This City Belongs to You. Heather Vrana
city newspapers described the aggression of the Kaqchikels and used the events to demonstrate how rural indigenous Guatemalans were unprepared for full citizenship.88 They did not report the fatal mismatch of machetes versus guns that placed indigenous combatants at a deadly disadvantage. Flashpoints such as these provided opportunities for middle-class professionals and students to demonstrate their own cultural and political difference, to celebrate their urbanity, and articulate a “dialectical brew of optimism, anxiety, and contradiction” that promoted certain manners as requisite for citizenship.89
In El Imparcial, just a few months later, illustrious journalist Rufino Guerra Cortave echoed this view when he wrote, “the rural man, the illiterate, the laborer, Indian or ladino, continues in his ignorance and, consequently, continues to be a danger, to be manipulated by the perverse maneuvering of the enemy.”90 For Cortave, the indigenous citizen was not to be faulted for his ignorance, but rather “four centuries of oppression, cruelty, and systematic brutalization of the native” had “made him so indolent and apathetic,” and “resigned to his lot.”91 Ongoing oppression rendered the indigenous community (and illiterate ladinos) incapable of participating in the social contract. Cortave continued, “To beings whose lack of consciousness is a cloud in our sky of democratic liberties . . . we must take reason . . . we must infuse the ABC of civilization.” After all, if one had not learned more than the most rudimentary reading, he “is not guilty if he cannot discern good from evil and it is the duty of the rest of the Guatemalans of conscience to show them the path of their own best interest if they are to be part of this society.” This task could be achieved “with reason and patriotic honesty as guides.”92 Cortave’s quasi-expert discourse declared that only with literacy could one have reason, discern good from evil, and be counted upon to act in their own best interest. The process of coming to consciousness by those blameless for their lack of it required a certain submission to a course of treatment by the more wise.
In La Hora, Jorge Schlesinger argued that the “Indian” was an “irresponsible subject” because of “his lack of education and inadaptability.” Like Cortave, he encouraged the incorporation of the indigenous as citizens in the national community. But for Schlesinger, inclusion was owed because “he is the pillar of the national economy which is based mainly on agriculture” not because inclusion was “necessary to unify the national conscience,” as Cortave had written.93 In fact, the government was duty-bound to look after the indigenous, if only so “that he may be useful to the fatherland.”94 Cortave, Schlesinger, and the AEU agreed on the conclusion if not on the rationale: illiterate rural indigenous laborers and their ladino counterparts must be enfranchised.
Suffrage became “obligatory and secret” for literate men; “optional and secret” for literate women; and “optional and public” for illiterate men. Illiterate women were not mentioned at all in the Constitution.95 A woman thusly located in the assemblymen’s understanding of political authority could not possibly properly exercise citizenship. The question was settled in the Constitutional Assembly, but it revealed a rift that was not easily mended. Civil society was the precondition of democracy, but education was the precondition of civil society. San Carlistas were charged to infuse the “ABCs of civilization,” and in so doing enact the most enduring feature of the new student nationalism: the responsibility of the students to lead the nation.
The new constitution was completed in time for Arévalo’s inauguration. On March 15, 1945, President Arévalo stood before a crowd in the congressional chambers. He declared, “We are going to equip humanity with humanity. We are going to rid ourselves of guilt-ridden fear through unselfish ideas. We are going to add justice and happiness to order, because order does not serve us if it is based on injustice and humiliation.” He continued, “We are going to revalorize, civically and legally, all of the men of the Republic . . . Democracy means just order, constructive peace, internal discipline, [and] happy and productive work . . . a democratic government supposes and demands the dignity of everyone.”96 Dictatorship, or order “based on injustice and humiliation,” was abolished. Yet real democracy required “internal discipline, happy and productive work,” and men who had been “revalorized.” Later in the address Arévalo confirmed, “we are [working] directly for a transformation of the spiritual, cultural, and economic life of the republic.” The speech was a vow to teach civic values to all citizens who had lost or not yet acquired them. Arévalo added that Guatemalan democracy would become “a permanent, dynamic system of projections into society [by] tireless vigilance.”97 Some of Arévalo’s populist contemporaries, like Victor Haya de la Torre in Peru and Juan Perón in Argentina, had made similar claims, occasionally inspiring the support and at other times the ire of the middle class.98
FIGURE 2. President Arévalo depicted as a woman before a stereotypical indigenous peasant on a float for the desfile bufo, 1945. Anonymous Photograph. Collection of Juan José Arévalo Bermejo. Fototeca Guatemala, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA).
Once in office, Arévalo called on San Carlistas to design the tax reform and new social security program, and to lead teams of doctors, lawyers, and engineers into the countryside to organize free clinics. Arévalo and his advisors also promoted national culture through fiction, poetry, music composition, and fine art contests.99 His democratic vision fused Rooseveltian social liberalism with Lockeian liberalism, the legacy of late nineteenth-century Central American Liberalism, and the populist political style that was en vogue across Latin America.100 His populism empowered intellectuals, experts, and policymakers through interwoven projects of economic development, human welfare, and political tutelage. Before long, advisors and funders from the United States would utilize these networks to implement a kind of soft imperialism in the context of the Cold War.101
The Arévalo government designed comprehensive reforms for every level of the educational system. The reforms ushered in a new period of openness. Professors and students returned from exile and brought with them experiences gained in Mexico and further afield.102 Schoolteachers were encouraged to restructure professional credentialing and rethink their teaching methods. Hundreds of new primary and secondary schools were built with government subsidies. The new Instituto Normal Nocturno, a night school, enabled workers to have access to the nationalist positivist curriculum of the highly regarded “cultura normalista.”103 At USAC, administrative reform crafted a republican government for the university: a legislature, the University High Council (CSU); an electoral college, the University Electoral Body; and an executive, the rector. The rector presided over the CSU, but its membership included the deans of all academic units, a professional delegate from every colegio, and a student delegate from each academic unit.104 Elections by secret ballot in the University Electoral Body replaced the personal appointment of the rector. Colegios, like guilds, regulated professionals’ training, examinations, and licensure; they served as a political bloc and social organization for members. The inclusion of colegios in university governance meant that although San Carlistas changed phases, from student to professional, and frequently, from professional to professor, their obligation to USAC endured.105
Education reforms progressed quickly, but Arévalo had more difficulty launching reforms in other areas. His economic policy based on a system of capitalist growth through agricultural export of coffee, cotton, and petroleum and moderate labor and finance reforms suggests he was cautious about impacting export production. The 1947 Labor Code restored the right to unionize to urban unions, but placed limitations on agricultural unions.106 Two of Arévalo’s most lasting reforms were the formation of the National Institute for the Promotion of Production (INFOP) and the Guatemalan Social Security Institute (IGSS) in 1948. These institutes sought to expand and diversify industry and agriculture, and focused on industrialization, credit, home construction, the indigenous economy, and cooperatives.107 San Carlistas advised both institutes.
But Arévalo was an educator, and not an economist or agronomist.108 His uneven policies and their consequences fueled debate over the meaning of the revolution. Historian Piero Gleijeses