From Oil Country to Banana Land

HIS 187

Operation Ajax, 1953

Coup, 1953

Mossadegh deposed

Geography of the Middle East

Egypt, 1953

When I consider the 80m Muslims in Indonesia, and the 50m in China, and the millions in Malaya, Siam, and Burma, and the nearly 100m in Pakistan, and the more than 100m in the Middle East, and the 40m in the Soviet Union. . . . I emerge with a sense of the tremendous possibilities

Gamel Abdel Nasser, 1953

Not to play

the match is between two teams, Communism and nationalism. And if you insist on playing, you are going to spoil the game for the others.

Nasser to Allen Dulles, 1953

Nationalizing Suez

Suez War, 1956

Nasser, 1956

Some nationalists so far

• Ho Chi Minh
• Mossadegh
• Nasser

Consider now the banana

Growing bananas

United Fruit

Bananas for breakfast

United Fruit’s locations

Controlling labor

Journey to Banana Land

Jacobo Arbenz

Wellbeing

How wrong we would be if . . . we were to set financial stability and economic growth as the supreme goals . . . sacrificing to them the wellbeing of our masses

Jacobo Arbenz

Communism on the march

When is Guatemala going to stop being a bridgehead for Communism?

John Peurifoy, US ambassador to Guatemala

Operation SUCCESS

The Church

People of Guatemala . . . rise as a single man against the enemy of god and country

Carta pastoral del excelentisimo y reverendisimo monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala, sobre los avances del comunismo en Guatemala, 1954

“the most generous and tolerant taskmaster”

arms to the people

Although Korea and Indochina are there as examples, [Arbenz] did not think to himself that a people in arms is an invincible power. He could have given arms to the people, but he did not want to—and now we see the result.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

Batista (again), 1954

Revolution 1959

Some nationalists so far

• Ho Chi Minh
• Mossadegh
• Nasser
• Arbenz
• Castro