Jacobo Árbenz

• 1. Introduction

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  Jacobo Árbenz stood at a podium on the 15th of March 1951, promising to convert Guatemala from "a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state." At that moment, only 2% of the population owned 70% of the land. A foreign company's annual profits were twice the revenue of his entire government. And a network of Cold War anxieties and corporate interests was already assembling the machinery that would bring him down. How did a Swiss German pharmacist's son from Quetzaltenango rise to become the most consequential president in Guatemalan history? And why did one of the world's most powerful governments decide he had to go?

• 2. From Quetzaltenango to the Cadets

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  Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second-largest city, was where Árbenz was born in 1913. His father, Hans Jakob Arbenz Gröbli, had emigrated from Switzerland to Guatemala in 1901 and worked as a pharmacist. The family was comfortable, upper-class. Then the pharmacy collapsed. Hans Jakob became addicted to morphine, neglected his business, went bankrupt, and the family was moved to a rural estate held for them by a wealthy friend out of charity. Jacobo had wanted to become an economist or an engineer, but university was out of reach. The Polytechnic School of Guatemala offered a scholarship to military cadets. He applied, passed the entrance exams, and entered in 1932. His father died by suicide two years after he arrived.

  At the Polytechnic School, Árbenz distinguished himself in ways that rarely happened. He was named "first sergeant," the highest cadet honor, a distinction awarded to only six people between 1924 and 1944. Major John Considine, the American director of the school, was among those who treated Árbenz with unusual respect. A fellow officer later recalled that "his abilities were such that the officers treated him with a respect that was rarely granted to a cadet." He graduated in 1935.

  His early postings gave him a close view of how Guatemalan authority operated at its lowest level. At Fort San José in Guatemala City, he led squads escorting chain gangs of prisoners, including political prisoners, to perform forced labor under the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. He said he felt like a capataz, a foreman. The word stuck with him. It was at Fort San José that he first met Francisco Arana, a man who would later become both an essential ally and a fatal problem.

• 3. The Woman Who Left a Manifesto on the Bedside Table

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  In 1938, while teaching at the military academy, Árbenz met María Vilanova, the daughter of a wealthy Salvadoran landowner and a Guatemalan mother from a prominent family. They married a few months later, against her parents' wishes: they felt she should not marry an army lieutenant without means. María was 24, Jacobo was 26. She later wrote that despite their differences, a shared desire for political change drew them together.

  Maria had attended a women's congress at which she received a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Before leaving on a vacation, she left a copy on Jacobo's bedside table. He was, by the account available to historians, moved by it. The two discussed it at length. It seemed to explain things they had already been feeling. Jacobo began reading more broadly in Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. By the late 1940s he was meeting regularly with a group of Guatemalan communists, among them José Manuel Fortuny, a man who would become one of the most important figures in his presidency.

  Historian Stephen Schlesinger later described Árbenz not as a communist but as a democratic socialist. Historian Jim Handy characterized his economics as "decidedly pragmatic and capitalist in temper." Yet the ideological current in his household ran deeper than any of those labels. The relationship between Árbenz and Fortuny, which began in late 1947 when Fortuny was intrigued by Árbenz's defense of accused communist workers, developed into a friendship that lasted through all three years of the presidency, from 1951 to 1954.

• 4. The October Revolution

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  In May 1944, protests against Ubico erupted at the university in Guatemala City. Ubico suspended the constitution on the 22nd of June 1944. The movement grew to include middle-class citizens, junior officers, students, and laborers, and by the end of June Ubico was gone. He appointed a three-person junta under General Federico Ponce Vaides to succeed him. On the 3rd of July, soldiers at a congressional session held everyone at gunpoint and forced the body to name Ponce Vaides interim president. His administration kept the repressive policies of its predecessor.

  Árbenz had been fired from his teaching post at the Escuela Politécnica and had relocated to El Salvador, where he organized a network of revolutionary exiles. He was one of the leaders of the coup plot inside the army, along with Major Aldana Sandoval. A fact notable in its context: Árbenz insisted, over the objections of other military men, that civilians be included in the conspiracy. Sandoval later confirmed that all contact with civilians during the coup was routed through Árbenz.

