Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1951-1961 (review)

Against the backdrop of significant scholarship on the relations between the United States and Guatemala in the years leading up to the 1954 coup against Jacobo Arbenz, it might appear that yet another book would have little to offer scholars of modern Latin America. This is, indeed, well-tilled soil. The overthrow of the leftist government by CIA- and United Fruit Company-supported rebels is understood as one of the most blatant efforts by the United States to assert its economic and political power in Central America. But that is where most scholarly work ends. Stephen Streeter has embraced the heretofore underexamined decade following the coup. The story he tells is of the Eisenhower administration's efforts to prop up dictators, perpetuate dependency, and thwart populist and nationalist movements, all of which laid the foundations for a bloody civil war that cost more than 200,000 Guatemalan lives.

Streeter's central argument is that the United States manipulated movements within Guatemala to maintain hegemonic control. Hegemony was justified in terms of Eisenhower's effort to forestall the spread of communism in the isthmus and at the same time perpetuate Guatemalan dependency on multinational corporations such as the United Fruit Company (UFCO), International Railways of Central America (IRCA), and Empresa Eléctrica. Streeter's extensive research and cogent prose effectively reveals the various efforts United States officials employed to maintain this hegemony.

Streeter identifies several manipulations of Guatemalan politics, the military, and economics in the attempt to restore and maintain U.S. control over Guatemalan affairs. Among the more important were the stabilization of the government through peace with the Guatemalan officer corps, the extensive use of the United States Information Agency propaganda mill to convince Guatemalans that they were happier under the U.S.-sponsored regimes than they had been under Arbenz, programs aimed at depoliticizing labor movements to foster an attractive environment for U.S. investors, and the constant effort to portray destabilizing events such as the assassination of strongman Carlos Castillo Armas and the resulting rise of a popular government movement as the work of communists.

Among the more intriguing points of Streeter's analysis are his examination of the "counterinsurgency state" and the development of the "parallel government" under the leadership of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. Ydígoras built the counterinsurgency state through U.S. aid to the Guatemalan military and national police force. These proved effective in suppressing opposition by nationalists mobilized to protest Ydígoras's pro-United States right-wing policies. It is through the "parallel government" under the auspices of the Consejo Nacional de Planificación Económica that U.S. officials manipulated Guatemala's five-year plans in areas such as infrastructure, agriculture, education, healthcare, and housing. This manipulation facilitated the economic domination of Guatemala by UFCO, IRCA, and Empresa Eléctrica, which together accounted for virtually all of the $120 million the United States had invested in Guatemala.

This is, again, a well-documented and well-written examination of the methods of control exercised by the United States in the decade after the successful overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz. An unfortunate note of the work was Streeter's inability to access Guatemalan archival material outside of published government documents, newspapers, and journals. Perhaps we will have to wait until such materials become available to ascertain what Streeter states as his goal, the view from the Guatemalan side. This unavoidable omission notwithstanding, Stephen Streeter has presented readers—from undergraduates to accomplished scholars—with an important look at the methods and goals of United States power in Latin America during the depths of the cold war.