CHAPTER 7 MESOAMERICANS IN THE NEOCOLONIAL ERA 293Figure 7.11 Carts for transporting coffee from the Pacific coastal plantations to the seaports
in nineteenth-century Guatemala. Courtesy of E. Bradford Burns. Reprinted from E. Bradford
Burns, Eadward Muybridge in Guatemala, 1875: The Photographer as Social Recorder.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986, p. 126.
dictators of the strong father figure, and this image was used to keep the poorer sec-
tors in line. Nevertheless, dictators throughout the region created large armies and
highly coercive rural police forces that they could call upon if necessary to maintain
the status quo. One observer has referred to the Díaz regime in Mexico around 1910
as “not so much a nation as a company store.” The regime made Mexico safe so that
U.S. investors and other foreigners could reap huge profits.
The role of Porfirio Díaz as keeper of the store in Mexico applies equally well to
such Central American dictators as Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) and Jorge
Ubico (1931–1944) in Guatemala; Maximiliano Hernández (1931–1944) in El Sal-
vador; Tiburcio Carías Andino (1932–1948) in Honduras; Anastasio Somoza García
(1936–1956) in Nicaragua; and even the somewhat more democratic Cleto González
and Ricardo Jiménez (1906–1936) in Costa Rica.
Dictatorial rule does not mean that peace and harmony reigned at the top of the
political “store,” and, as noted, the United States intervened on many occasions in
order to orchestrate developments in the Mesoamerican region. Some of the polit-
ical problems originated from local capitalists who opposed domination by foreign
investors, others from conflicts between manufacturing and agricultural interests,
and still others from middle-class intellectuals and professionals blocked from power
by the dictatorial regimes. The dictators themselves often outlived their usefulness
to the foreign powers, and the latter did not hesitate to negotiate their downfall. In
Mexico, for example, the United States facilitated Porfirio Díaz’s departure from