U.S. needs to atone for CIA coup in Guatemala

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2011
U.S. needs to atone for CIA coup in Guatemala
By Ana Perez | The Progressive Media Project

Now that the Guatemalan government is coming clean on the 1954 coup there, the Obama administration should follow suit.

Fifty-seven years ago, the United States ensured a legacy of military intervention, human rights abuses and economic instability in Guatemala when the CIA ousted Jacobo Arbenz, that country's democratically elected president.

On May 19, the Guatemalan government acknowledged its own wrongdoing and agreed to pay reparations to Arbenz's family. Now it is time for President Obama to make good on his promise of ushering in a new day for U.S.-Latin American relations by owning up to our responsibility for undermining Guatemalan democracy. And the U.S. corporations that instigated the coup ought to pay reparations not only to the Arbenz family but also to the entire country of Guatemala.

Arbenz wanted to bring democracy to Guatemala, modernize the state, expand and strengthen the middle class and implement land reform to alleviate deep inequality. A small, white landholding elite ruled over an impoverished, mostly indigenous population. When Arbenz was elected president, 2 percent of the population owned 70 percent of the country's land.

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