  On the 19th of October 1944, a small group of soldiers and students led by Árbenz and Francisco Javier Arana attacked the National Palace. The battle initially went against them. An appeal for support brought in unionists and students, and they eventually subdued the forces loyal to Ponce Vaides. On the 20th of October, Ponce Vaides surrendered unconditionally. Árbenz was promoted from captain to lieutenant colonel; Arana moved from major to full colonel. Scholars mark this moment, the departure of Ponce Vaides and the creation of a new junta, as the beginning of the Guatemalan Revolution.

  Elections in December 1944 were broadly free and fair, limited to literate men. A teacher named Juan José Arévalo, running under the Partido Acción Revolucionaria, won 85% of the vote. Arana tried first to delay the election and then to invalidate Arévalo's victory, but Árbenz and a colleague named Toriello held the line. Arana relented, on the condition that his position as commander of the military was written into the new constitution as essentially unassailable. The constitution adopted in 1945 created exactly that role, more powerful than the defense minister and removable only by congressional action if laws had been broken. Árbenz was sworn in as defense minister under this arrangement.

• 5. Decree 900

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  When Árbenz took office as president on the 15th of March 1951, the starting point for his land reform was stark: 2% of the population owned 70% of the land. His agrarian reform bill, which he drafted himself with help from economists across Latin America as well as advisers that included some communist party leaders, was passed by the National Assembly on the 17th of June 1952. It took effect immediately.

  The law was formally titled Decree 900. It expropriated uncultivated land from holdings larger than 673 acres. For estates between 224 and 672 acres, land was taken only when less than two-thirds of it was in use. Compensation was paid in government bonds set at the declared tax value from 1952. Local committees, which included representatives from landowners, laborers, and the government, organized the redistribution. Of nearly 350,000 private land-holdings, only 1,710 were affected.

  By June 1954, 1.4 million acres had been redistributed to roughly 500,000 individuals, approximately one-sixth of the entire population. The majority were indigenous Guatemalans whose ancestors had been dispossessed following the Spanish invasion. The National Agrarian Bank, created on the 7th of July 1953, disbursed more than $9 million in small loans. Of the $3,371,185 handed out between March and November 1953, $3,049,092 had been repaid by June 1954. The bank developed a reputation for efficiency that even Árbenz's fiercest critics in the United States did not dispute.

  The Supreme Court ruled the reform unconstitutional in 1953. The Guatemalan Congress responded by impeaching four judges associated with the ruling. Árbenz himself, a landowner through his wife María, gave up 1,700 acres of his own land under the program.

• 6. United Fruit and the Price of Bananas

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  The United Fruit Company had been formed in 1899. By 1930 it had been Guatemala's largest landowner and employer for several years. Its arrangement with Ubico included a 99-year lease on massive tracts of land and exemptions from virtually all taxes. Ubico had even asked the company to cap its workers' wages at 50 cents a day, so that other workers in Guatemala would not demand more. The company effectively owned Puerto Barrios, the country's only Atlantic port. By 1950, its annual profits were $65 million, exactly twice the revenue of the Guatemalan government.

  Of the 550,000 acres the company held in Guatemala, only 15% was under cultivation. The remainder fell squarely within the scope of Decree 900. In 1953, when 200,000 acres of that idle land were expropriated, the Guatemalan government offered compensation at $2.99 per acre, twice what the company had originally paid. The company treated this as an outrage. It launched an intensive lobbying campaign in Washington, spending over half a million dollars to persuade lawmakers and the public that Árbenz needed to be removed.

  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pressed the company's case with particular energy. He had previously represented United Fruit as its lawyer. His brother Allen Dulles, then director of the CIA, sat on the company's board of directors. Thomas Dudley Cabot, a former CEO of United Fruit, held the position of director of International Security Affairs in the State Department. Undersecretary of State Bedell Smith later became a director of the company. The wife of the United Fruit public relations director was Eisenhower's personal assistant. The relationships were documented, not circumstantial.

• 7. Operation PBSuccess

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  President Eisenhower authorized the CIA operation to overthrow Árbenz, code-named Operation PBSuccess, in August 1953. An earlier plot, Operation PBFortune, had been proposed by Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García and authorized by Truman after Decree 900 passed in 1952, but Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded Truman to abort it before it could proceed. Eisenhower had no such hesitation.

