¹ This view of the United States is common, not only among Latin Americans, but among nearly all underdeveloped nations. The leaders of India, for example, argue that while the United States may be rich and powerful, India has far greater spiritual values which may be glimpsed only faintly by Americans. The best expression of the corresponding Latin American view is frequently said to be found in the famed and quite powerful work Ariel, written by the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó, in 1900. For a short synthesis of the Indian view, see Northrop, F. S. C., The Taming of the Nations (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, Chs. 3, 4, and 6.

² One of the better explanations of the basic characteristics of Latin American society can be found in Jane, L. Cecil, Liberty and Despotism in Spanish America (Oxford, England, 1929)Google Scholar, Chs. 2–8. See also Tannenbaum, Frank, “The Future of Democracy in Latin America,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 33, pp. 429–44 (April, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ The contrary view, although presented without significant documentation, is stated by former Ecuadorian President Galo Plaza Lasso in his little book Problems of Democracy in Latin America (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1955), pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

⁴ The rejoinder of the adviser's chief is not necessarily apropos; after agreeing that this might hold possibilities, he objects, “Suppose we won?”

The disparity of United States economic aid to the various areas is striking when viewed statistically. Harris, Seymour, in “How Good is our Good Neighbor Policy?,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 28, 1954, pp. 17 ff.Google Scholar, says that “of about $80,000,000,000 of United States Government foreign aid since 1940, the people to the south of us have received but 1 to 2 per cent.” The point is supported by the Report of the Subcommittee to Investigate Communist Aggression in Latin America to the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives, Eighty-Third Congress, Second Session … (Washington, 1954), p. 18Google Scholar: “… the fact remains that to this critical area we have devoted less than 1 percent of the billions of dollars of grants that we have appropriated … to help friendly nations ….”

Fitzgibbons, Tom, in his article “An Empty Briefcase at Rio,” The New Republic, Vol. 131, pp. 12–15 (Dec. 13, 1954)Google Scholar, states even more dramatically: “Since the war, the United States has given, outright, to wealthy Belgium and tiny Luxembourg three times more than to all 20 Latin American nations.”

⁵ See Tax, Sol, “The Problems of Democracy in Middle America,” The American Sociological Review, Vol. 10, pp. 192–99 (April, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many of Tax' generalizations are based in part on field study and observation in Guatemala.

⁶ See James, Daniel, Red Design for the Americas (New York, 1945)Google Scholar, an imposing synthesis based, in large part, on 1945–1954 materials. See also the somewhat more authoritative publication by the U. S. Department of State, Intervention of International Communism in Guatemala (Washington, 1954), pp. 35–88Google Scholar.

⁷ James, pp. 46–52, 70 ff., cites a few of the Communists who held important positions in the government. The late John E. Peurifoy, who was United States Ambassador to Guatemala from October 3, 1953 to September 15, 1954, told a House of Representatives committee investigating Communist aggression in Latin America that his conversations with Arbenz had convinced him that the man was a Communist. Ninth Interim Report of Hearings before the Subcommittee on Latin America of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives, Eighty-Third Congress, Second Session (Washington, 1954), pp. 124–26Google Scholar (hereinafter cited as Hearings).

For a brief but authoritative account of the political events prior to 1954, together with a brief description of the structure of Guatemalan government, see Macdonald, Austin F., Latin American Politics and Government, 2nd ed. (New York, 1954), pp. 613–21Google Scholar.

⁸ New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 8–13, 1950.

⁹ Hackworth, Green H., Digest of International Law, 8 vols. (Washington, 1941), Vol. 2, pp. 291–98Google Scholar, states the general obligations in customary practice, as does Fenwick, Charles G., International Law, 3rd ed. (New York, 1948), pp. 301–2Google Scholar. Honduran action specifically violated numerous provisions of the Charter of the Organization of American States, including articles 5, 7, 11, and 15. See United States Department of State, Ninth International Conference of American States (Washington, 1948), pp. 168 ff.Google Scholar

The New York Times, June 18, 1954, reported: “Foreign correspondents in the Honduran capital were impressed by the numbers of khaki-clad men in the city and gathered at the airport. Wearing no insignia, the men boarded planes without any apparent effort to hide their movements.” Honduran failure to check such an obvious gathering of forces can lead only to the conclusion that that nation was in fact performing an act of aggression against Guatemala. Failure of joint inter-American action to develop under the circumstances was further an ignoring of the meaning of article 24 of the O.A.S. Charter, which states that “Every act of aggression by a State against the territorial integrity or the inviolability of the territory or against the sovereignty or political independence of an American State shall be considered an act of aggression against the other American States,” and of the resultant article 25: “If the inviolability or the integrity of the territory … of any American State should be affected by an armed attack or by an act of aggression …, the American States, in furtherance of the principles of continental solidarity or collective self-defense, shall apply the measures and procedures established in the special treaties on the subject.”

