Well Worth Reading

• Date: 16.10.2008
• Book: Guatemala: Occupied Country
• Author: plappen

Review

Guatemala: Occupied Country, Eduardo Galeano, Monthly Review Press, 1969


This book looks at life in the Central American country of Guatemala since the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup that brought the military to power. The extreme Right operates with impunity all over the country, protected by the army and police, while on the Left, guerrillas organize in the cities and countryside.

In the early 1950s, the elected president, a man named Arbenz, was interested in agrarian reform. He expropriated idle land owned by the United Fruit Company, and planned to divide it up among small farmers. This is land the United Fruit was not using, and they were repaid for the land. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, was on the United Fruit Board of Directors. Guatemala was immediately branded a communist state, and some of the most repressive leaders in Latin America, like Batista of Cuba, and Somoza of Nicaragua, through the Organization of American States, condemned the plan. In mid-1954, Arbenz was overthrown in a military coup, sponsored by the CIA, and the first of a series of military governments was installed.

Today (1967) there is a civilian president, a man named Mendez Montenegro, but he is little more than a figurehead. The Defense Minister has the real power. Anyone who even tries to organize the people, like peasant leaders, teachers, priests, etc, can expect to be jailed, tortured or shot. The income discrepancy can best be called extreme. Over three-quarters of the land is owned by 2 percent of the people, while over three-quarters of the people live on less than a dollar a day.

The Guatemalan resistance is home-grown; there is no Cuban or Soviet "influence," despite US propaganda to the contrary. On the other hand, the military is full of North Americans, including "volunteers" to fly bombers to drop napalm on civilians, and actual Green Berets teaching torture techniques. What the military doesn't control is controlled by Washington and Wall Street through the Alliance for Progress. A number of financial and economic agreements were forced on the Guatemalan government under extremely unfair conditions, making the country even more and more dependent on "aid" from Washington.

This snapshot of American foreign policy (the Guatemalan struggle, or civil war, only ended in the 1990s) as seen from inside the country is really good, and pretty eye-opening. It's short, easy to read, and is well worth the reader's time.