Monsicha Hoonsuwan

Critical Book Review

U.S. Interventionism

Professor Curt Cardwell

20 October 2010

Shattered Hope, Shattered Dream

Within a period of eleven days after Jacobo Arbenz resigned from his presidential

post, Guatemala saw five successive juntas occupying the presidential palace before the

exiled Guatemalan army officer, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, eventually took over the

government. His notoriously corrupt and repressive regime threw Guatemala back to

forty years of consecutive military regime and violence that took more than 140,000

Guatemalan lives. Although Arbenz’s presidency lasted a mere three years, it represented

the hope Guatemalan revolution brought to non-elite Guatemalans, as it challenged “the

culture of fear”—the way of life that portrays torture and death as the “gods that

determine behavior” (383). In Shattered Hope, Piero Gleijeses argues that Arbenz’s

regime phased out the culture of fear through reforms, mainly the agrarian reform and

public work programs, which were viewed by the U.S. as signifying the start of a leftist

revolution in Guatemala. The U.S. government, being fearful of the spread of

communism, dubbed Arbenz the “Red Jacobo” who maintained close ties with the

communist party and was a communist himself. Consequently, the U.S. government saw

the need to overthrow Arbenz not only to address security concerns in Central America,

but also to protect economic interests and exercise U.S. imperial hubris. In the end,

Gleijeses argues, the CIA’s success in engineering the overthrow of Arbenz shattered

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many Guatemalans’ hope of living a new life—a life that is not determined by the fear of

torture or death.

No other scholarly book unfolds the heartbreaking end of the Guatemalan

revolution and Arbenz’s “unique feat” (134)—the first true agrarian reform of Central

America—as smoothly as Gleijeses’. Owing to his lurid journalistic account based

largely on painstaking interviews with witnesses during the Guatemalan revolution

leading up to the U.S. ruinous effort in overthrowing Arbenz, each page turns like a good

suspense story, although one is most likely able to guess the outcome the minute he or

she opens the book. Nonetheless, every good book has its downfall. For Shattered Hope,

it is Gleijeses’ sympathy for the communist president that is apparent in his lurid portrait

of Arbenz as a protagonist. The image is painted with careful observation, using

information gathered from interviews with not only Arbenz’s friends, but also enemies.

The result is a two-dimensional, almost saint-like Arbenz whose biggest mistake

contributing to the end of his presidency was his naivety. Being a leader whose heart and

passion lie solely in the Guatemalan people, Arbenz in Gleijeses’ narrative seems too

fictional, a factor that may raise some questions regarding the author’s objectivity and the

accuracy of the information he presents.

In addition to his heavenly character, Arbenz is a “lonely man” (134) abandoned

on the road to reformation. His original power base, the Guatemalan military, dismissed

Arbenz as he advanced toward agrarian reform, while his close ties with the Communist

party forced the Guatemalan president to hide his true beliefs from the public. Besides his

wife and the leaders of the Communist party, no one else accurately understands

Arbenz’s private life and, hence, his motivations and intentions behind the reform

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programs. Attempts to explain the tragic fate of Jacobo Arbenz by conservative, liberal

and radical critics have failed to capture the essence of what the Guatemalan leader really

was, argues Gleijeses. Arbenz was not a man driven by ambition and greed. He was

neither controlled by the communists nor was he an inconsequential bourgeois unwilling

or unable to intensify the revolution. He was, however, a man whose inscrutable

personality earned him few friends, but his fierce nationalism and genuine passion for

social reform garnered him tremendous confidence in putting forward the most beneficial

policy in Guatemalan history. Gleijeses admits Arbenz’s political radicalization toward

the far-left spectrum, as Arbenz became increasingly crestfallen with the revolutionary

parties who failed to bring about necessary changes to the Guatemalan society. Yet, his

left-tilting commitment was not involuntary; Marxist theory, argued Gleijeses, offered

Arbenz the answer to Guatemala’s present social and economic issues, “explanations that

were not available in other theories,” (141) according to Maria de Arbenz, the

Guatemalan leader’s wife. Besides, argues Gleijeses, Arbenz’s passion was “an

aberration” (144) for a middle-class landowner that his presidency could not possibly be

led by greed or ambitions.