¹⁰ Hearings (cited in note 7), pp. 119–20. See also the New York Times for this period.

¹¹ These quinquennial Inter-American Conferences are declared to be “the supreme organ of the Organization of American States,” by article 33 of the Charter.

¹² See resolution 32 of the Final Act of the Bogotá Conference, entitled “The Preservation and Defense of Democracy in America,” U. S. Department of State, Ninth International Conference of American States (Washington, 1948), pp. 266–67Google Scholar.

¹³ From section 1, “Declaration of Solidarity for the Preservation of the Political Integrity of the American States against the Intervention of International Communism,” adopted as resolution 93 of the Final Act of the Conference on March 28, 1954. See U. S. Department of State, Tenth Inter-American Conference (Washington, 1955), pp. 156–57Google Scholar.

On his return from Caracas, Mr. Dulles held a press conference in which he made an effort to imply that the Monroe Doctrine was the United States' reply to the aggressive designs of Czarist Russia. Intervention of International Communism in Guatemala, cited in note 6, p. 788. This is a mis-emphasis of historical fact which is only slightly removed from rewriting it. For a sounder version of the circumstances, see Bemis, Samuel F., The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York, 1943), pp. 48–72Google Scholar, and Perkins, Dexter, Hands Off: A History of the Monroe Doctrine (Boston, 1941)Google Scholar, Ch. 2.

¹⁴ “Professor Telders” Study Group, United Nations Textbook, 2nd ed. (Leyden, Netherlands, 1954), p. 365Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 371.

¹⁶ New York Times, March 3 and 4, 1954.

¹⁷ Ibid., March 6, 1954. For the text of Toriello's speech see O.A.S., Tenth Inter-American Conference, Document 95 (English), SP-23, 5 March 1954. Toriello's argument against the United States as an interventionist nation and destroyer of Guatemalan democracy is elaborated in his La Batalla de Guatemala (México, 1955)Google Scholar. Toriello here (pp. 65–66) develops his thesis that the Arbenz government was doomed from the moment of the triumph of the Republican party in the 1952 United States presidential elections, by virtue of the fact that Dulles is both stockholder and long-time corporation counsel for the United Fruit Company, and legal adviser to the company in the drawing up of the contracts of 1930 and 1936 with the Ubico government.

¹⁸ New York Times, March 7, 1954. The Latin American view that their votes represented a quid pro quo for securing a hearing for their views regarding United States' economic policy can scarcely be avoided from a literal reading of this quote. Such an interpretation is not far from the truth.

¹⁹ Ibid., March 16, 1954. Guatemala voted against the proposal, Mexico and Argentina abstained. Costa Rica did not attend the conference in protest against the government of Venezuela.

²⁰ New York Times, “Review of the Week” section, March 14, 1954Google Scholar. For many years the Latin American nations tried to achieve United States acceptance of the principle that no nation should intervene in the domestic or international affairs of another. Specific efforts were made at the 1928, 1933, 1936, and 1947 meetings of the American nations. At the 1936 (Buenos Aires) meeting the Special Protocol Relative to Nonintervention was signed by the United States and later ratified. Article 1 of this protocol states in part: “The High Contracting Parties declare inadmissible the intervention of any one of them, directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other of the Parties ….” Bemis, op. cit., pp. 227–89. Article 15 of the O.A.S. Charter probably states the ultimate degree of this principle: “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State ….”

This hard-won principle was, in the eyes of the Latins, endangered by the anti Communist resolution, as was another article of the O.A.S. Charter, number 13: “Each State has the right to develop its cultural, political and economic life freely and naturally ….”

²¹ See Kennedy's, article in the “News of the Week” section of the New York Times, May 23, 1954Google Scholar.

²² The lack of publicly-available proof has been noted by many writers. Donald Grant of the St. Louis Post Dispatch writes: “… this writer is not in a position to assign precise roles for the events which culminated in the fall of the Arbenz government, although he was, in fact, an eyewitness to many of the decisive events. Exiled Guatemalans, the Governments of Honduras and Nicaragua, the United States Departments of State and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States National Security Council and other agencies and individuals were involved.” “Guatemala and United States Foreign Policy,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 69 (1955)Google Scholar.

Lewis, Flora, writing for the New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1954, p. 9Google Scholar, says of Peurifoy: “It was perfectly clear that his instructions and his purpose had one simple theme: ‘Get rid of the Reds’.” In testimony before a special House of Representatives committee investigating Communist aggression in Latin America, Peurifoy denied this charge, however: “… I would like to take this opportunity to explode a popular and flattering myth regarding the part I played in the revolution led by Colonel Castillo [Armas]. My role … was strictly that of a diplomatic observer …. The first and only active role that I played … was to lend my good offices to assist in negotiating the truce between the forces of Colonel Castillo and the military junta that was established in Guatemala after President Arbenz resigned ….” Hearings (cited in note 7), p. 114.

²³ Reuters dispatch in the Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1954. The New York Times, May 23, indicates the material was shipped in cases marked “hardware, auto parts, iron rods, optical glass, etc.”

²⁴ New York Times, May 24, 1954. It is ironic to note that Gruson reported in this dispatch that the outcry of the United States against the arms shipment (it had been the United States which had first released the news of the event to the world) had produced a solidarity of Guatemalan opinion behind the government that had been surprising even to government leaders themselves!

The day previous, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Guillermo Toriello had announced to the diplomatic corps at Guatemala City that his nation rejected the protest and action of the United States as “aggression,” and that it was considering seriously a plea to the United Nations Security Council under article 35 of the Charter.

²⁵ See, for example, “Guatemala: What the Reds Left Behind,” Harper's Magazine, Vol. 211, pp. 60–65 (July, 1955)Google Scholar, by a free-lance writer, Keith Monroe. Monroe's version was substantiated to this writer by a confidential source in Mexico in the summer of 1955.

²⁶ Gruson's version is found in the New York Times, July 9, 1954. Gruson states that the bulk of the shipment was of World War II or earlier vintage, and that much of it was anti-tank mines and very heavy German artillery built to travel on the autobahns of Hitler's construction. Other equipment, he states, included nonfunctioning Czech, British, and German rifles, and a few useful Czech machine guns. Gruson tells the story that the army spent much of its time after the outbreak of fighting trucking the mines, which had been stored in the army headquarters in the heart of Guatemala City, out of town to prevent a catastrophe from a lucky bomb hit. This version has definite comicopera overtones.

The contrary version, that much of the shipment was highly modern, is supported by Monroe, op. cit., and the press statement by United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on May 25. In the questioning after the presentation of the statement, Dulles even conjectured that the arms might well be intended to develop a Communist strong point dominating the Panama Canal! See New York Times, May 26, 1954.

²⁷ New York Times, May 20, 1954.

²⁸ Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 30, pp. 873–74 (June 7, 1954)Google Scholar.

²⁹ See Oliver, Covey T., “International Relations and International Law; Some Problems of Inter-Relationship,” a paper read at the 50th meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 9–11, 1954, pp. 7–9Google Scholar. Also, New York Times, June 19, 1954. The rumor, previously reported on May 25, that two additional shiploads of arms had departed for Guatemala, undoubtedly was instrumental in causing the United States request.

³⁰ For text see U. S. Department of State, Publication 5530, May 20, 1954Google Scholar.

³¹ The Wyoming carried several cases of sporting guns and ammunition, but these had been indicated in the manifests. The Browning automatic rifles, consigned to a private address in El Salvador, had not been so listed. Evidence indicated that the falsification had been performed by some private person, not by the French Line, which operated the ship. New York Times, May 27 and 28, 1954.

³² It had been expected that the meeting would be set for either June 28 or July 1 at Montevideo. Under Article 40 of the Charter of Bogotá, support of the United States proposal by an absolute majority of the O.A.S. Council would have resulted in the convocation of the meeting.

