This City Belongs to You. Heather Vrana
or strategic appeal, the students sought an authentic nationalism that was “[n]either the extreme right nor the extreme left [but rather] the heart of Guatemala.”32
Guatemala, a nation figured as female, was the progeny of the indigenous and the ladino. In kaleidoscopic language reminiscent of Mexican pedagogue José Vasconcelos’s cosmic race, the CEUA students went on to predict, “like the sexes, the two halves of one destiny will come together to generate the future, and then, the genius of the Guatemalan people will shine.” Then, the students added, “Guatemala will be herself.”33 The Plan detailed specialized institutions for guidance in “cultural, social, and economic improvement” in order to develop “what [the indios] have that is useful.”34 It offered an education system with curriculum taught by indigenous teachers, attentive to the needs and customs of each region.35 Educational centers (colonias escolares) would be built to increase access to education for indigenous communities.36 The autonomous university was protected under the Plan, for without it, “scientific speculation stagnates, spiritual disquiet goes up in smoke, and the founts of knowledge and desire for knowledge run dry.” Only USAC could confer degrees and the doors to the university would be open to anyone who could fulfill the prerequisites of enrollment, “regardless of sex, color, nationality, citizenship, political or religious creed, and economic or social position.”37 Whether ladino or indigenous, the Plan affirmed each citizen’s right to education alongside their responsibility to seek self-improvement. In sum, its education reforms were moderate.
The Plan’s land reforms were also moderate. The Plan rejected the land expropriations of Arbenz’s Agrarian Reform and proposed that the seized property be returned to its previous owners. But it also advocated what the CEUA called a “humanized” version of the modern trade system with fixed minimum export prices, greater domestic investment in industrialized agriculture, and the provision of low-interest loans for campesinos. This would increase the number of landowners while avoiding “the minifundio trap,” because, the CEUA claimed, maximizing private property was the most effective way to generate wealth as well as “the most just way to achieve the primary aims of life.”38 For the CEUA, the primary aims of life were national economic productivity and individual material advancement. Finally, the Plan returned property rights to the Catholic Church and permitted religious instruction in public schools.39
As I mentioned above, a small Army of the Liberation invaded from Honduras under the command of Castillo Armas in June 1954, dealing the final blow to the Arbenz government after months of covert propaganda campaigns and diplomatic and economic isolation. On June 27, Arbenz announced his resignation on the national radio station TGW. He began: “We all know how they have bombed and bombarded cities, sacrificing women, children, the elderly, and defenseless citizens. We all know the viciousness with which they have assassinated representatives of the workers and campesinos in the communities that they have occupied.” After reinforcing gendered, raced, and aged ideas of victimhood, he identified the vicious assailant as “North American mercenaries.” He explicitly denounced how the opposition used communism as a pretext to avenge “the financial interests of the frutera [United Fruit Company] and . . . other North American monopolies” that were threatened by the Agrarian Reform. Arbenz went on to outline the role of the United States in the invasion and the treason of Castillo Armas, and then he ceded his presidential powers to Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz of the armed forces. The counterrevolution had won. Supporters of the revolutionary government, including many students, labor organizers, and, famously, Che Guevara, sought refuge in the embassies of Argentina and Mexico until the governments of Juan Perón and Adolfo Ruiz Cortines assured their safe passage. Many San Carlistas, including Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Manuel Colom Argueta, Adolfo Mijangos López, and Francisco Villagrán Kramer, went into exile.40
Like the revolutionaries in 1944, the counterrevolutionaries rewarded their university-based supporters with positions in the government. Some older CEUA students held positions in the presidential secretariat, including the offices of secretary general of the president (Ricardo Quiñonez), private secretary (Carlos Recinos), and secretary of publicity and propaganda (Luis Coronado Lira). Young CEUA leaders Mario Sandoval Alarcón and Lionel Sisniega Otero served in junior positions in the president’s cabinet. Other CEUA students worked in ministries of the Interior, Public Health, and Public Education, and the Foreign Ministry. Jorge Skinner Klee led the Constituent Assembly and José Torón Barrios directed TGW, the national radio station.41
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