of the mentality of the Army’s
officers. However, as relevant his work may have been for the political
historiography of Guatemala, it has been seldom followed by other national or
international historians. In this sense, this analysis is also an attempt to
keep alive the legacy of one of the most important historians of Guatemala, and
to highlight his contribution to the Guatemalan historical studies.
As
mentioned above, there have been three other major insights into the role of
the Guatemalan military during the Cold War. The first one is the
sociological-structuralist approach, mainly developed by sociologists like Hector
Rosada-Granados (2011), Edgar Ruano Najarro (2012), and Gustavo Porras Castejón
(2011), among others. Their work is based on the simple premise that the army
is the right hand of the bourgeoisie, and they used official policies against
labor unions, the Arbenz’ agrarian reform, or communists, as evidence of this
class relation. However, one can counter-argue that although the results of
their actions protected the lands and social position of the traditional upper
class of Guatemala, it does not necessarily follow that this was true for the
period after Ubico, in which the Guatemalan military had a higher degree of
autonomy from the social and political forces.
The second
perspective is the legalist approach, exposed mainly by former army men like
Héctor Gramajo (2002), AVEMILGUA (2013), and Mario Merida (2011), among others.
Their main argument is that the actions taken by the Guatemalan armed forces
during the Cold War were based on law, and only to protect the legal,
constitutional, and democratic status of Guatemala. To prove their point they
have relied on the threat that the communists posed to the government, or in
the breakup of the constitutional order, like during Castillo Armas’ invasion,
starting in the 1950’s. But, the weakness of this approach is that the military
actually stepped over the Guatemalan laws, constitutions, and democratic orders
in the forty years that go from 1944 until 1986. This started with Colonel
Arana’s blackmail to the national government in the 1940’s, followed by the
Army’s disobedience to the then President Jacobo Arbenz in the 1950’s, the coup
d’etat and blackmail done by the military in 1963 against the national
government, and passing the fixing of elections and coups of the 1970’s and
1980’s.
The third perspective is the most recent one,
and it has been explored by Carlos Sabino (2008). It relies on the theories of the
real politik and the game theory
approaches; it states that the Guatemalan Army only reacted to a perceived
threat in a way as to terminate it. Moreover, for Sabino (2008) this reaction
was justified as a the measure that suppressed the communist threat, which then
helped the growth of the Guatemalan economy, and that it was well received by
ample (?) sectors of the Guatemalan society. But, this is evident, and it
doesn’t tells us much about the cause of the Army’s behavior during the Cold
War.
Servility. Servility may have been the most salient
character trait in Gleijeses’ description of the Guatemalan Army’s officers[10].
This was probably the most common type of behavior between the military and
Ubico and the revolutionary’s administrations. However, it differed widely
among them because its causes parted from different social situations in those
epochs.
During
Ubico’s time the military existed in a social structure in which they were the
servants of the Guatemalan oligarchy. Gleijeses expressed this when he says
that[11]:
“Detested by their own officers, Ubico’s
generals were famous by their ignorance, incompetence, and cruelty. Their only
qualification was their blind obedience to Ubico’s orders.”
And
that[12]:
“Their role [of the Army’s officers] was to
inspire fear in the name of the dictator, but they also lived in a world
reigned by fear, were the “least sign of dissatisfaction could have been
fatal.” The officers were robots ready to obey orders, refraining from any
initiative (…)”.
The
officers’ servility didn’t ended in the Revolution, only its causes changed.
This happened because the Guatemalan Army became an equal to the revolutionary
politicians, at the expense of the old Liberal Party, and of the oligarchy.
Gleijeses[13]
mentions that Colonel Francisco Javier Arana believed that the military should have
kept the political power of the country because it achieved the overthrown of
the last liberal President, General Ponce Vaidez, not the civilians.