It is significant that steady United States pressure had apparently gained the acceptance of the proposal by a majority of O.A.S. members, including Mexico. The State Department's approach was designed to show that the acts of Guatemala had been a threat to the security of her immediate neighbors, and the relative success of the effort showed that the view was taken seriously. State Department spokesmen, including Mr. Dulles, noted that the Guatemalan attitude was persistently that the only real issue was that government's treatment of the United Fruit and other private interests. Accordingly, Guatemala had proposed as early as May 23 that Presidents Eisenhower and Arbenz personally discuss the matter in an effort to improve relations between the two nations. In his press conference of June 8, Mr. Dulles declared in part, “[this] is a totally false presentation of the situation. There is a problem in Guatemala which affects the other American states just as much as it does the United States, and it is not a problem which the United States regards as exclusively a United States-Guatemala problem.” New York Times, June 9, 1954.

³³ The confidential source cited in note 25 stated that this destruction was actually an effort by part of the Guatemalan army to prevent the arrival of the arms at a point where they could be distributed to peasant militia units organized for the defense of the Arbenz government and to potential saboteurs in Honduras.

³⁴ Ambassador Peurifoy, testifying before the special House Committee to Investigate Communist Aggression in Latin America, said in part: “No case of Soviet direction was more clear than what occurred after the return of [José Manuel] Fortuny [Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Guatemala] last January. A press and propaganda campaign, stirring alarm over resistance of anti-Communists to the Arbenz regime, was immediately cranked up in the endeavor to prepare public opinion for the blow to fall. Then, at the end of January, 1954, the dramatic announcement was made of the uncovering of a subversive ‘plot,’ with the sinister note of foreign intervention, linking the United States by innuendo as ‘the country of the North’ from which direction and aid was allegedly being furnished the ‘plotters.’ This set the stage for wholesale arrests of anti-Communist citizens and for subsequent imprisonment, torture, and even murder. Many who were later released, beaten and broken, were pushed across the frontiers into México and Honduras by the vicious truncheon-wielding police …. Your committee is well aware that these tactics of brutal suppression and terrorization of the opposition is characteristically the last blow of communism in a country outside of the Soviet Union before complete seizure of power.” Hearings, p. 117.

³⁵ See both New York Times and Christian Science Monitor, May 18 to July 3, 1954, for articles covering the affair. See also James, op. cit., pp. 304–19, and Bracker, Milton, “The Lessons of the Guatemalan Struggle,” New York Times Magazine, July 11, 1954, p. 11Google Scholar.

³⁶ See Life, July 12 and July 19, 1954, for illustrations indicative of the arms used in the fighting.

³⁷ U.N., Document S/3232, June 20, 1954.

³⁸ U.N., Document S/3236, June 20, 1954. Sr. Castillo-Arriola's statements obviously referred to the private United States enterprises in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company being not only the best known but the favorite target of the Arbenz regime and its spokesmen. This attitude is explained in greater detail in Toriello, op. cit.

It seems unnecessary to belabor the role of the Fruit Company in the Caribbean area, since this has been done virtually ad nauseam in a number of excellent and well-documented books. See particularly Kepner, Charles David Jr., and Soothill, Jay Henry, The Banana Empire (New York, 1935)Google Scholar, and Rippy, J. Fred, The Capitalists and Colombia (New York, 1931)Google Scholar. The company has played a more enlightened role in the area as the result of recent pressures, but its mere size lends credence to the recent emotional outbursts against it by nationalistic leaders. Sydney Gruson, in an article in the New York Times “Review of the Week” section for July 4, 1954Google Scholar, reports its assets at $579,342,000, of which approximately 10 per cent was located in Guatemala.

³⁹ U.N., Documents S/3237 and S/PV. 675, June 20, 1954.

⁴⁰ The U.N. Charter provides (article 12) that the General Assembly may not make “any recommendation” regarding a dispute while the Security Council remains seized of it. But there is no analogous statement regarding regional organizations. The Charter states only (article 52, par. 3) “The Security Council shall encourage the … pacific settlement of local disputes through … regional agencies ….” Article 53, par. 1 reinforces this. In the absence of definitive Charter statement on the matter, it seems quite indefinite. Padelford, Norman J. in his “Recent Developments in Regional Organizations,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting (1955), pp. 23–41Google Scholar, finds only the views of the Colombian delegate who was chairman of Committee III/4 of the U.N. Conference on International Organization at San Francisco (1945), as a basis for conjecture on this point. Padelford states that “… it would not have been incompatible with the accord reached at San Francisco if the Security Council had encouraged the parties to go to a regional organization and then had considered under Articles 33 or 34 a request to investigate whether a situation existed likely to disturb international peace and security.” (His italics.)

