The cancellation of the effective reforms imposed during the decade in which the social-democrat government was in power, gave rise to serious public protests culminating in an armed revolt in 1960 that was led by a conspicuous group of military people who remained faithful to Arbenz. It was joined by workers, union groups, and students and also professionals besides the poor classes and Maya peasants scattered throughout the rural villages.

The revolt was put down in blood by the army but many of the leaders succeeded in escaping abroad where they nourished growing resentment against the government and increasing radicalisation that led to the formation of armed revolutionary groups, inspired by the Cuban experience. In 1968, the American ambassador was the victim of assassination and this was followed by another escalation of terror by both factions until, following the coming to power as president of the Republic, in July 1970, of General Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio, the repression was systematically inflicted on thousands of Indian peasants accused of supporting the guerrillas or of sympathising with them. This was but the prologue to an even more bloody wave of violence in the years that followed.

General Efraín Ríos Montt (centre) announcing his military coup.

In the late eighties, the violence intensified, culminating in the extermination of the Maya community by the army led by the dictator Efrain Rios Montt. On that occasion, the government used a new strategy supported by the new ‘doctrine of national security’ which, besides legitimising the indiscriminate violence by the state against anyone seeking social justice, did no longer engage in selective repression but the direct repression of the masses, implementing a truly systematic plan to eliminate entire Maya communities. This genocide took place before the indifferent eyes of the entire international community, genocide that no one, not even civil or Church movements, could stop; genocide that spared neither women, children nor the elderly. The aim of preventing the spread of communism and a possible Soviet-style government on the borders of the USA was, in fact, considered more important than respect for human rights. Consequently, to guarantee national security by means of the appropriate doctrine, anyone who took an opposing stand was subject to elimination.
All forms of opposition were seen as cultivation grounds of the ‘enemy within’ and even the work of many priests for the defence of the weakest was considered subversive.

Despite the large amount of aid given by Washington to the government army, both in terms of weapons and of finance, and the anti-insurrection units specially trained by the US ‘Green Berets’, many localities of the urban centres were controlled by groups of guerrillas. Guatemala had become a country broken in two by dividing lines that changed according to the outcome of clashes between government troops and the rebels. Efrain Rios Montt was replaced in August 1983 by Oscar Mejia Victores, former minister of defence. Faced with the strongly critical situation that had been created, the new President appointed by the men in uniform should have known that it was necessary to restore civil and political rights so that the country could return to a minimum of normality. It was only with a return to constitutional legality and, therefore, only with the support of parties and civil authorities that it would be possible to defuse the deep social tensions and stem the activities of the extreme left.
So it was that, after fifteen years under a military regime, in July 1984 proper elections were held which were won by the Christian Democrat party with a relative majority.
It took more than ten years for the army to stop the death squads from attacking the indigenous communities and the guerrillas, in turn, decided to cease hostilities and sign a peace  agreement.

Father Stanley Francis Rother was murdered in July 1981.

In 1996, under pressure from the international community and the work of the UN, the parties to the conflict met in Oslo to agree upon a cessation of hostilities. At the same time, a Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) was set up with the mandate to reconstruct the unfolding of events during those years and to promote reconciliation on the basis of historical truth. The enquiry ended in 1999 with an official report presented by the same Commission from which an even more terrifying account emerged. The Commission also showed that the killings, that included 626 episodes of the massacre of harmless civilians by government forces, were caused only marginally by military action against guerrillas, classifying the vast majority of the cases, such as that against the Maya population, as crimes against humanity.
The signatory of the peace agreement was President Alvaro Arzù Irigoien, elected in 1995 with a centre-right government with very little room for manoeuvre due to restrictions caused by the extreme right, expression of the military leaders who had been the leaders in those atrocities. However, in 1999, with the victory of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) which put Alfonso Portillo Cabrera in power, the situation again became complicated because the new president, abandoning all the promises made during the election campaign, immediately saw to it that the leaders of the army and the police were officials involved in the repression unleashed in the past against the guerrillas and the Indian communities. This action only served to reopen the wounds of the civil war at a time when the country was coming to terms with a devastating economic crisis. A large proportion of the population was living under the poverty level, making do with means of subsistence and various forms of traditional barter.

