In 1954 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship. The fears of a socialist government and the nationalization of industry in the small Central American country persuaded Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to doom the fledgling democracy. The decades that followed resulted in the most horrendous slaughter of indigenous people in the modern history of Latin America. The aim of these military campaigns against the Mayan Indians was to ensure a Latino majority who had historically been in the minority. A small Marxist insurgency sprouted up in Guatemala and the military led government with the assistance of the US government unleashed on the Marxists and Mayans alike. Death squads fanned out within Guatemala and killed hundreds of thousands of Mayans in the countryside throughout the 1980s. The Civil War lasted for 36 years. More people died in Guatemala then in all the other Central American countries combined; a significant fact since both El Salvador and Nicaragua waged war throughout this same timeframe.

The impact of US involvement in the overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government in 1954 left a wound that festered during the Cold War period. A culture of fear and violence remains to this day. 90% of all cocaine traffic that comes to the US traverses Guatemala. Criminals rule significant sectors of the state’s police and military forces, expediting the movement of drugs. Gangs continue to threaten the civilian population there.

Guatemala has returned to a democracy following the civil war and recently Alvaro Colom, a liberal, was elected president. He is promising to heal the wounds of the past but this will not be easy. Any who have pushed back at the criminal establishment have ended up dead. He proves to be an interesting figure to lead the state. He is a trained Mayan priest despite the fact he is Latino and not Mayan. He is committed to improving the lives of the indigenous people; most of whom live on less than $1 a day. It would be in the US’s best interest to invest time and resources to ensure that Colom is successful. That is the least we can do for our transgressions during the 1950s there and the murderous decades that followed.

Guatemala’s Silent Genocide

Guatemala’s New Dawn?

Guatemala’s Challenge