GUATEMALA: Reds at Work

The House Subcommittee on Communist Aggression in Latin America, sitting in Washington last week, heard a chilling story from a witness who knew what he was talking about. The witness was Guatemala’s President Carlos Castillo Armas, who toppled his country’s Red-controlled regime in June. His testimony, played back from a wire recording made in Guatemala City, was the first that a committee of Congress ever took from a foreign chief of state.

Apologizing that he could “not speak English very good,” Castillo Armas told simply and eloquently how Moscow-directed Communists emerged with power and influence under his predecessor, Jacobo Arbenz.”The Communists concentrated first on the labor unions, of which they quickly gained complete control, “he explained. “Soon it became almost impossible to be elected to public office without the support of the unions . . . A teachers’ union was formed, and before long almost every teacher in the country, in order to hold his job, had to teach the Communist doctrines . . . The Communists had political control of Guatemala by the time [former President Juan José] Arévalo’s term expired [in 1951]. When their hand-picked candidate, Jacobo Arbenz, took office, they finally dared to come out into the open.”

Modestly skipping over his own role in cracking the Arbenz regime. Castillo Armas went on to outline the responsibilities ahead: “We are now committed to show the world that Guatemala, by democratic ways, can advance the welfare of all our people far beyond what was achieved under Communism. Guatemala is the first nation to return to democracy after having lived under Communist rule. We are on trial before the world.”

Castillo Armas is also on guard against a Communist comeback. Last week he deceased the death penalty for sabotage of rail, ship, plane or wire communications—apparently as a broad weapon to head off any attempts at counterrevolution.