Guatemalan Revolution
The period in the history of Guatemala between the coups against Jorge Ubico in 1944 and Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 is known locally as the Revolution. It has also been called the Ten Years of Spring, highlighting the peak years of representative democracy in Guatemala from 1944 until the end of the civil war in 1996. It saw the implementation of social, political, and especially agrarian reforms that were influential across Latin America.
From the late 19th century until 1944, Guatemala was governed by a series of authoritarian rulers who sought to strengthen the economy by supporting the export of coffee. Between 1898 and 1920, Manuel Estrada Cabrera granted significant concessions to the United Fruit Company, an American corporation that traded in tropical fruit, and dispossessed many indigenous people of their communal lands. Under Jorge Ubico, who ruled as a dictator between 1931 and 1944, this process was intensified, with the institution of harsh labor regulations and a police state.
In June 1944, a popular pro-democracy movement led by university students and labor organizations forced Ubico to resign. He appointed a three-person military junta to take his place, led by Federico Ponce Vaides. This junta continued Ubico's oppressive policies, until it was toppled in a military coup led by Jacobo Árbenz in October 1944, an event also known as the "October Revolution". The coup leaders formed a junta which swiftly called for open elections. These elections were won in a landslide by Juan José Arévalo, a progressive professor of philosophy who had become the face of the popular movement. He implemented a moderate program of social reform, including a widely successful literacy campaign and a largely free election process, although illiterate women were not given the vote and communist parties were banned.
Following the end of Arévalo's presidency in 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was elected to the presidency in a landslide. Árbenz continued Arévalo's reforms, and began an ambitious land-reform program, known as Decree 900. Under it, the uncultivated portions of large land-holdings were expropriated in return for compensation, and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. Approximately 500,000 people benefited from the decree. The majority of them were indigenous people, whose forebears had been dispossessed after the Spanish invasion. Árbenz's policies ran afoul of the United Fruit Company, which lost some of its uncultivated land. The company lobbied the US government for the overthrow of Árbenz, and the US State Department responded by engineering a coup under the pretext that Árbenz was a communist. Carlos Castillo Armas took power at the head of a military junta, starting the Guatemalan Civil War. The war lasted from 1960 to 1996, and saw the military commit genocide against the indigenous Maya peoples and widespread human rights violations against civilians.
Background
Early 20th Century
Prior to the Spanish invasion in 1524, the population of Guatemala was almost exclusively Maya. The Spanish conquest created a system of wealthy European landowners overseeing a labor force composed of slaves and bonded laborers. However, the community lands of the indigenous population remained in their control until the late 19th century. At this point, rising global demand for coffee made its export a significant source of income for the government. As a result, the state supported the coffee growers by passing legislation that took land away from the Indian population, as well as relaxing labor laws so that bonded labor could be used on the plantations.The US-based United Fruit Company was one of many foreign companies that acquired large tracts of both state land and indigenous land. Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who was president of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920, permitted limited unionization in rural Guatemala, but also made further concessions to the UFC. In 1922, the Communist Party of Guatemala was created, and became a significant influence among urban laborers; however, it had little reach among the rural and Indian populations. In 1929, the Great Depression led to the collapse of the economy and a rise in unemployment, leading to unrest among workers and labourers. Fearing the possibility of a revolution, the landed elite lent their support to Jorge Ubico y Castañeda, who had built a reputation for ruthlessness and efficiency as a provincial governor. Ubico won the election that followed in 1931, in which he was the only candidate.
Dictatorship of Jorge Ubico
Ubico had made statements supporting the labor movement when campaigning for the presidency, but after his election his policy quickly became authoritarian. He abolished the system of debt peonage, and replaced it with a vagrancy law, which required all men of working age who did not own land to perform a minimum of 100 days of hard labor. In addition, the state made use of unpaid Indian labor to work on public infrastructure like roads and railroads. Ubico also froze wages at very low levels, and passed a law allowing land-owners complete immunity from prosecution for any action they took to defend their property, an action described by historians as legalizing murder. He greatly strengthened the police force, turning it into one of the most efficient and ruthless in Latin America. The police were given greater authority to shoot and imprison people suspected of breaking the labor laws. The result of these laws was to create tremendous resentment against him among agricultural laborers. Ubico was highly contemptuous of the country's indigenous people, once stating that they resembled donkeys.Ubico had great admiration for the fascist leaders of Europe, such as Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini. However, he saw the United States as an ally against the supposed communist threat of Mexico. He made a concerted effort to gain American support; when the US declared war on Germany and Japan in 1941, Ubico followed suit, and acting on American instructions arrested all people of German descent in Guatemala. He permitted the US to establish an air base in Guatemala, with the stated aim of protecting the Panama Canal. Like his predecessors, he made large concessions to the United Fruit Company, granting it of public land in exchange for a promise to build a port. He later released the company from this obligation as well, citing the economic crisis. Since its entry into Guatemala, the UFC had expanded its land holdings by displacing the peasantry and converting their farmland into banana plantations. This process accelerated under Ubico, whose government did nothing to stop it.