The Council was never seized of the Guatemalan issue. See U.N. Documents S/3253, June 28; S/3261, July 6; and S/3265, July 12, 1954.

⁴¹ On June 19, the Guatemalan Chargé in Washington delivered a note to Luis Quintanilla, chairman of the Peace Committee, asking for an immediate meeting of the Committee for the purpose of taking action in regard to Castillo Armas' attack. The note alleged the intimate participation of Honduras and Nicaragua. Quintanilla further received a telephone call direct from Guatemalan Foreign Minister Toriello that midnight, asking that an investigating subcommittee leave for Guatemala on the 20th.

But on the afternoon of the 20th, the Chargé notified Quintanilla by telephone that the Guatemalan request was to be withdrawn, on the ground that the Security Council was considering the matter. This was later confirmed by several notes. See O.A.S., Informe de la Comisión Interamericana de Paz sobre la Conlroversia entre Guatemala, Honduras, y Nicaragua, Document CIP-131/54, pp. 1–3. Full texts of the notes and other documents mentioned are contained in the appendix of this report.

⁴² See United States Department of State, Report of the Delegation of the United States of America to the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security (Washington, 1948), pp. 59–65Google Scholar, for the text of the treaty. See also Ninth International Conference of American States (cited in note 12), pp. 170–71, for the text of chapter six of the Charter, which provides for peaceful settlement of disputes among the signatories.

The Peace Committee was extended and accorded a vote of confidence by resolution 102 of the Caracas (Tenth) Inter-American Conference. See Tenth Inter-American Conference (cited in note 13), pp. 101–2.

⁴³ U.N., Document S/3241, June 23, 1954.

⁴⁴ Loc. cit. See also Documents S/3238, S/3240, S/3244, S/3246, and S/3248, June 21–24, 1954.

⁴⁵ U.N., Document S/PV. 676, June 25, 1954.

⁴⁶ Informe de la Comisión Inleramericana de Paz (cited in note 41), pp. 6–10.

⁴⁷ O.A.S., Document C-a-153, Corr., Acta de la Sesión Extraordinaria celebrada el 28 de Junio de 1954 (Washington, 1954)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 794–800.

⁴⁹ O.A.S., Document C-a-155, Acta de la Sesi6n Extraordinaria celebrada el 2 de Julio de 1954 (Washington, 1954), pp. 920–22Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Informe de la Comisión Intramericana de Paz (cited in note 41), pp. 10–14.

⁵¹ Oliver, op. cit. (note 29), observes cryptically, “… the sensitively attuned representatives of some of the other American republics must have felt [Lodge's ‘emotional asides’] were reversions to the older, unilateral version of the Monroe Doctrine, to ‘manifest density,’ Senator Platt and all of that.” For the text of the Lodge statement see U.N., Document S/PV. 675, paragraphs 164–172, and 223.

⁵² Intervention of International Communism in Guatemala (cited in note 6), p. 18.

⁵³ Ibid., pp. 30–34.

^53a See the speech by Donald McK. Key, Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs, in United States Department of State, Bulletin, Vol. 31, pp. 115–118 (July 26, 1954)Google Scholar for a most flagrant misrepresentation of the situation.

⁵⁴ H. M. Stationery Office, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, Official Report, 5th Series, Vol. 530 (London, 1954)Google Scholar, cols. 489–90.

⁵⁵ Christian Science Monitor, June 26, 1954.

⁵⁶ See Mr. Krock's column in the New York Times of that date.

⁵⁷ See the series of articles by Kennedy, Paul P. in the New York Times on Castillo's first anniversary in office, June 30–July 4, 1955Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Instrumental in the survival of the Castillo government has been a series of grants, loans, and technical assistance agreements concluded between Guatemala and the United States. See General Agreement for Technical Cooperation between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Guatemala, signed at Guatemala City September 1, 1954, and entered in force on the same day. Department of State, Publication 5698 (Washington, 1955)Google Scholar. See also Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings … on the Mutual Security Program for Fiscal Year 1956 (Washington, 1955), pp. 288, 306–8, 313Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Christian Science Monitor, June 22, 1954.

⁶⁰ Perhaps the most comprehensive and critical survey of recent United States economic policy toward Latin America is Hanson's, Simon G. article, “The End of the Good-Neighbor Policy,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, Vol. 7, pp. 3–49 (Autumn, 1953)Google Scholar. Mr. Hanson's writing is very harsh, but his vigorous judgments make far too much sense to be ignored.