The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

itary, recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and altering the drastically unequal system of land ownership. The promise of the accords has never been fulfilled, however. A major setback occurred in 1999, when a referendum on proposed constitutional reforms — a key to implementation of the accords — failed by 55 to 45 percent. For unex- plained reasons, the turnout was dis- appointingly small: only 19 percent of those eligible voted. Defeat meant a significant loss of momen- tum toward a demilitarized, multi- ethnic democracy. Another setback occurred when Guatemala failed to qualify for sig- nificant postwar reconstruction assistance from international lending institutions. Isaac Cohen, a Wash- ington-based Guatemalan who keeps tabs on the country’s politics, says the country’s internal tax rev- enues fell short of these institutions’ requirements. Accordingly, Guate- mala received only about half the funding it would otherwise have been entitled to, and lacked the resources to carry out the promised reforms. The end of the war failed to yield a significant improvement in the human rights situation. An August 2002 report by the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala documented “threats of assassina- tion of human rights defenders, church workers, judges, witnesses, journalists, political activists and labor unionists.” Lynchings and mob violence continued. Illegal groups and clandestine structures operated with impunity. In January 2003, the newspaper Prensa Libre reported that 134 judges had received death threats over the pre- ceding several years. But 2003 may have represented a turning point. Last November, Guatemalan voters emphatically rejected the presidential candidacy of Efrain Rios Montt, a retired gen- eral who led the country as military dictator in 1982-83, one of the bloodiest civil war periods. He fin- ished a distant third. The country’s new president, Oscar Berger, is seen by many Guatemalans as a welcome change from his discredited prede- cessor, Alfonso Portillo, who fled the country soon after Berger’s inaugu- ration in late December, apparently to avoid corruption charges. Berger indeed seems determined to clean up government. He has required all the members of his cab- inet and subordinates to abide by a code of ethics. He has taken steps to cut down on crime and to improve the rights of women as well as the traditionally marginalized indige- nous population. He also wants to cut armed forces personnel to 14,000 from 31,000, for a savings of $44 million. Some of these funds will be used to upgrade public trans- portation. Some military personnel who agree to accept voluntary retire- ment will be offered new positions as police officers or prison system employees. These changes suggest that the military no longer will enjoy the highly privileged position it acquired during the post-Arbenz years when it made common cause with the oli- garchy. The goal of that alliance was to ensure that Arbenz-style social reformers were kept at bay. In large measure, this objective was achieved — but at extraordinarily high cost. The Lessons of History Drawing lessons from the 1954 experience in Guatemala is not easy; no two situations that feed U.S. interventionist impulses are exactly alike. The Guatemala of 50 years ago was different from the Iran of 1953, the Cuba of 1961, the Dominican Republic of 1965, the Chile of 1973, the Grenada of 1983, the Panama of 1989, or the Iraq of 2003. In each case, the United States stepped in to protect its inter- ests against perceived threats, with varying results. Did the CIA intervention rob Guatemala of a democratic hero and lay the groundwork for the civil war that followed? Or did the agency’s actions merely tip the balance against an unpopular government that may have eventually fallen from its own weight? State Department researchers embrace the latter the- sis. They say that Arbenz’s support had dwindled sharply, consisting mostly of the estimated 100,000 peasant families who had benefited from his agrarian reform. They also believe that the link between his ouster and the 30-year civil war that followed is tenuous, noting that the conflict did not begin until 10 or so years after Arbenz fled. Others have a less charitable view about what the CIA action wrought. “The CIA intervention began a ghastly cycle of violence, assassina- tion and torture in Guatemala,” says Stephen G. Rabe, a historian from the University of Texas at Dallas. “The Guatemalan intervention of 1954 is the most important event in the history of U.S. relations with Latin America. It really set the 56 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 Like most Latin American land reform programs, Guatemala’s did not go smoothly.