It was also ignorance on the U.S. part that led to the unwarranted fall of the

Guatemalan president, Gleijeses argues. The U.S. was too consumed by its hatred of

communism that it failed to see the true purpose behind agrarian reform. The communist

party or PGT—as well as Arbenz—believed that Guatemala must go through a capitalist

stage, where material conditions for socialism are developed through agrarian reform, and

eventually, they hoped, would lead to industrialization and the growth of a proletariat. In

the mind of Arbenz and the PGT who were well aware of U.S. communism intolerance,

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this historic reform would not pose a problem because it would lead Guatemala to

become capitalist before it could achieve socialism. Consequently, Decree 900—a law

that laid down the groundwork for the expropriation of uncultivated land in private

estates of more than 672 acres and only if less than two thirds of these private estates

were uncultivated—was passed. In fact, argues Gleijeses, this reform was modeled after

the U.S. example in Formosa and Japan, and presented a satisfying result in Guatemala,

for one quarter of the total arable land of Guatemala was expropriated with five hundred

thousand Guatemalan beneficiaries. Unlike the outcomes in Bolivia, Cuba, Peru and

Nicaragua, Arbenz’s agrarian reform increased productivity in Guatemala—the success

also noted by the U.S. embassy. Another sign showing the underlying capitalist intent

was the public works program implemented to reclaim the country’s economic

sovereignty from foreign domination through competition rather than expropriation.

According to Gleijeses, Decree 900 and the public works program went so successfully

that the Guatemalan economy was “basically prosperous” (167). Hence, Arbenz’s

reforms were not the equivalent of collectivization and should not become the U.S.

government’s source of fear against communist takeover in Guatemala.

However, Gleijeses argues, there is no “convenient villain” that contributes to the

shattering of hope in Guatemala. Economic reasons played an important part as the

United Fruit Company (UFCO), affected by Arbenz’s predecessor Juan José Arévalo’s

Labor Code and Arbenz’s agrarian reform, appealed for help from the U.S. government.

Despite Eisenhower’s pro-UFCO officials, Gleijeses argues that the influence of the

United Fruit Company in shaping American policy towards Guatemala decreased as the

influence of the communists in shaping Guatemala increased. The PGT gained influence

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during the peak of McCarthyism in the U.S., making the U.S. government less concerned

with UFCO’s fate and more anxious with growing communist influence in Central

America. Furthermore, government reports showed that as the intelligence gathering

capability of the U.S. increased, the U.S. government relied less on the UFCO’s depiction

of the communist threat in Guatemala, eventually marginalizing the UFCO’s influence

altogether. While economic factors were crucial to the understanding of this story,

Gleijeses nevertheless contends that Washington wrongly believed that Arbenz’s

Guatemala “threatened the stability of the region” (365), offering a haven for prosecuted

communists and destabilizing its neighbors. Most importantly, the fact that Arbenz

offered a successful alternative to U.S. capitalism was an insult to U.S. “sense of self-

respect” (366). As Gleijeses argued, José Manuel Fortuny was right: It was not just about

economic interests. “They (the U.S. government) would have overthrown us even if we

had grown no bananas,” says Fortuny (7).

Arbenz disappointed the U.S. government. He was not an opportunist, nor was he

a “dishonest and shallow” (125) man who would allow self-interest to drive him into the

U.S. government’s embrace. Gleijeses illustrates to the readers that the U.S. had

overplayed the communism threat in Guatemala to protect its economic interests, its

influence in Central America and its imperial pride. Of course, Washington was right on

one thing: Arbenz was a communist. Yet, he was also the hope of at least five hundred

thousand Guatemalans who never owned a piece of land. Their hope came and

immediately went away with the resignation of Arbenz and the return of military juntas.

No other government was to be blamed for this tragedy except the U.S. government

whose self-righteousness robbed the Guatemalan people off their impending prosperity.

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