Yojimbo
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 327
Location: Tallahassee, FL
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| Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:14 pm Post subject: Jacobo Arbenz was not a communist |
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This post is for cap'n sleazy.
Quote: Arbenz was not a communist.
Quote: He was a communist. He worked with a communist organization, the PGT, to enact land reform measures that can only be characterized as Communist.
If you want to discuss the history of Communism in Latin America I suggest the history or South America Politics forum.
This one is for discussing ME political issues. And this thread is specifically for discussing foreign aid to the Palestinians.
Thank you.
He was not a Communist. This really is not debatable. Find me one SCHOLARLY source that claims he was a Communist. He did work with the PGT, who had gained some influence in his government (4 seats in the legislature). They did work with Arbenz to design a land reform program, land reform which was badly needed, supported by the majority of Guatemalans, and can only be characterized as Communist by someone who knows nothing about Communism apart from Cold War rhetoric. You could call it Socialist perhaps, but not Communist. The government was expropriating land to redistribute to peasants; they were not setting up government collectives. The government was not trying to nationalize UF. United Fruit would not have lost all of its land, and would have been compensated for every acre based on their own assessment of the land's value, which they had consistently lied about to avoid paying taxes. The land reform and the fact that the Guatemalan government purchased weapons from Czechoslovakia (after making numerous attempts to purchase arms from Western countries and being turned down) were used to portray Arbenz as a Communist. The CIA even went so far as to make a phony "Soviet" weapons dump in a neighboring country, supposedly demonstrating direct contact between the Soviets and the Arbenz regime. It seems odd that the U.S. government would have gone to such lengths to portray Arbenz as a Communist if hard proof actually existed. It also seems odd that you would claim that the U.S. intervened to stop Arbenz from ruining the Guatemalan economy given that UF was part of the reason Guatemala wasn't able to utilize its landholdings efficiently (in a way that would benefit their economy), and all evidence indicates that the U.S. intervened to bail out UF. |
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