Historia de América Latina

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 abou