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NEW details have emerged of an American plot in the early 1950s to overthrow
the elected Government of Guatemala.
According to newly declassified CIA documents, the coup codenamed
Operation Success involved the training of assassins to kill at least
58 political leaders and a "psychological war" of death threats,
including phone calls "preferably between 2am and 5am".
The murders were never carried out, but the coup went off smoothly.
Undermined by the campaign, the left-wing Government of Jacobo Arbenz was
overthrown in June 1954 by military officers. Arbenz fled to Mexico. US
involvement has been well documented. Elected in 1950, Arbenz's radical
land reform programme had angered American allies in the region and multinational
fruit companies.
But the newly-released documents, part of an official CIA history of
the coup, disclose that the "disposal list" of people to be assassinated
was still being considered until the day Arbenz resigned. The assassination
plans were discussed in detail at the highest levels of the CIA and the
State Department, the records show.
The documents also cast new light on the CIA's campaign of sabotage
and black propaganda against Arbenz, and provide details of the agency's
efforts to recruit Guatemalan military officers. The 1,400 pages of documents
are estimated to be only 1 per cent of the CIA's files on the coup. Planning
began in 1952 after the CIA was approached by Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan
dictator, who was concerned by the effect of pressure for social reforms
in his own country.
The coup became a landmark in Latin America, cementing the CIA's influence
with repressive military regimes in the region. The coup was one of the
causes of a civil war in Guatemala that continued until last year, with
an estimated toll of 100,000 civilian dead. Regionally, the coup also gave
birth to a more radical left-wing movement that took up arms against social
injustice in other countries.
Among those most affected by the events of that summer was Che Guevara,
the 26-year-old Argentine Communist, who was visiting Guatemala after being
attracted by its left-wing experiment in democracy.
"A terrible cold shower has fallen over the Guatemalan people,"
Guevara wrote before fleeing to Mexico where he joined Fidel Castro, the
exiled Cuban opposition leader, as he was planning a guerrilla war in his
country.
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