Guatemala Begins Decades of Chaos
Carlos
Castillo Armas (locally ['kaɾlos kas'tiʝo 'aɾmas];
November 4, 1914 – July 26, 1957) was a Guatemalan military officer and
politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala, serving from 1954 to
1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National
Liberation Movement (MLN) party, his authoritarian government
was closely allied with the United States.
Armas in 1954
Born to a planter, out of wedlock,
Castillo Armas was educated at Guatemala's military academy. A protégé of Colonel
Francisco Javier Arana, he joined Arana's forces during the 1944 uprising
against
President Federico Ponce Vaides. This began the Guatemalan Revolution and
the introduction of representative democracy to the country. Castillo Armas
joined the General Staff and became director of the military academy. Arana and
Castillo Armas opposed the newly elected government of Juan José Arévalo; after
Arana's failed 1949 coup, Castillo Armas went into exile in Honduras. Seeking
support for another revolt, he came to the attention of the US Central
Intelligence Agency(CIA). In 1950 he launched a failed assault on Guatemala City, before
escaping back to Honduras. Influenced by Cold War fears of communism and the
pressure from the United Fruit Company, in 1952 the US government of President Harry
Truman authorized Operation PBFORTUNE, a plot to overthrow Arévalo's leftist
successor, President Jacobo Árbenz. Castillo Armas was to lead the coup, but
the plan was abandoned before being revived in a new form by US President Dwight
D. Eisenhower in 1953.
In June 1954, Castillo Armas led 480
CIA-trained soldiers into Guatemala, backed by US-supplied aircraft. Despite
initial setbacks to the rebel forces, US support for the rebels made the
Guatemalan army reluctant to fight, and Árbenz resigned on June 27. A series of
military juntas briefly held power during negotiations that ended with Castillo
Armas assuming the presidency on July 7. Castillo Armas consolidated his power
in an October 1954 election, in which he was the only candidate; the MLN, which
he led, was the only party allowed to contest congressional elections. Árbenz's
popular agricultural reform was largely rolled back, with land confiscated from
small farmers and returned to large landowners. Castillo Armas cracked down on
unions and peasant organizations, arresting and killing thousands. He created a
National Committee of Defense Against Communism, which investigated over 70,000
people and added 10 percent of the population to a list of suspected
communists.
Castillo Armas faced significant
internal resistance, which was blamed on communist agitation. The government,
plagued by corruption and soaring debt, became dependent on aid from the US. In
1957 Castillo Armas was assassinated by a presidential guard with leftist
sympathies. He was the first of a series of authoritarian rulers in Guatemala
who were close allies of the US. His reversal of the reforms of his
predecessors sparked a series of leftist insurgencies in the country after his
death, culminating in the Guatemalan Civil War of 1960 to 1996.
Authoritarian Rule
Prior
to the 1954 coup, Castillo Armas had been reluctant to discuss how he would
govern the country. He had never articulated any particular philosophy, which
had worried his CIA contacts.
The closest he came to doing so was the
"Plan de Tegucigalpa", a manifesto issued on December 23, 1953 that
criticized the "Sovietization of Guatemala". Castillo Armas had expressed sympathy for justicialismo,
the philosophy supported by Juan Perón, the President of Argentina.
Upon
taking power Castillo Armas, worried that he lacked popular support, attempted
to eliminate all opposition. He quickly arrested many thousands of opposition
leaders, branding them communists. Detention camps were built to hold the
prisoners when the jails exceeded their capacity. Historians have
estimated that more than 3,000 people were arrested following the coup, and
that approximately 1,000 agricultural workers were killed by Castillo Armas's
troops in the province of Tiquisate. Acting on the advice of Dulles, Castillo
Armas also detained a number of citizens trying to flee the country.
He also
created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism (CDNCC), with
sweeping powers of arrest, detention, and deportation. Over the next few years,
the committee investigated nearly 70,000 people. Many were imprisoned,
executed, or disappeared, frequently without trial.
In
August 1954, the government passed Decree 59, which permitted the security
forces to detain anybody on the blacklist of the CDNCC for six months without
trial. The eventual list of suspected communists compiled by the CDNCC included
one in every ten adults in the country. Attempts were also made to eliminate
from government positions people who had gained them under Árbenz. All
political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations were outlawed. In
histories of the period, Castillo Armas has been referred to as a dictator.
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