The CIA and Latin America
Operation PBSUCESS and US intervention in Guatemala, 1954
In 1954 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. In doing so, they paved the way for decades of unchecked violence.
The culture of secrecy: the Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA’s recent disclosure of its Family Jewels, comprising a slew of previously declassified memoranda and operational plans, has led many Americans to question both the intentions and reach of this secretive branch of the government. From Latin America, to Sub-Saharan Africa, to the Middle East, the CIA’s meddling has taken an enormous toll on nations the world over.
Cold War Coup
Operation PBSUCCESS, the codename for the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan leader Jacopo Arbenz Guzmán, is an ideal point of departure for those interested in the history of US covert intervention. The operation was intended to place a pro-U.S., authoritarian leader in the seat of government to “restore order” and prevent an inevitable communist takeover. When Arbenz rose to power in 1951, he immediately promoted plans to redistribute vast tracts of arable land to the nation’s poor peasant majority. Fearing that the success of Arbenz’s agenda could lead to progressive trends throughout Latin America, and subsequently to communism, the Eisenhower administration contracted the CIA to organize a covert intervention to remove him from power. As one U.S. official claimed, “Premature extension of democratic privileges and responsibilities to a people still accustomed to patriarchal methods can only be harmful.”
At all costs: the CIA and terror
Employing a variety of techniques, including psychological warfare, propaganda, and military intervention by proxy, the CIA’s relentless campaign to remove Arbenz was comprehensive in scope. Urging Guatemalan military leaders that the failure to remove Arbenz would provoke a direct U.S. intervention, the CIA spread fear among a population already accustomed to U.S. marines wading ashore in Latin America. Also, the operational planners employed fake radio broadcasts, leaflets, and even incited gang riots in their attempt to spread terror and overthrow Arbenz’s leftist regime.
Proxy Army: Carlos Castillo Armas
From the beginning, State Department officials worried that Arbenz’s intended replacement, the exiled Guatemalan chief of police, Carlos Castillo Armas, lacked a definitive agenda for his eventual takeover. Knowing that he represented the only organized U.S. asset in the region, however, the operational planners were forced to employ his ragtag group of mercenaries in largely ineffective guerilla warfare, culminating in a coordinated invasion across the Guatemala-Honduras Border in violation of both the United States’ Good Neighbor Policy and the 1947 Rio Pact
The Tragedy of US Foreign Policy
Through a combination of cunning, perseverance, and pure luck, the CIA succeeded in overthrowing Arbenz and installing Castillo Armas on June 27, 1954. Shortly after the operation’s termination, the CIA initiated Operation PBHISTORY, whose goal was to determine the Arbenz regime’s Soviet ties and plant them if none existed; CIA agents found none. Immediately after assuming power, Castillo Armas brutally murdered dissidents and rivals within the government, curtailed civil liberties, censored the press, and utterly reversed Arbenz’s land reforms, thus sealing the nation’s fate for decades to come. The great irony of Operation PBSUCCESS is that in replacing Arbenz with Castillo Armas, the United States actually increased the levels of anti-American sentiment in the region, leading to further regional destabilization. As Castillo Armas’s strained relations with the U.S. and the increased and justifiable anti-Americanism of the region demonstrate, unforeseen consequences can result from even the most carefully planned interventions.
References
Cullather, Nick. Secret History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006
CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents
