As in a dream, a few insistent

details keep weaving. in and_ out of the jumbled impressions

ef Guatemala — the advertising Sign, the streamer strung across the street, the writing’ on the Wall, the box of pretzels.

_ 1 stood on the balcony of the Imposing National Palace in Guatemala City, admiring the Spacious square with its well laid out and immaculately kept lawns and alleys. There was beauty and dignity in the scene. But towering over the square and as if challenging the very seat of €0vernment of the Republic of Guatemala was a huge advertis- Mg sign reading: Canada Dry.

Then that streamer across the Width of the street. It was start-

ling because I was not prepared for it,

Up to that point, on the way from Guatemala City to the quaint town of Chichicastenango (the Rame is too long even for the Patient Guatemalans and they Call it Chichi-for short), we trav- eled through Indian country, and what with the hairpin curves on

€ winding, mountainous gravel Toad, the frightening precipices, We were too much absorbed by the breath-taking landscape and the picturesque costumes of the Maya tribes to think politics.

That is why the streamer strung cross *the main street of the Indian village of Solala hit me hetween the eyes. It read (in

Spanish): Against Foreign Inter- Yention.

Now, the’ box of pretzels. Ex- Pecting guests in my hotel room One evening, I went to the grocery cross the street to get some- ane to nibble with the wine. “ae Packaged food looked very ‘Miliar — it was all from the ‘ie I selected a box of pretz- ne that sells in the U.S. for 10 ne: The price in Guatemala ity was 50 cents.

_ Later I complained to my Suests about the high prices in ; €ir country, citing the box of Sie as an example. One of

4. Suests knew a good deal about

i €xport-import business and he : Sured me that more than half

the price of pretzels repre- ented freight costs.

2 qt Cost more, he said, to carry th, item from Puerto Barrios on © Atlantic coast over the only

Tailway line to Guatemala City,’

: distance of 197 miles, than to ID it from the U.S., or from Urope for that matter, to Puerto

arrios. *

oS rail line from Puerto Bar- oe belongs to the United Fruit = Mpany, and by the terms of the et between United and the Mer dictators of Guatemala,

e Guatemalan government has mee Voice’ whatever in setting eight rates over the railroad. a ith excellent coast lines on both Reig Guatemala has only one ri On the Atlantic, Puerto Bar- Os, and two on the Pacific—San te and Champerica, and all “Tee are the property of United.

ay ithout a port of its own, with- Dr any say in freight rates, with ‘Actically all of its exports (main- th Coffee and bananas) going to re and all of its imports uding food, clothing, ‘oil pro- Ucts, machinery and manufactur- fh consumers’ goods) coming iad the U.S., Guatemala for air a century has been at the ‘ €rey of U.S. monopoly capital, Pecifically United Fruit Company d its subsidiaries. 3 all practical purposes, Un- Pat Owns Guatemala. Guatemalan a Tlots never liked this arrange- €nt, and the democratic regime dice from 1944, when the last a ator, General. Ubico, was kick- thi Out, has decided to do some- Mg about it. ioe Pre: is is particularly true of the Sent government of President ®Cobo Arbenz Guzman; elected

«

in 1951 as. the candidate of a democratic coalition including

middle class groups, the National

Peasant Confederation, as well as tlé new and numerically small Communist (Workers) party.

Immediately upon its election, the new government proceeded to deliver on its promises.

*

Overshadowing all other na- tional plans is the Agrarian Re- form Law, adopted by Congress (a one-chamber body where the Communists have four of the 56 seats) in June, 1952.

It is this reform, aiming at the abolition of the semi-feudal sys- tem and the distribution of the uncultivated land among the landless peasants, that furnishes the basis for the charge the pre- sent regime is “eommunistic” and “anti-American. ”

If the United Fruit Company

and paintings and drawings by well-known artists with the Road to the Atlantic as their theme.

Indeed, this projected highway of some 200 miles that is to con- nect Guatemala City with the At- lantic coast is represented by Guatemalan poets and statesmen alike as the road to national sal- vation, precisely because of what it represents.

The projected highway may break United Fruit’s stranglehold upon Guatemala’s economy and put an end to decades of extor- tion amounting to highway rob- bery. With a road of its own to the Atlantic, Guatemala would no longer have to accept the mon- strously high freight rates Unit- ed charges for carrying imports over its railway from Puerto Bar- rios.

Since Guatemala imports all of its gasoline (now selling in the country at 50 cents a gallon), all

Why the == nited States

attacks Guatemala

erent

SOUTH | AMERICA |

is America then the Guatemalan government is anti-American. The Agrarian Reform Law applies to all holders of large and unused stretches of land. United is the

Jargest single landlord in Guate-

mala, with hundreds of thousands of acres of uncultivated land.

Like the domestic landowners, United is compensated. for the na- tionalized land, not. at an arbit- rary rate but at the rate of its tax valuation. For years it has been paying land taxes at the valuation of $2 per acre and whent the government suggested a higher valuation United pro- tested that the land wasn’t worth more. i

ow the US. State Depart- siete yells blue murder that Un- ited is being robbed and its prop- erty confiscated practically with- out compensation.

