Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

320 Pages·2005·4.95 MB·English

by  Stephen Schlesinger

"Schlesinger and Kinzer have done the greatest service to
truth and justice by presenting the untold story of the CIA
coup. BITTER FRUIT may open the eyes of many Americans to
the poisonous mixture of ignorance and arrogance which
has characterized United States foreign policy in Central
America. The authors bring detail and knowledge, scope
and concern to their extraordinary achievement. They prove
themselves to be, at the highest level, both journalists and
historians. BITTER FRUIT is an extremely important,
valuable, and exciting work."
— Carlos Fuentes
BITTER FRUIT is an astounding story of CIA adventurism. It tells
the story of Operation Success, in which the CIA, the U.S. State
Department and the Executive Branch conspired on behalf of the
United Fruit Company to overthrow the government of Guate-
mala. Based on scores of CIA and State Department documents
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, it is a dramatic
rendition of a beautifully planned treachery that may be the most
important episode in the history of both the CIA and modern
Central America. Indeed, it was the seed of later secret operations
in Cuba as well as of the bloody revolutions now convulsing El
Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
With President Eisenhower's approval, Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, Director of the CIA,
conceived and orchestrated a plot that would put in power a
government "compatible" with United Fruit. The plot included a
pistol-packing ambassador, a propaganda campaign mounted in
the American press, a ragtag "nationalist" army hired by the CIA,
a disinformation campaign conducted through clandestine radio
stations and mercenary American pilots who bombed Guatemala
City.
BITTER FRUIT is essential reading for anyone who wants to
understand why Central America is in flames today. It considers
important questions of U.S. intervention, the role of multi-
national corporations and the mandate of the CIA. It is also a
fast-paced adventure with as much action and intrigue as any spy
novel.
Stephen Schlesinger is a graduate of Harvard Law School, served
as a speechwriter for Senator George McGovern's presidential
campaign in 1972 and was deputy director of issues for Senator
Edward Kennedy's campaign in 1980. He has edited and
published The New Democrat and has served as a staff writer for
Time Magazine. He taught at Harvard University and the New
School for Social Research. He is the author of The New
Reformers. Stephen Kinzer is the Latin-American correspondent
of the Boston Globe. His articles have appeared in major
magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The
New Republic, and The Nation. He lives in Truro, Massachusetts.
TO THE PEOPLE OF GUATEMALA
PREFACE

Numerous individuals and institutions were helpful in the writing of this
book. We would like to thank the congressional authors of the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA), who provided us with an indispensable tool
to review the inner workings of United States foreign policy. The FOIA
enabled us to obtain documents from the State Department, the National
Archives, the Naval Department and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation which described many details of American policy and
conduct in Guatemala.
Pursuant to our FOIA request, the State Department released to us
over 1,000 pages of material. Three individuals serving on the
Information/Privacy Staff in the State Department's Bureau of
Administration were particularly helpful: Deborah M. Odell, Mary
Spruell and Kathleen Siljegovic. At the Department of the Navy, Rear
Admiral USN (Ret.) John Kane, Jr., director of the Naval Historical
Center, was most cooperative in retrieving papers from the Navy's
archives explaining the movement of U.S. ships, submarines and planes
during 1954. At the National Archives, Gibson Smith of the Modern
Military Branch of the
via PREFACE
Military Archives Division provided important documents from the
Defense Department.
In addition attorney Mark Lynch of the American Civil Liberties
Union's National Security Project provided us continuing legal counsel
in our attempt to win release of documents from the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Our experience with American libraries was at all times worthwhile.
Of special value for our research purposes were: the Eisenhower Library
and its director, John E. Wickman, and his assistant director, Martin M.
Teasley, who were most cooperative in providing us with important
documents from the Eisenhower collection; the Princeton University
Library, which houses the John Foster Dulles papers, and the Seeley G.
Mudd Manuscript Library, at the same university, containing Allen
Dulles' papers; the Boston Public Library; and the New York City
Public Library, which harbored a significant trove of materials on the
coup. As well, the New York Public Library provided a research office
in the Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room. In Guatemala, the
Biblioteca Nacional offered important sources.
We also wish to thank Richard Harris Smith, who generously
permitted us to quote from his forthcoming biography of CIA Director
Allen Dulles, called Spymaster's Odyssey: The World of Allen Dulles
which will be published in 1983.
Among special friends who read and commented upon the manuscript,
we want to make mention of Judy Elster, Mrs. Ilona Kinzer, and Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., all of whom spent several days reviewing the
manuscript.
The authors take full responsibility for all information contained in
the book.
CONTENTS

PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION, by Harrison E. Salisbury xi
MAPS Guatemala 1
The Voyage of the Alfhem 3
The Invasion Route 5
1 THE BATTLE BEGINS 7
2 A TEACHER TAKES POWER 25
3 AN AGE OF REFORM 37
4 THE CLOUDS GATHER 49
5 THE OVERLORD: THE UNITED FRUIT 65
6 ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF 79
7 OPERATION SUCCESS 99
8 THE LIBERATOR 119
9 THE PROCONSUL 131
10 THE SECRET VOYAGE OF THE "ALFHEM" 147
11 THE FINAL COUNTDOWN 159
12 ARBENZ FIGHTS BACK 173
13 THE LONGEST DAY 191
14 THE LIBERATION 205
15 THE AFTERMATH 227
NOTES 256
BIBLIOGRAPHY 293
INDEX 307
INTRODUCTION