Besides, there were in the country those who were growing rich through the drugs trade and the trafficking of children legalised by the government through a series of agreements between poor, local families and families in the USA who paid cash to adopt children. The climate was rendered even more explosive by the bands of paramilitaries who had formerly fought against guerrilla forces and now claimed some financial recompense for their past services.
The insecurity that was again being generated and miserable living conditions forced many to cross the borders of the country and migrate towards Mexico and the United States where more than a million Guatemalans legally settled, even if thousands of them were, from time to time, repatriated by the US authorities.(F.R.)

The country has always been at the centre of tensions and troubles, provoking a sequence of dictatorships, foreign interventions, military coups and civil wars.

Part of this situation is due to Guatemala’s geographical position in the area of Central America which, together with Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, acts as a hinge between the Southern Cone and the United States. The area is of strategic importance, being at the centre of the great disputes relevant to the American continent since the XVI century and the start of its colonisation by the major European powers (especially Spain), attracted by the obvious presence of natural and mineral resources. The region bears the burden of the proximity and interests of the largest world power – the United States – and those of the various local oligarchies. This has helped to transform such countries into instruments of control and dominion by external actors.

Since the end of the eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, the greatest and most decisive battles were fought for the conquest of strategic, economic and financial spaces. The United States, in particular, with its strong interventions in local political life, works to exclude the European powers due to the presence of conspicuous investments concentrated in the production and export of tropical agricultural products, especially bananas. The amount and importance of such capital was so great that it placed serious limits on national sovereignty. This gave rise to the expression ‘Banana Republic’.
This happened during the time of the UFCO (United Fruit Company), better known as ‘The Green Octopus’, which, due to its actions and its reckless business dealings, had created a powerful economic empire in the entire region of Central and Caribbean America.

It was a sort of ‘state within a state’, which had policing powers in its own territories and control of strategic sectors like existing rail networks in the host country, of the ports, the merchant navy, the most important banks, telephone systems and radio transmitters, as well as the public contracts sector. As regards the latter, special attention was given to the railroad sector and the construction of railway lines that often functioned as trailblazers to penetrate Central American and Caribbean territories and to obtain new plantations. Given, finally, that the balance sheets of that company or others like it, were greater than those of the countries where they operated, it is easy to understand the amount of pressure and conditioning that the governments of the area were forced to accept. The plan of action of such companies was the result of a strategy that was planned and created by the government of Washington – known to this day as ‘Dollar Diplomacy’ – intended to develop an intense policy of promotion and expansion of its financial influence in the Caribbean Basin and Central America by means of considerable government support to US businessmen.
However, ‘Dollar Diplomacy’ was never seen as an alternative to the use of the most brutal pressure or brute force itself. But  economic and repressive strategies worked hand in hand and overlapped.

Such operations were disguised as the US civilising and charitable plan, aimed, at least officially, at restoring equilibrium to local finances. This vision grew out of all proportion during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson who, with blind and unlimited faith in the democratic and constitutional mechanisms of the US system, had such an ethical and paternalistic view of the Latin American governments that it led him to the use of force and sending in the marines to confront governments that were unconstitutional according to Washington parameters.
During the Cold War, too, those territories were the theatre of confrontation between the USA and USSR through political/military support to some political establishments, complex intelligence activities, destabilisation and/or the de-legitimisation of certain governments and, at times, direct military action. The USA, following the Monroe Doctrine (‘America for the Americans’) and the so-called ‘Roosevelt Corollary’, claimed the right/duty to intervene in internal questions in Central and South American countries for reasons of national security. The USSR, on the contrary, tried to establish its outposts on the doorstep of the USA and so reduce US influence: Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Salvador have, in this respect, been examples of the so-called ‘periphery strategy’ of the two superpowers. (F.R.)