  Carlos Castillo Armas, once Arana's lieutenant and exiled after the failed coup attempt in 1949, was chosen to lead the operation. He recruited roughly 150 mercenaries from Guatemalan exile communities and neighboring populations. In January 1954, the Guatemalan government learned of these preparations and publicly named a "Government of the North" in a plot to remove Árbenz. The US denied everything. The US press sided with the government.

  Unable to buy weapons openly, Guatemala turned to Czechoslovakia. The shipment arrived aboard a vessel called the Alfhem. The CIA portrayed it as Soviet penetration of the Western Hemisphere. Árbenz had intended the weapons for peasant militias that could supplement the army in the event of army disloyalty, but the US informed Guatemalan military chiefs of the shipment and forced Árbenz to hand the weapons over to the military, deepening the rift between him and his own officer corps.

  Castillo Armas' forces invaded on the 18th of June 1954. The CIA ran a psychological warfare campaign alongside the invasion, anchored by a radio station called the "Voice of Liberation" that broadcast fabricated reports of rebel troops converging on the capital. By the 25th of June, Guatemalan soldiers gathered at Zacapa had sent word back that they would not fight. Army chiefs informed US Ambassador John Peurifoy of a plan to remove Árbenz themselves in exchange for a ceasefire. Árbenz, exhausted and hoping to preserve what remained of the October Revolution's reforms, taped a resignation speech at 8 pm on the 27th of June 1954, broadcast an hour later. He walked to the nearby Mexican Embassy and requested asylum.

• 8. Exile, Loss, and the Long Return

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  For 73 days, Árbenz and nearly 300 exiles crowded the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City. When they were finally permitted to leave, authorities at the airport subjected Árbenz to a public search, claiming he was carrying jewelry purchased at Tiffany's in New York City with presidential funds. No jewelry was found. The interrogation lasted an hour and was conducted in front of cameras. During this entire period, the CIA had been doctoring his personal papers and releasing the altered documents to the press.

  The family traveled to Mexico, then to Canada to collect Arabella, their oldest daughter, then to Switzerland, where Árbenz hoped his Swiss heritage might secure citizenship. He declined to renounce his Guatemalan nationality, fearing it would end his political future. The application failed. The family moved to Paris, then to Prague, then to Moscow, where Árbenz found some relief from the hostility he had experienced in Czechoslovakia. After returning to Prague and Paris, he and María separated briefly: she traveled to El Salvador for family matters. Alone, Árbenz fell into depression and drank heavily.

  In 1957, the CIA attempted to block his entry to Uruguay but failed. He arrived in Montevideo on the 13th of May 1957. In 1960, at the invitation of a representative of Fidel Castro, he flew to Havana, briefly energized by the Cuban Revolution. He refused leadership of Guatemalan revolutionary movements, pessimistic about their outcome. In 1965, he was invited to a Communist Congress in Helsinki. Shortly afterward, his daughter Arabella died by suicide in Bogotá. The family settled in Mexico City. Árbenz spent periods in France and Switzerland before returning. He died in Mexico in 1971. Historians disagree on the manner of his death: Roberto García Ferreira concluded he died of a heart attack while bathing; Cindy Forster concluded he died by suicide.

  On the 19th of October 1995, his remains were repatriated to Guatemala. Military officers fired cannon salutes. His coffin was drawn by a horse-drawn carriage to San Carlos University, where students paid homage. The next day, thousands gathered at the Guatemala City General Cemetery for burial. Defense Minister General Marco Antonio González remained in his car as crowds outside shouted, "Army of assassins get out of the country."

  In May 2011, the Guatemalan government signed an agreement with Árbenz's surviving family. On the 20th of October 2011, President Alvaro Colom issued a formal apology at the National Palace to Jacobo Árbenz Vilanova, the former president's son. Colom stated: "It was a crime to Guatemalan society and it was an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring." Among the reparations: a highway to the Atlantic was named after the former president, the national school curriculum was revised, and postage stamps were issued in his honor.