The time has come for a basic reappraisal of American policy in the
Western Hemisphere. For deep psychological, political and economic
reasons U.S. relations with its neighbors tend to receive low priority
regardless of President or party in power.
This has been true for almost a hundred years and not even the
sudden spotlight focused on El Salvador in the first days of the Reagan
administration has changed things very much. The results are obvious
and dangerous. We festoon Hispano-America with garlands of flossy
verbiage and pay little or no attention to what is going on there. Then
when something happens to shock Washington, to violate its imprecise
notion of status quo, or threatens American interests, we reach for our
gun.
Wilson did it when he sent "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico
chasing Villa and when the Navy bombarded Veracruz. Harding and
Coolidge sent the Marines into Latin America like riot squads. They
stayed in Nicaragua so long they grew beards. Our forces have routinely
moved in and out of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The use of
American force in Central America and the Caribbean has become a
way of life since the
xii INTRODUCTION
days when newspaper competition between Joseph Pulitzer and William
Randolph Hearst touched off the Spanish-American War. "How do you
like the Journal's war?" Hearst asked his readers in bold headlines.
The record of unilateral use of force by the United States would fill a
book. Not for nothing were the Central American republics long known
as banana republics, fiefs of an American fruit-vending outfit based in
Boston.
So what else is new? What is new is that with the rise to power of the
Central Intelligence Agency the task of keeping Latin America "safe for
democracy" has more and more passed into the hands of a great
clandestine bureaucracy.
One must presume that National Security directives exist which
define the role of the CIA and its mission in the Western Hemisphere.
One supposes the directives make a case for a hemisphere safe and
secure for American interests (an updating of the Monroe Doctrine,
which kept Europe out of our backyard); an imperative to keep the
Soviet Union and its agents out; and, it can be hoped, a commandment
to further the development of democratic ideals and friendly democratic
governments compatible with U.S. principles.
It is in the light of this presumed U.S. policy that the case history of
Guatemala assumes such striking importance.
If the above words faithfully represent the essence of U.S. policy our
conduct in Guatemala violates its every provision.
Guatemala bears a special distinction. It is one of two countries where
the CIA boasts it carried out a successful clandestine military operation.
The other, of course, is Iran.
Indeed, it was in the rosy afterglow of Iran that the Agency was
authorized by John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower to carry out
the plan which removed Jacobo Arbenz, the legally elected President of
Guatemala, and replaced him with a regime headed by a little-known
military man named Castillo Armas, whose friends regarded him as a
well-meaning, rather stupid little man. These qualities were not
necessarily seen as negatives by the CIA operators.
It was enthusiasm over Guatemala and the CIA operation there which
encouraged Mr. Dulles, General Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to
believe the Agency could rid the United States
INTRODUCTION xiii
of the "threat" of Fidel Castro by duplicating "Operation Success," as
the plot to overthrow Arbenz was code-named.
As Bitter Fruit makes clear, Operation Success worked. It achieved
its objective. Arbenz was overthrown and after some pulling and
hauling Armas was seated in the presidential chair. The operation did
not go very smoothly. It required bluster, strong-arm tactics, double-
dealing, tough talk by American Ambassador Peurifoy to put it over.
And there was an unprecedented trick in which Foster Dulles and his
brother Allen collaborated to blind the eyes of the American press (and
the American people) as to what was going on. They deliberately
deceived the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, feeding him false and misleading information about one of
the Times's best men, Sydney Gruson, to get him off the scene. Gruson
was too good a reporter. He might spill the beans.
Still and all, Arbenz was taken out of play as planned. So it was not
the technique, so carefully reconstructed by the authors of Bitter Fruit,
which was at fault. True, the tactics came within a blink of blowing up.
The same thing happened in Iran, and at the Bay of Pigs the whole
operation would go down the drain because of bad planning and this
would be the case in many other, lesser-known CIA operations, for
example, that against Sukarno in Indonesia, the pitiful sacrifice of
Tibetans in a botched conspiracy against Lhasa, the wholesale slaughter
of Russians and Ukrainians parachuted into the Soviet Union in the late
1940s and early 1950s.
Still and all, the question is not one of technique. Presumably the
United States with all its capabilities should be able to get its act
together and mount a clandestine plot anywhere in Latin America. The
question is: Was Operation Success necessary and did it really advance
U.S. interests, in the long range and in the aggregate?
This is the question which has almost never been examined. Bitter
Fruit looks very hard at the case of Arbenz. Did he genuinely represent
a threat to the United States or was he really only a kind of secondary
threat to a leading U.S. monopoly, the United Fruit Company? Did his
successors actually provide a firm and reliable base for U.S. policy?
Was the whole thing just a charade, a tragic charade, which actually
weakened our pres-