It was the Maya who, long ago, inhabited those territories that were later colonised by Spain. The Iberian penetration was accomplished around the years 1523-24, through the work of Pedro de Alvarado who was the founder of the old capital, Antigua, of Guatemala.

With the passage of time, the Spanish possession became a Captaincy General within the framework of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico). For this reason the events that led to Mexican independence also involved Guatemala and the other Central American countries.
In 1821 the region declared itself independent through a Cabildo Abierto, a Municipal Assembly with local powers, a copy of the Spanish administration transplanted in Latin America. This move was not accepted by Mexico which set out on the military re-conquest of the dissident ‘Provinces’.
However, when Mexican intestine conflicts created more favourable conditions, the rebels again took the initiative in June 1823 creating a state entity they called ‘United Provinces of Central America’.

In 1839, with the break-up of unity, each ‘Province’ declared independence, taking on republican constitutional characteristics.
In the case of Guatemala, independence brought no particular advantages since the socio-economic structure was in no way diminished, and, leaving the colonial system intact, apart from some concessions to the dominant oligarchy, it threw open its doors to US investments. In this state of affairs, the major beneficiaries turned out to be: the United Fruit Company, the concessionary of vast plantations of coffee and bananas as well as services; the International Railways of Central America, active in the field of transport and the Empresa Eléctrica, a subsidiary of American Foreign Power.
These ‘Three Greats’, in practical terms, subjected Guatemalan financial practice to US interests just as they had done or were about to do in the other republics of the sector.
International developments, together with the internal maturing of the population – through the development of the middle and working classes – created the conditions for radical change whose epilogue was the revolution of October 1944 which handed power to a social-democratic junta led by Juan José Arévalo. He had followed a typical centre-left programme aimed at reducing the poverty of the great majority of the people and at removing existing economic inequality.

Guatemala’s president Jacobo Árbenz

In 1951, Arévalo was replaced by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman who, following in the wake of his predecessor, intended to speed up the process of transformation and implement agrarian reform. The figures demanded he do so since 2% of the population controlled 74% of all arable land, while 76% of all agricultural units had access to only 9% of the land. Agrarian reform started in 1952 with the appropriation of 372.000 hectares which were assigned to 80,000 peasant families. This reform, even though it proposed to review the redistribution of land in order to develop capitalistic agriculture (but not that of the large landowners) by increasing the number of small farmers, leaving untouched farms of less than 90 hectares, was seen by the White House as a serious danger to its strategic objectives.

The stance adopted by the White House was to protect the economic interests of the United Fruit Company. Then, in April 1954, the State Department, on behalf of the multinational, demanded 15,854,849 dollars in compensation from the Guatemalan government. At the same time, it accused the same government of being infiltrated by communists. These accusations turned out to be unfounded and exaggerated since the Guatemalan government not only did not proceed with plans to exchange diplomatic representatives with the USSR, but it kept the US military bases and voted in favour of the US position regarding the war in Korea. Despite the expropriations, the economy of the country was still closely tied to that of the USA which received as much as 80% of Guatemala’s exports.

The intransigent policy followed by the government of Guatemala regarding US demands caused the latter to change tactics and devise a plan to destabilise the country and overthrow Jacobo Arbenz. In a short time, the operation, code-named Operation Success, which began on 18 June 1954, ended after nine days with the deposition of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, and the coming to power of a military junta that functioned as the guarantor of the alliance between the multinationals, private investment and the State, causing the country to suffer a long period of political instability giving rise to one of the bloodiest conflicts of Latin America with more than 200.000 victims. The war lasted 36 years and was fought by the regular army and paramilitaries, more or less openly supported by North American advisors.(F.R.)