The Agrarian Reform is the main lever to pry the country loose from the crushing burden of foreign monopoly domination. But it is only part of a larger program that has captured the imagination and kindled the hopes of large sections of the population. Take the fervor gen- erated by the slogan, “The Road to the Atlantic!”

In the House of Culture (Casa della Cultura) I was shown pam- phlets and poems by prominent writers dedicated to this project,

U.S. monopoly exploitation and dictatorial regimes have left Guatemala a heritage of poverty and illiteracy, The present demo-

cratic government is trying to raise living standards by its land reform program and to wipe out illiteracy by expanding the school

system.

by NATHANIEL BUCHWALD ©

of its machinery, practically all of its canned and packaged foods, a good deal of its textiles and ready-to-wear clothing from the U.S., the Road to the Atlantic looms large as a short cut to lower living costs and improved living standards. .

In the excited hopes of the peo- ple it means that the wage-earner will no longer have to pay from one-third to one-half of his meagre earnings as tribute to Un- ited Fruit. The merchant, no

-longer at the mercy of United,

will be able to sell twice as much to a much larger buying public than he can now reach at the pro- hibitive prices.

*

Still there is among politically informed people a sober realiza- tion of the difficulties, obstacles and dangers attending the pro- gram of transition from a semi- feudal to a modern agrarian-in- dustrial economy and from the status of a semi-colonial “banana republic” to economic indepen- dence and political democracy.

Many of the obstacles and dan- gers come from without, from U.S. monopolies and their domes- tic stooges, but there are also serious internal obstacles. Not

the least of these are the pre- vailing illiteracy (72 percent of the population) and the rigid tra- ditionalism of the Indians, who constitute more than a half of

the population and whose cus-—

toms stand in the way of social and economic progress.

Adherents of the democratic front say that to integrate the Indians into national life is one of the present regime’s goals, but that as yet hardly a beginning has been made. I was told there are no Indians in the national gov- ernment and very few in the ranks of the lower government employees.

Education is something else again. The annual budget of the ministry of education, 10% mil- lion quetzals of a total national budget of some 70 million, is

higher than that of any other

ministry.

During the 14 vears of Ubico’s dictatorship not a single modern school was built and only one teachers’ training school was in

operation. But in the nine years

of the democratic regime 87 such schools were built and equipped, and six teachers’ training insti- tutes are now functioning in vari- ous parts of the country.

Before the overthrow of Ubico’s dictatorship in 1944, a graduate rural teacher received $12 a month and the salary of an urban

teacher was $24, Now the salaries are $60 and $75, respectively. In 1953 alone 400 one-room schools were built in rural areas.

What is the political complex- ion of this democratic coalition government which the U.S. State Department is widely misrepre- senting as being “communist-con- trolled.” :

' Far from being socialistic in its outlook, the coalition govern-

“ment bases its program upon pri-

vate enterprise. It could . be characterized as a_ liberal-bour- geois regime supported by the in-

_dustrial workers (as yet humeric- _ ally small) and large sections of

the agricultural workers and landless peasantry.

The land reform is the political cement that binds the various elements of the coalition: Indus- trialization—on the basis of pri- vate enterprise—is another goal

Shared by all the groupings in

the coalition. ae But what about the Commun- ists? “What is the specific function

_of your party in the coalition?

Wherein does it differ in practice from the other parties of the de- mocratic front?” I asked one Communist leader. °

“We support the common pro- gram of the coalition and spare no efforts to help put it into effect. At the same time we are on guard against any attempt to promote the problem of industrial- ization and other reforms at the expense of the workers. You may consider us Communists, if you wish, as the advocates and guadians of the proletariat in the democratic front,’ he said.

Later the same day I visited the House of Culture, where I learned among other things that

-at the recent Book Fair held in

the National Palace under the auspices of the House of Culture, the two books topping the list of best sellers were Mao Tse-tung’s New Democracy and—the Bible.

Perhaps this will give you an idea of the mood of the reading public backing the present demo- cratic regime of Guatemala.

U.S. plotting our overthrow’

HIPMENT of U.S. arms to Nica- ragua this week, on the pre- text that Guatemala, to which the U.S. has refused to sell arms, has now received arms from Europe, recalls the White Paper issued by the Guatemalan government earlier this year.

The White Paper accused the U.S. government of endorsing a plan for the invasion of Guate- mala from Nicaragua and of re- tiring a U.S. army colonel to or- ganize sabotage in Guatemala.

Details of the U.S. plot to over-

throw the Guatemalan govern-

ment were revealed during in- vestigations into sabotage and the attempted assassination of Vice- President Arriola.

Arriola played a leading role in carrying through the 1952 land reform program in Guatemala, which was bitterly opposed by the United Fruit Company.

Leaders of an attempted revolt last March stated that they had received arms! from the ambas- sador of El Salvador and money from the United Fruit Company.

This powerful U.S. trust, dom-

inating! the economic life of Central America, has some $100 million invested in Guatemala, and lost 400,000 acres of land which it had deliberately left un- used in the land reform.

In Mexico, Guatemala’s neigh- bor, 200 leading figures have sup- ported a Society of Friends of Guatemala, having Catholic poet Carlos Pellicer and industrialist Jose Domingo Lavin among its leaders.

The Chilean parliament has con- demned the planned U.S. aggres- sion against Guatemala.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 28, 1954 — PAGE 9