June 1944 general strike
The onset of World War II increased economic unrest in Guatemala. Ubico responded by cracking down more fiercely on any form of protest or dissent. In 1944, popular revolt broke out in neighboring El Salvador, which briefly toppled dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. However, he quickly returned to power, leading to a flood of exiled El Salvadorian revolutionaries moving to Guatemala. This coincided with a series of protests at the university in Guatemala City. Ubico responded by suspending the constitution on 22 June 1944. The protesters, who by this point included many middle-class members in addition to students and workers, called for a general strike, and presented an ultimatum to Ubico the next day, demanding the reinstatement of the constitution. They also presented him a petition signed by 311 of the most prominent Guatemalan citizens. Ubico sent the police to disrupt the protests by firing on them, and declared martial law.Ubico resigns and appoints an interim government
Clashes between protesters and the military continued for a week, during which the revolt gained momentum. At the end of June, Ubico submitted his resignation to the National Assembly, leading to huge celebrations in the streets.The resignation of Ubico did not restore democracy. Ubico appointed three generals, Federico Ponce Vaides, Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, and Buenaventura Pineda, to a junta which would lead the provisional government. A few days later, Ponce Vaides persuaded the congress to appoint him interim president. Ponce pledged to hold free elections soon, while at the same time suppressing the protests. Press freedom was suspended, arbitrary detentions continued, and memorial services for slain revolutionaries were prohibited. However, the protests had grown to the point where the government could not stamp them out, and rural areas also began organizing against the dictatorship. The government began using the police to intimidate the indigenous population to keep the junta in power through the forthcoming election. This resulted in growing support for an armed revolution among some sections of the populace. By now, the army was disillusioned with the junta, and progressives within it had begun to plot a coup.
On 1 October 1944, Alejandro Cordova, the editor of El Imparcial, the main opposition newspaper, was assassinated. This led to the military coup plotters reaching out to the leaders of the protests, in an attempt to turn the coup into a popular uprising. Ponce Vaides announced elections, but the pro-democracy forces denounced them as a fraud, citing his attempts to rig them. Ponce Vaides sought to stabilize his regime by playing on inter-racial tension within the Guatemalan population. The most vocal support for the revolution had come from the Ladinos, or people of mixed racial or Spanish descent. Ponce Vaides sought to exploit their fear of the Indians by paying thousands of indigenous peasants to march in Guatemala City in his support, and promising them land if they supported the Liberal party that Ubico had begun as a front for the dictatorship.
October revolution
By mid-October, several different plans to overthrow the junta had been set in motion by various factions of the pro-democracy movement, including teachers, students, and progressive factions of the army. On 19 October, the government learned of one of these conspiracies.That same day, a small group of army officers launched a coup, led by Francisco Javier Arana and Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Although the coup had initially been plotted by Árbenz and Major Aldana Sandoval, Sandoval had prevailed upon Arana to join them; however, Sandoval himself did not participate in the coup attempt, and was described as having "lost his nerve". They were joined the next day by other factions of the army and the civilian population. Initially, the battle went against the revolutionaries, but after an appeal for support their ranks were swelled by unionists and students, and they eventually subdued the police and army factions loyal to Ponce Vaides. On October 20, the next day, Ponce Vaides surrendered unconditionally.
Ponce Vaides was allowed to leave the country safely, as was Ubico himself. The military junta was replaced by another three-person junta consisting of Árbenz, Arana, and an upper-class youth named Jorge Toriello, who had played a significant role in the protests. Although Arana had come to the military conspiracy relatively late, his defection had brought the powerful Guardia de Honor over to the revolutionaries, and for this crucial role he was rewarded with a place on the junta. The junta promised free and open elections to the presidency and the congress, as well as for a constituent assembly.
The resignation of Ponce Vaides and the creation of the junta has been considered by scholars to be the beginning of the Guatemalan Revolution. However, the revolutionary junta did not immediately threaten the interests of the landed elite. Two days after Ponce Vaides' resignation, a violent protest erupted at Patzicía, a small Indian hamlet. The junta responded with swift brutality, silencing the protest. The dead civilians included women and children.