#51 Bananas: The 1954 US-Led Coup In Guatemala

June 20, 2022 kmunoz 0 Comments

Episode Description:

How bananas led to the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemala, violently reversing the progressive policies of the civilian governments. A coup that was ordered by the United Fruit Company ushering a 36-year civil war claiming the lives of about 200,000 people.

If you aren’t from Guatemala or maybe even if you are you most likely haven’t heard about this side of history in your history books. We can all agree that the U.S has a long history of somehow always being involved in many foreign interventions and Guatemala is undoubtedly no exception. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about how bananas led to the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemala, violently reversing the progressive policies of the civilian governments. A coup that was ordered by the United Fruit Company ushering a 36-year civil war claiming the lives of about 200,000 people.

I’m your host, Kevin Muñoz, this is today’s free episode. If you want early access to upcoming episodes and bonus episodes or if you just want to support the podcast and the hard work that goes into it, you can do that on patreon.com/latinamericaneo and if not, then enjoy this one!

Topic 1: Background: Advertising

During the first sixty years of their existence, the U.S.-owned banana companies learned that they could use local governments as instruments of their will. From 1898 to 1920, President Manuel Estrada Cabrera invited the United Fruit Company to build Guatemalas’ infrastructure, I’m talking about railroads, telegraph lines, and ports. General Jorge Ubico, In-office from 1933 to 1944, remained loyal to the company and suppressed civil society.

However, before we get into the coup we’re gonna be talking about advertising and how big of a role it played in Guatemala’s history. Advertising has been used as a form of manipulation for years, think about big tobacco and the type of advertising they have done to target a younger audience and still do just maybe not as upfront about it as they used to be because of lawsuits. Well in the mid-twentieth century, United Fruit Company embarked on a series of advertising campaigns specifically designed to exploit the emotions and sense of adventure of a growing American middle class and furthered the racial polarization and political tension between the U.S. and Central America, all for the sake of selling their bananas.

The year is 1917 and United Fruit company has just initiated its first advertising campaign. They already had well-established plantations in various countries in Central and South America by this time. All they really were missing now was the interest of the American people in trying new, exotic things in order to sell the bananas that they were producing. Now during this time in American History, it was understood that advertisements should target consumers’ rationale and not their emotions. So United Fruit being the company they are, hired scientists to author positive reviews about bananas whether they were true or not. One of these publications titled “Food value of the Banana: Opinions of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities” offered numerous articles by well-known scientists that promoted the nutrition value, health benefits, and even taste of the banana.

Now of course today we know that bananas are good for us, but back then in the early 1900s, there wasn’t a sure way for these scientists to determine the nutrition value and other properties that they claimed to have researched. But regardless of this, Americans appeared to have believed the scientists and as a result, United Fruit’s banana sales began to soar.

Everything about advertising began to change in the 1920s when a young successful propagandist named Edward Bernays discovered that targeting people’s emotions instead of their logic caused people to flock to a product. His first experiment in this type of advertising was for the American Tobacco Company. His thought process was that cigarette sales would skyrocket if it was socially acceptable for women to smoke, so during an important women’s rights march in New York City, Bernays had a woman light a cigarette in front of reporters and call it a “Torch of Freedom”. Soon, women all over the United States were smoking cigarettes. And of course, after this stunt, companies all over America began using emotionally-loaded advertising.

United Fruit Company was no different. They launched an advertising campaign revolving around their new cruise liner called “The Great White Fleet”. This cruise liner sailed civilians to the United Fruit-controlled countries in Central and South America to appeal to Americans’ sense of adventure and foster a good corporate reputation with the American people. When this cruise liner docked in a country, cruisers often toured one of the United Fruit’s plantations. Now here’s the thing, during this tour, the tourists would only be shown small areas of the banana plantations that were theatrically set up to present the plantation as this great place to work, when, really it was a place with harsh conditions and a lot of corruption. Their advertisements were key in swaying the American people to set out on this exotic adventure with the Great White Fleet.

They had flyers in which they described Central America as this land of pirates and romance. The advertisement even portrays it as the place where “Pirates hid their gold.” And so in order to sell more cruise tickets, and through association, more bananas they gave American tourists this false sense of romanticism of Central America.

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Topic 2: Jacobo Arbenz

The United Fruit Company continued to advertise throughout the mid-twentieth century till they found a new use for their public relations skills. In 1951 A politician named Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala. What you need to know about Arbenz is that he was a strict nationalist, and all he wanted was for his people to stop suffering in poverty. At that time one of the biggest issues in Guatemala was that there wasn’t enough land.

When United Fruit invaded Guatemala, they bought out many of the local farmers to acquire land for their plantations. This didn’t leave room for people who relied on farming as the sole source of their income. So Arbenz decided to create an agrarian reform that took land from the company and gave it back to the poor farmers that needed it. Under the Agrarian Reform Act, The Arbenz government declared that about 209 thousand of acres of uncultivated lands of United Fruit should be taken back from them and distributed to the people. In return, the Guatemalan government promised to compensate the company for about $627 thousand dollars in government bonds. This amount of money was based on the company’s declared tax value of the land.

Now as you can imagine, United Fruit was not happy with this reform. So get this, United Fruit decided to immediately launch a propaganda campaign led by Edward Bernays (the young successful propagandist) to convince the United States government and its people that Arbenz was a communist dictator. To give you an idea of how much clout this company had, In 1953 in an article by the New York Times, Guatemala was described as “operating under increasingly severe Communist-inspired pressure to rid the country of United States companies”. So obviously United Fruit company was manipulating the media and making it sound like the agrarian reform was only created because Arbenz was being influenced by the Soviet government to sabotage America’s economic imperialism in Central America.

And now you have to keep in mind that the Cold War was during this time so the association with communists was a serious accusation. And because The United States had taken such an aggressive stance toward communism they immediately took action.

This is where the CIA got involved, they hired civilian militias from Honduras to come into Guatemala and start a war against Arbenz and his followers. United Fruit even convinced U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to threaten Arbenz because Eisenhower and many other prominent American government officials had stock in United Fruit.

On June 15, 1954, U.S.-backed mercenaries left their bases in Honduras to invade Guatemala backed by a heavy campaign of psychological warfare. They were led by Coronel Castillo Armas. The Guatemalan army actually succeeded in driving the rebel forces back into Honduras. In fact, the invasion was actually a big failure, but the attack was enough to scare Arbenz. With this type of immense pressure, Arbenz rightfully feared for his life. On the eve of being overthrown Arbenz addressed the nation and famously stated “our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception” and on June 27, 1954, he resigned.

Topic 3: The Result of the Arbenz resignation

Shortly after Arbenz’s resignation, 10 days actually after his resignation Castillo Armas is unanimously elected as president (which btw he was the only candidate so it’s not like there were any options on the table)

The 1954 coup ushered in a civil war that claimed the lives of 200,000 Guatemalans, tens of thousands of whom were indigenous Mayas.

The Coup has been described as the definitive death blow to democracy in Guatemala. It was widely criticized internationally and strengthened the long-lasting anti-U.S. sentiment in Latin America.

The CIA attempted to justify the coup by launching an operation known as Operation PBHistory, which sought evidence of Soviet influence in Guatemala among documents from the Arbenz era…Which btw was a complete failure.

Castilla Armas quickly assumed dictatorial powers, banning opposition parties, imprisoning and torturing political opponents, and reversing the social reforms of the revolution. If you look up a picture of this guy he basically looks like the Guatemalan Hitler mustache and everything.

Castillas policies which were mostly proposed by United Fruit or the American government resulted in nearly four decades of civil war in which leftist guerrillas fought a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes whose brutalities include the genocide of the Mayan people.

Numerous other human rights violations were committed, including massacres of civilian populations, rape, aerial bombardment, and forced disappearances. The narrative that the 1954 coup had represented a battle against communism was something that was often used to justify the violence in the 1980s.

U.S. President Bill Clinton apologized to the nation of Guatemala in March 1999 for the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed dictatorships. The apology occurred during a meeting in Guatemala which involved leaders from various sectors of the country’s society, including indigenous people and women. Clinton stated, “For the United States it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.” The apology came soon after the release of a truth commission report that documented U.S. support for the military forces that committed genocide.

In May 2011, the Guatemalan government signed an agreement with Árbenz’s surviving family to restore his legacy and publicly apologize for the government’s role in ousting him. This included a financial settlement to the family. The formal apology was made at the National Palace by Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom on 20 October 2011, to Jacobo Árbenz Villanova, the son of the former president, and a Guatemalan politician. Colom stated, “It was a crime to Guatemalan society and it was an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring.” The agreement established several forms of reparation for the next of kin of Árbenz Guzmán.

As for United Fruit throughout all this, it regained its former lands and privileges. However, the coup actually proved disastrous for the company, as the corrupt regime proved to be a massive destabilizing force in the region that impeded business. And so after a period of financial decline, United Fruit merged with Eli M. Black’s AMK in 1970 to become the United Brands Company. In 1984, Carl Lindner, Jr. transformed United Brands into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

And let me tell you, just because they changed their name doesn’t mean much of their actions have changed. In fact, in 2007 Chiquita brands pleaded guilty in a US federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, they have also been accused of smuggling weapons and assisting a terrorist organization in smuggling drugs to Europe.

I wanted to share this piece of history from my home country because it is one that is important, not only for Guatemalans but also for Latin America as a whole. Because of the 1954 coup in Guatemala, The United States is seen as a country that will overthrow democratic governments in the interests of banana companies. This shaped how generations of Latin Americans have regarded the U.S. and American business. The United Fruit Company ultimately came to represent what American companies do and the legitimacy of American capitalism.

THE END

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