PART SIX: Force for Liberty or for Oppression? Guatemala

“A feeling of superiority counteracts imitation. Had the millions of immigrants who came to this country been superior people – the cream of the countries they came from – there would have been not one USA but a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups. It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were from the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly.”
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951

Unlike El Salvador, Guatemala was and is racially and culturally divided. Over half of the population is Maya which holds to its culture and traditions. Like El Salvador, Guatemala’s 300-year colonial heritage ensured that the land was owned by a few, the oligarchs, and supported by the military. Unlike El Salvador however, the military in Guatemala proved to be much more cruel and deadly. In Panama the US wanted a canal, in El Salvador the US wanted to defeat communism, and in Guatemala the story more closely resembles our past involvement in Southeast Asia and the beginnings of the “domino theory”.

Military Juntas were beneficial to the landed aristocracy and also became profitable to the US. United Fruit Company (UFC) became a polarizing entity in 20th century Guatemalan politics. Starting operations in 1901 UFC eventually won control over 40% of the best arable land. It also controlled the railroad, the telegraph, the electric utility, and the port facility. Much like Noriega in Panama, UFC wielded disproportionate power over the Guatemalan government. While not uncomfortable to the military rulers it would be disastrous for those seeking reform and modernization.

In 1944 the dictatorship of General Ubico was overthrown. The officers that were responsible for the coup stepped aside and called for a general election to the surprise of most people. The general election represented the beginning of what was dubbed the “ten years of spring”. One of coup leaders was a young officer named Captain Jacobo Arbenz.

A civilian President was elected in 1945 and remained in office until 1951. The mood in Guatemala was upbeat as a period of personal liberties and reforms were embarked upon. In 1951 the young officer Arbenz was elected President in a landslide victory. As part of his socially progressive agenda he purged the military of officers not loyal to him personally, one of these who would return to haunt Arbenz was Colonel Castillo Armas.

In 1952 President Arbenz allowed the Communist Guatemalan Party of Labor to achieve legal standing. While his progressive agenda was popular with the rank and file, it was considered controversial and dangerous among the powerful economic interests. Indian discontent and unrest had already started in 1944 and Arbenz might have been seen as inciting them further. In any case the suppression of the indigenous Maya would define Guatemalan politics for the next 52 years.

In 1953 US and Guatemalan interest would clash in a big way. Decree 900 of the Agrarian Reform Act would redistribute agricultural land primarily to peasant communities. The United Fruit Company stood to lose 250,000 of its 350,000 tracts of land and fought the measure. The company had the support of the US State Department because it maintained that the loss of UFC holdings would harm the US economy. President Arbenz would not be pressured to make an exception for UFC and this would seal his fate.

The leader of the anti-Arbenz exiles was none other than Colonel Castillo Armas who had been part of the Arbenz military purge three years earlier. As part of the CIA’s Operation PBSuccess the exiles invaded Guatemala on June 18, 1954 and, without the support of his military, Arbenz resigned shortly thereafter and went into exile. Colonel Castillo Armas took control and established a military government, disbanded the legislature, arrested communist leaders, and hundreds of suspected leftists were summarily executed. The United Fruit Company had another right-wing military dictatorship in place that would support its interests above those of the Guatemalan people. The irony of the personalities involved in this political drama does not stop with Castillo Armas.

While the CIA was ultimately responsible for the downfall of Arbenz, it came as a result of a combined United Fruit Company and US State Department campaign to convince the US that Guatemala was a Soviet puppet. The Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles. His former law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, represented United Fruit Company. The top public relations officer of Sullivan and Cromwell was Ed Whitman whose wife was the private secretary of President Eisenhower. Allen Dulles, the brother of the Secretary of State, had served on the Board of Trustees of United Fruit and was then the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The American people were peppered with propaganda, disinformation and slanted newspaper stories in favor of United Fruit and the spread of international communism in Guatemala. Like Vietnam, Guatemala became a victim of the anti-communist’s “domino theory”.

The stage was set for civil war in 1954 although it would officially start in 1960. It was the beginning of a period throughout Latin America when socially progressive military officers toppled right-wing dictators. If they failed to acquire US support, they would have no alternative but to seek help from the Soviet Union or its proxy, Cuba. In 1958 Colonel Castillo Armas was assassinated. When he was replaced by General Fuentes a group of junior officers revolted unsuccessfully. Of these young officers, some established close ties with Cuba and became the nucleus for armed insurrection groups, one of which was the Guatemalan Party of Labor or PGT. As in El Salvador, the several groups would be required by Cuba to form an umbrella organization called the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG).

The civil war was more violent and nearly four times more deadly than in neighboring El Salvador. Like El Salvador, death squads operated freely complementing the military counter-insurgency operations. In the 1960s and early 1970s much of the fighting was localized and far from the capital, although insurgents assassinated key persons including US Ambassador John Mein in 1968. Also murdered were numerous priests, nuns, tourists, and reporters. Most were covered up by the Guatemalan military and the cases never solved. The CIA had compiled a list of 70,000 suspects in support of the 1954 coup and this list was used by the Guatemalan government throughout the 36-year Civil War. CIA tactics from Southeast Asia were employed as well.

In 1965, John Longan worked with elite members of the Guatemala army to set up a death squad to support Operation Cleanup which, like Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, targeted individuals for kidnapping and assassination. The following year the army initiated major operations against guerrilla strongholds in the countryside. In the late 1970s the war was being fought in both rural and urban areas. By 1982, the army had copied the hamlet pacification programs under CORDS and the provincial reconnaissance units used in Vietnam.

Unlike the CORDS pacification program that provided security and civic action, the Guatemalan army instituted their “rifles and beans” operations under Rios Montt: “If you are with us, we’ll feed you; if not, we’ll kill you” was an army officer’s explanation as quoted in the New York Times (July 18, 1982). The rural peasants were intimidated into joining civilian defense patrols or risk being labeled an insurgent. Unlike El Salvador, the reporting of human rights violations was either not required or was overlooked. The war produced an estimated 50,000 disappeared persons and 200,000 dead insurgents and civilians. All the while, the CIA worked closely with the D-2, the Guatemalan army intelligence directorate. It was the D-2 that controlled all interrogations, kidnappings, and assassinations. Its officers, like Hitler’s SS, were feared within their own military. One such officer, Colonel Alpirez would prove disastrous to the CIA’s operations in Guatemala. Perhaps, in a way, the peace process itself may have benefited from this murderous and corrupt officer linked to both the D-2 and the CIA.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

The likes of Colonel Alpirez and his ilk have never really been completely purged from the army and the government of Guatemala remains one of the most corrupt. This pattern of corruption and ruthlessness led to the interrogation and 1992 assassination of Efrain Bamaca and to the 1990 assassination of US citizen Michael DeVine in Poptun, Guatemala.

June 1991, CIA secret cable
Sources indicate that Minister of Defense Mendoza has launched a series of verbal attacks against the Military Intelligence Directorate (D-2), alleging that it has fallen “under the control” of U.S. intelligence. In particular, Mendoza has accused D-2 of passing information to U.S. intelligence agencies on the killing of American citizen Michael DeVine, a case that provoked the suspension of U.S. security assistance. Sources speculate, however, that these accusations are not sincere, and that Mendoza’s efforts to weaken the intelligence unit are linked to his alleged involvement with drug traffickers. D-2, the document notes, “is the only credible organization in the country with an antinarcotics role.”

In January 1995, Ambassador McAffee was provided information that demonstrated that the CIA had withheld critical information from her. She cabled Washington DC and the CIA Station Chief in Guatemala was relieved of his duties and reassigned to a desk job at Langley. Years of suppressed information given to it by paid informants became public knowledge on March 25-1995. Representative Torricelli, as reported in the New York Times, “…said a Guatemalan military officer who was on the CIA payroll had ordered the deaths of the innkeeper, Michael DeVine and Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, the leftist guerrilla, who was the husband of Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard Law School graduate.”

Jennifer Harbury and Hillary Clinton were one year apart at Harvard Law School and were acquainted. Harbury was allegedly married to Efrain Bamaca. President Clinton aggressively pushed for a full investigation of CIA actions in Guatemala and its policies regarding human rights. Michael DeVine found a source for justice and vindication in an unnamed person who analyzed the classified information and exposed the questionable practices by the CIA in Guatemala. Finally, it was Ambassador McAffee who took the definitive steps to reign-in the CIA excesses in Guatemala.

It defies logic and common sense to think that, after decades of working with Guatemalan intelligence and carrying out replicas of their operations in Vietnam that the CIA would not have known exactly what happened to fellow US citizen, Michael DeVine. May he rest in peace.

Defense Intelligence Agency, secret message, February 1, 1995
A source discusses whether Colonel Julio Roberto Alpírez was responsible for the torture and execution of guerrilla leader Efraín Bámaca Velasquez. The source asserts that Colonel Alpírez “was fully capable” of the performing these actions, but believes that he “would have probably delegated the final responsibility to eliminate Bámaca to a junior officer or a specialist that he trusted.” The source also believes that the army “would not offer up one of its own” to reduce international pressure on the case, adding that anyone willing to come forward with information “would have a great deal to lose if Colonel Alpírez were to talk.” Alpírez was a paid intelligence asset for the CIA until 1995, when then-Congressman Robert Toricelli revealed his role in the cover-up of the 1990 killing of American innkeeper Michael DeVine, and the torture and murder of Bámaca in 1992.

The CIA Inspector General’s investigation found no purposeful cover-up, stated that the agency professional standards were unacceptable, suggested reporting be more closely analyzed and contrasted with other reporting, and recommended that the Director of the CIA take action against several covert CIA agents that were stationed in or supervised agency operations in Guatemala for “serious deficiencies”.

USSOUTHCOM Intelligence Summary for 13 September 1995
In an effort to improve Guatemala’s human rights image, President Ramiro De León Carpio has announced that he will disband the 35-year old military commissioner system, an arrangement that has long provided the army with “a steady stream” of intelligence information on “insurgent, suspected insurgent sympathizer, and criminal activities.” However, it is also reported that the army will secretly retain the commissioners and their support functions under a different name and organizational structure. Under the new arrangement, the Directorate of Intelligence (D-2) will compile a master list of the top 25,000 “collaborators,” who will continue to play an “invisible” role for the military. The new system is intended to preserve “the valuable HUMINT [human source intelligence] collection network critical for monitoring insurgent activity,” while allowing “deniability if allegations about retaining the commissioners arise.”
Defense Intelligence Agency, secret cable, September 14, 1995

While the final peace accords were concluded in 1996 much work is still required to overcome the causes of the civil war. Author Walter La Feber eloquently stated in his 1993 book Inevitable Revolutions: the United States in Central America, “The history of Guatemala since the Spanish conquest is one of continuous conquest and repression”. This will be a cultural heritage hard to overcome and probably will not be overcome any time soon.