The Growth of American Power Through Cold and Hot Wars 323incoherent, but the meeting of economic interests, government connections,
and media complicity made the overthrow of Arbenz a certainty. In fact, from
1952 onward, the CIA had been working with right-wing elements in
Guatemala to create manuals and compile lists of so-called subversives to be
assassinated.
Beginning in early May, CIA agents began “Operation Success,” a covert
action to overthrow Arbenz. The CIA’s psychological warfare expert was E.
Howard Hunt, who would later be involved in the Watergate scandal of the
1970s, and he set up a radio station to air negative propaganda about the
government. The Americans there also set up a “liberation army,” and trained
it in Nicaragua, as no American troops were to be used in the operation. In
mid- June 1954, the attacks began, with, a small force led by Colonel Carlos
Castillo Armas skirmishing with Guatemalan army forces, but his units bogged
down and he lost two of the three planes he had deployed with him. At that
point, the Americans bailed them out, sending small aircraft it had received
from the dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua which dropped sticks of
dynamite to frighten the population and cause considerable damage and casu-
alties. When Arbenz tried to hand out arms to a militia composed of workers
and peasants, the army–fearing a rival force of the underclass–abandoned the
government and defected, leaving the president isolated and with no choice
but to resign. Castillo Armas became president and American companies
moved in to Guatemala with a new vigor, the labor and land reform laws were
overturned, and the new regime went after its “enemies,” usually peasant and
urban union leaders and leftists of all kinds.
Over the next three decades or so, the government of Guatemala would kill
over a quarter-million of its own people, mostly Mayan Indians, with U.S.
weapons, support, and high levels of economic aid. The Americans had sent a
clear message to the whole region; they would not tolerate a government try-
ing to develop its country along its own lines and affecting U.S. business inter-
ests in the process. Ironically, after using Arbenz’s alleged communist views as
the pretext for invasion, the CIA observed after the coup that “the events of
the last week of the Arbenz regime showed that Communism in Guatemala
had not developed into a successful popular movement... [they] had not
found sufficient time to build a broad base or to sink their roots deeply.”
While the U.S. maintained rigid control in Latin America, it continued to
face challenges in Asia which were not as easy to handle. In particular, events
in Vietnam emerged to cause problems for the U.S. after World War II and