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Guatemala From 1954 to Current Period

The purpose of this research is to examine the economic, political, and social aspects of Latin America as seen through the experience of Guatemala from 1954 to the current period. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which the experience of Guatemala may be said to express salient characteristics of Latin American reality and then to discuss the main conflicts informing Guatemala's experience in terms of competing and interrelated class interests there and relative to other situations of Latin American history where the same or equivalent components have come into play, with a view toward identifying certain patterns of geopolitical behavior and exploitation on one hand, and the means by which such patterns function as both the foundation and framework for understanding specific events in the Guatemala of 1954 and beyond.

The revolutionary experience of Guatemala can be traced to the hand-in-glove cooperation of entrenched landowning interests in Guatemala and entrenched commercial interests of the American United Fruit Company, which was formed in 1899, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, with a view to exploiting rich agricultural land in Cuba and beyond (Galeano 2:250-1). Some 20 years earlier in Guatemala itself, President Justo Rufino Barrios took over land holdings of the Catholic Church, but the main takeover was of Indian lands for coffee plantations, instituting de facto Indian slavery on the lands while courting industrial "modernization" (Galeano 2:214-15). United Fruit stepped into this situation, and by the mid-1950s had de facto control of Guatemala's transportation, shipping, and communication infrastructure, as well as "soldiers, politicians, and journalists" (Galeano 3:149). In 1953, a reformist president, Jacobo Arbenz, appropriated United Fruit's land for Guatemalan peasants. In 1954, with the Cold War well in place, the U.S. government sponsored "Operation Guate...

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Guatemala From 1954 to Current Period. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 00:30, March 19, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712049.html