The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

the CIA, entered the country with his “Liberation Army,” a ragtag group of 150 CIA-trained and armed Guatemalan rebels. In a paper written in 2001, before he joined the State Department, Latin American historian Douglas Kraft describes what transpired: “Fully aware of Castillo Armas’ weakness, Arbenz held the utmost trust in Guatemala’s ability to defeat the rebels. When they attacked by land in Zacapa and by sea at Puerto Barrios, the rebels encountered fierce opposition. ... With the Liberation Army stalled, the CIA launched a psychological attack on Arbenz. Jamming Guatemalan radio waves and broadcasting fictitious reports of an advancing rebel force, the CIA worked to unnerve the Guatemalan Army. Simultaneously, CIA bombers strafed Guatemala City streets and dropped small bombs to arouse fear among the local population. ... Senior Guate- malan officers began to fear that the United States might invade should the rebel incursion fail. “By June 25, these fears circulat- ed at the front, and Guatemala’s mil- itary forces at Zacapa refused to engage the Liberation Army. The military had effectively turned against Arbenz. His alternatives narrowed, the Guatemalan presi- dent ordered the military to arm peasant and labor organizations in a last-ditch effort to stop Castillo Armas. The order represented Arbenz’s fatal error. Entrusting the nation’s defense to a band of peas- ants represented a vote of no confi- dence in the military. What little loyalty Arbenz still enjoyed evapo- rated.” Arbenz was forced out of office just 10 days after the coup began. He resigned the presidency on June 27, 1954, after seeking refuge in the Mexican embassy. He went into exile shortly thereafter, dying in 1971 at age 58 in Mexico without ever again seeing his beloved home- land. His ashes were returned in October 1995 and sit in a white tomb topped with a pyramid shaped monument in the capital’s Central Cemetery. Disingenuously, the State De- partment said Arbenz was the victim of a popular uprising. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs Henry Holland, without referring to the CIA role, said, “The people of Guatemala rose and dispersed the little group of trai- tors who had tried to subvert their government into another commu- nist satellite.” Arbenz, not surpris- ingly, had a different perspective. “Our crime,” Arbenz explained in his resignation speech, “is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company.” As part of CIA planning before the invasion, the agency compiled a list of Guatemalans to be neutralized through murder, imprisonment or exile, according to declassified CIA documents. Latin America research- er Peter Kornbluh, of the private National Security Archives, said the “A” list of those to be assassinated contained 58 names. Planning for 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 4 At a minimum, it is clear that the Eisenhower administration intervened without much of a plan beyond getting rid of Arbenz.