This
new social and political status came with an increase in the prestige of and
perks for the military career in Guatemala. That is to say that the official policy
of the Arevalo and Arbenz’ administrations towards the military was to keep
them happy with high wages, elegant uniforms, expensive cars, beautiful country
clubs, long vacations, and easy-to-get scholarships to study abroad.[14]
But
the economic awards weren’t enough to secure the loyalty of the Guatemalan Army
towards the politicians.[15]
In the case of President Jacobo Arbenz, the price to pay was material perks,
but also keeping the Army’s monopoly over the weapons, and keeping it clean
from communists. And, although having a military president helped in maintaining
the Army’s loyalty or servility towards the President, it proved to be
insufficient when a real threat appeared.
Fear. Fear of reprisals kept the military from
insurrecting against Ubico’s government. Fear of an American attack made it
look the other way when the Liberation Army entered Guatemala in the summer of
1954 and overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. Fear
made it servile towards the oligarchy, and once in power, towards the US.
During
Ubico’s mandate the soldiers were poorly equipped, badly trained, forcefully
drafted, earned peanuts, slept in the floor, useless, ignorant, and physically
abused.[16]
But the situation of most of the officers wasn’t either that great[17]:
“Their wages were mediocre and they stood an
oppressive discipline.”
Gleijeses[18]
continues: They were always afraid of the draconian military code, which
mandated death penalty for almost any infraction. Spies were everywhere.
“The Army’s loyalty towards Arbenz wasn’t
unconditional, not even between Arbenz’ followers (…)”.[19]
When the Liberation Army started moving in June 1954, with the veiled but
evident support of the CIA, they were overcome by fear. They were terrified of
a Castillo Armas backed up by the US, and even the Americans knew it.[20]
But in August 1st of 1954 in a military parade the masses and the
elite booed them; they were traitors for the defeated and cowards for the
winners. They paid their due, but they stood resentful.
Anti-communism. Anti-communism played a vital role in keeping
the military clean from the communists’ attempt to infiltrate them, and in
downplaying the officers’ allegiance towards President Arbenz. Gleijeses
doesn’t mention in his 1992 work on Guatemala the origins of this belief within
the military, or the ways in which its was transmitted. Maybe it had to do with
the legal banning that the Liberal administrations (1871-1944) put over
communists organizations and expressions, or with a sense of revenge against
the workers’ unions that defeated them during the 1920’s uprising against President
Estrada Cabrera, or maybe because they were servants of an oligarchy that
despised any type of popular disaffection towards their systems.
Anti-communism
only became important for the military with Jacobo Arbenz’ rise to power and
with his growing connection with the Guatemala’s Labor Party (PGT by its
acronym in Spanish). Although communism wasn’t rejected by the Guatemalan Army
at the time, as long as it stood out of its barracks, it wasn’t either well perceived
among the Army’s officers.[21]
So great
was their disdain for communism that probably only Arbenz, and the Colonels Paz
Tejada, and Aldana Sandoval had any affection for it.[22]
But certainly, as the diplomatic pressure of the US over Arbenz’ government grew,
the more the officers withdrew their loyalty to Arbenz, and the more they
mistrusted him.[23]
Moreover, this situation worked both ways. Arbenz knew that the military could
overthrow him, and that his officers weren’t fond for communism, but maybe he
thought their new economic perks, and social and political status was enough to
keep their doubts at bay.[24]
He was mistaken.
Conclusions
For
Piero Gleijeses (2005), the Guatemalan Army was an antagonist in a play in
which the victim was the democratic progress of a country long ridden by a
necrotic local oligarchy aided by a servile military. In this sense, Gleijeses
contributions to the political historiography of Guatemala are: 1) the use of
interviews to relevant people who live the revolutionary period in Guatemala,
in order to discover their past motivations, actions, and beliefs; 2) the use
of archival information from US federal sources in order to compare their views
with those of the national Guatemalan actors; and, 3) in the case of the
military, to provide a different ´perspective on their actions, motivations,
and beliefs.
However
Gleijeses leaves the space open to further develop two relevant topics about
the Guatemala military. The first one regards the origins, reproduction, and
future –after the October Revolution- of the anti-communist zeal within the
Armed Forces. Gleijeses mentions its existence at the time of the Revolution,
and how did it play a role in ebbing the legitimacy of Jacobo Arbenz’ mandate within
the Army. But, one ends up with the palate craving form more information about
why where the military so stiff regarding their anticommunism, where did it
came from, and what happened with it after the October Revolution.
