power struggles. Governed by corrupt military
regimes, Guatemala cried out for political, social
and economic reform. The Eisenhower adminis-
tration, meanwhile, was accused of having acted
in the interests of the United Fruit Company,
which grew the bananas that constituted Guate-
mala’s principal export. Yet that was untrue.
Eisenhower had acted because he believed that
Guatemala was falling under communist control
and because he assumed that the strings were
being pulled by Moscow. As he saw it, he had in
1954 successfully defended the Monroe Doctrine.
But the inherent weakness of American policy in
Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America lay in
the contempt felt by the right-wing militarists,
helped to power by the US, for Western demo-
cratic values, and their opposition to economic
and social reforms. They were prepared to protect
US corporations, however, as part of the bargain
to gain American support. In this expectation
they were not disappointed. American aid poured
into Guatemala after the coup. The strategy of
combating global communism, and so ensuring
that those in power professed friendship with
America, overshadowed in administration policy
the need of the great majority of Guatemalans for
basic reforms.
As long as pro-American governments retained
power in the Latin American republics, however
corrupt or dictatorial, the Eisenhower adminis-
tration turned a blind eye and ignored the fun-
damental problems besetting the continent. Latin
American radicals were equally unrealistic in
blaming the mass poverty and repressive dictator-
ships entirely on the US.
In Iran and Guatemala the CIA had success-
fully accomplished its mission. When it began to
adopt the same technique in Cuba, however, it
experienced humiliating failure and thereby
damaged the interests and prestige of the US.
Cuba was ruled by another corrupt and brutal
dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Its economy was
dominated by sugar cane, whose growth and pro-
duction were owned and controlled by American
companies. Here also land reform and the raising
of the living standard of the poor peasantry could
not be accomplished without clashing with the
interests of American corporations. Even so, the
Eisenhower administration once again was moti-
vated not by a desire to support the American
owners but rather by dread of communism and
of its control from the Kremlin.
Since the 1890s American administrations had
feared that the conflicts in Cuba could allow a
powerful European nation a base a mere ninety
miles from the coast of Florida. US interests
determined official attitudes to Cuban leaders and
as long as they safeguarded those interests even
brutal dictators enjoyed American support. But
there was also public sympathy in the US for Fidel
Castro’s revolutionary fight against Batista, a sym-
pathy that was combined with a growing recog-
nition that the US should support popular and
democratic regimes. The CIA, on the other hand,
warned the president of communist infiltration of
Castro’s guerrilla movement. On 1 January 1959
Castro overthrew Batista and took control of the
government in Havana. The executions of his
opponents which followed produced a feeling of
revulsion in the US. The Cuban Communist
Party was legalised, two prominent communist
associates of Castro, Che Guevara and Antonia
Jiménez, were brought into the government and
Castro, in the Latin American tradition, made
himself the leader of the country. Clearly a leader
of charisma with genuine popular support, he
promised radical reform to the poor masses and
proceeded to expropriate large estates and factor-
ies, many of which were American-owned. The
earlier American support for Batista, moreover,
had provoked strong anti-American feelings in
Cuba. The US responded to its perception of the
pro-communist and anti-American sentiments of
Castro’s rule with a trade embargo against Cuban
sugar. But this policy of economic sanctions badly
misfired because it offered Russia the opening to
step into the breach by giving aid to Cuba and
buying its sugar. It also drove Castro to seek
closer relations with the Soviet Union. There was
an obvious alternative for the US which had been
frequently resorted to: intervention. Eisenhower
turned once more to the CIA. Cuban exiles were
trained in what was now friendly Guatemala to
support a Cuban challenger to Castro. But the
Guatemalan operation could not be repeated, for
there was no exiled Cuban leader of sufficient
1
THE EISENHOWER YEARS 493