In December 2006, thanks to the support of the international community, a new truce was agreed that brought about an agreement signed by the United Nations and the Guatemalan government

The  purpose was to establish an independent Commission whose remit it was to assist the office of the Guatemalan Procurator, the national police and other institutions to investigate crimes committed by members of illegal security forces, of the clandestine state apparatus, often connected to former officials of the army and the government and also to proceed with the dismantling of illegal security groups. Nevertheless, despite the deep commitment of the United Nations and other subjects of the international community, the situation, even today, is not completely stable.
This is borne out by the lack of a shared historical memory of what has happened and, especially, of the crimes committed under the leadership of General Rios Montt e José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez.

Guatemala President Jimmy Morales

The indigenous peoples are loudly clamouring for the recognition of the genocide committed against them while the public powers deny that any genocide took place. Most eloquent in this sense are the condolences expressed to family members by President Jimmy Morales on the death of Rios Montt in April 2018. This action, together with many others, betrayed the expectations of many Guatemalans who had seen Morales as a man of change. Jimmy Morales, a former TV comic, who, in his time, was also secretary of the Conservative Party (FCN), based his electoral campaign in the fight against corruption with the slogan ‘Ni corrupto, ni ladrón’, winning the elections on the second ballot with 67 per cent of the votes. Today he is being investigated, being accused of having hidden some donations received during the 2015 election campaign. Faced with such a situation, a close and transversal front was formed between all the political forces to keep Morales’ immunity, granted in September 2017. The situation caused a rift between the President and the independent Commission which is investigating past crimes and which immediately stated it was against the presidential immunity of Jimmy Morales.

Today, in the view of some experts, the Commission is very weak since it has lost the international support of the USA which, in previous years, sustained and defended its work. In fact, in the presidency of Donald Trump this support has weakened. This is shown by the fact that there is no convincing stance of condemnation of the campaign of Morales against the Commission. Furthermore, Morales has completely followed the Trump line, supporting the decision of the USA to move its Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem, and, soon afterwards, following its example.
The United States, in one way or another, is still strongly interested in maintaining its historical hegemony in the so-called Triangle of North and Central America made up of three states: Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. To this end, the USA makes use of the Alianza Para la Prosperidad, which consists in a broad plan of development which, according to some analysts, by its plan to combat corruption, criminality and drugs trafficking, facilitates the control of those countries.

To the political-strategic understanding, we must also add the strong commercial ties that make the USA the main commercial partner of Guatemala, absorbing around 40% of its exports. Guatemala plays an active role in the organisations of integration in the region of Central America, especially in the Central American Integration System (SICA) and in the Latin American Economic System (SELA).
The conflict situation which the country has lived through for all those years has not facilitated economic development and today the country has to come to terms with the 60% of the population who live under the poverty line. Consequently, the social situation is also grave and affects especially the small farmers who are still subject to evictions, physical attacks and killings that often go unpunished and without those responsible being brought to book. Besides all this, there is a high index of violence with widespread criminality (murders, armed robbery and kidnapping for ransom) throughout the country, especially in some quarters of the capital and the main cities.
In spite of these facts, Guatemala is one of the most important economies of Central America but without a consistent flow of public and private capital and sufficient justice to guarantee social pace, it seems very difficult to obtain ambitious results in terms of development. Depending greatly upon the export of basic products, the economy also suffers from the fluctuation of prices and the inevitable consequences.

The agricultural sector today provides 12% of GDP, employs 40% of the population and is concentrated especially on the production of coffee, sugar and bananas. In this context, it is important to underline that, since the early years of this century, a diversification process is under way to promote, for example, the production of fruit and flowers for the American and European markets.
Over the years, the sectors of agricultural food and textile products has seen a small increase due exclusively to the internal market, but the largest amount of national earnings is made up of money sent from the USA where more than a million Guatemalans are working.

Filippo Romeo