A
second topic that is left for further discovering is the draconian methods with
which the Guatemalan soldiers and Army’s officers were treated inside the
military institution. According to Ricardo Mendez Ruiz[25],
former Minister of the Interior during the Efrain Rios Montt’s presidency, the
difference between the Chilean military manners, and the Guatemalan ones, was
striking form him. In the former, the Chilean officers kept a cold distance
towards the lower ranks, and the compliance of the law was a personal
conviction, whereas, in the case of the Guatemalan military, the officers with
higher ranks were proactively abusive towards the lower ranks, as a way to show
their position. Hence, it is important to explore more about the origins of
this practices and the mentality that it created with the Guatemalan armed
forces, and their impact on their behavior.
Finally,
Gleijeses opened up a vein of historiographical analysis about the interaction
between local and imperial actors. And, although it isn’t the aim of the
analysis to over-use the word imperialism, from a local and intellectual
perspective, it permits to understand and accept why our sovereignty is not in
the highest institutions of the Guatemalan Republic, but in the hands of the
Republican American Empire, in what John Locke termed: the federative power of
the commonwealth.[26]
Bibliography
Gleijeses, Piero. La Esperanza Rota: La revolución
guatemalteca y los Estados Unidos, 1944 - 1954. Translated by E.H.G.
Guatemala, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 2005.
Morales, Héctor Alejandro Gramajo. Alrededor de la
Bandera: Un análisis praxiológico del enfrentamiento armado en GUatemala 1960
- 1996. 1a edición. Vol. I. Guatemala, Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional,
2003.
Ibarra Figueroa, Carlos, Sergio Tischler Visquerra,
Arturo Taracena Arriola, Virgilio Álvarez Aragón, and Edmundo Urrutia. Guatemala:
Historia Reciente (1954 - 1996): Proceso Polítivo y Antagonismo Social.
Vol. I. V vols. Guatemala, Guatemala: FLACSO, 2012.
Sabino, Carlos. Guatemala, la historia silenciada
(1944 - 1989), Revolución y Liberación. Vol. I. II vols. Guatemala,
Guatemala: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007.
—. Guatemala, la historia silenciada (1944 -
1989), El dominó que no cayó. Vol. II. II vols. Guatemala, Guatemala:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008.
Castejón, Gustavo Porras. Las huellas de
Guatemala. 4a edición. Guatemala, Guatemala: F&G Editores, 2011.
Rosada-Granados, Héctor. Soldados en el poder:
Proyecto militar en Guatemala (1944 - 1990). 4a edición. 2011.
Asociación de Veteranos Militares de Guatemala. Guatemala
bajo asedio: Lo que nunca se ha contado. Guatemal, Guatemala: AVEMILGUA.
Truillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power
and the Production of HIstory. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1997.
Locke, John. Two Treatises on Government.
Liberty Fund Inc., 2005.
Ruiz, Ricardo Méndez. Crónica de una vida, 1944 - 1992,
años convulsos. Guatemala, Guatemala: Artemis Edinter.
[2] Piero
Gleijeses, La Esperanza Rota: La
revolución guatemalteca y los Estados Unidos, 1944 – 1954 (Guatemala:
Editorial Universitaria, 2005).
[3] Ibid.,
pages 527-528.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.,
page 36.
[6] Ibid., page 279.
[7] Ibid.,
page 73.
[8] Ibid.,
pages 69-75.
[9] Ibid., page 383.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., page 11.
[12] Ibid., page 12.
[13] Ibid., page 73.
[14] Ibid., page 278.
[15] Ibid., page 280.
[16] Ibid., page 12.
[17] Ibid., page 12.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid., page 285.
[20] Ibid., page 463.
[21] Ibid., page 280.
[22] Ibid. page 274.
[23] Ibid., page 277.
[26] John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (USA: Liberti Fund Inc., 2005), page
77.