The author, a Guatemalan-born journalist and long-time resident of Central America, proposes to describe the emergence of “democracy” in his native land. His point of view is quite unique because of his intimate acquaintance with Guatemala, his command of both English and Spanish, his obvious interest in history, and his training in reporting and writing. The story he tells places emphasis, by his own statement in the brief “Epilogue,” on a general political view of events in the national and international fields, but he chose not to treat economic and social factors in any depth. However, due to his identification with both Guatemala and the world of journalism beyond that country, the work is at times more penetrating than the traditional travel literature in English and will appeal to the foreign reader with insights not usually found in writings by Central Americans themselves.
The opening chapter attempts to treat the Guatemalan position toward democracy, communism, and totalitarianism, and the author states much of his thesis here at the beginning of the book. Essentially, he holds that Guatemala freed herself from the grip of communism in 1954 when the army refused to arm civilian militias to support the alien communist regime under Jacobo Arbenz against the invading liberation forces under Carlos Castillo Armas. This occurred because Guatemalans could never accept the communist way of life, and it was the more important force along with the Castillo Armas troops and the American aid given to them. Many sub-themes also appear in this initial chapter to show barriers to democracy: a rejection of arbitrary army rule; the evil of a totalitarian life under the oligarchy aided by American coddling of dictators; the aspiration of the masses for “democracy” (but the word seems to be used like political “liberty” with little or no attention to the broader cultural developments that necessarily underlie a democratic system); the need for a better-informed American public to help win the United States to decisive action against Cuba. These themes are developed in the historical chapters that follow. Above all, the source of the newly emergent democracy is stated to be the Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes administration beginning in 1958 with his “faith in the good judgment of his people and in the democratic system.”
A chapter on “The Guatemalan Temperament” follows, and it pictures the press and political attitudes in Guatemala, the Indian, and some general observations on Latin American images of their own governments and of that of the United States. The first two chapters are of interest because of the author’s own outlook and the more or less official viewpoint he expresses. The general reader will find this interesting copy, but many informed readers will take great exception to the black-and-white nature of those views. Equally interesting and controversial are Chapters 3 through 16, a standard organization into historical periods from pre-Columbian times down to the administration of Ydígoras Fuentes. Three of these chapters give the Central American view toward external forces that heavily influenced Central American life: the 19th-century Manifest Destiny and filibusters; the Third International of the 1920’s; and, the attempt of the Ydígoras regime to intensify the Belize Question in the 1960’s. Although interestingly written, these chapters lack historical analysis and evidence of adequate attention to available sources. Generally, the treatment is to give a brief, readable, but limited summation of political events, illustrating them with excerpts (some including new materials translated by the author) on or by personalities or problems of the respective periods. The journalistic approach is both a virtue and a defect, but the informed reader will find it to be more the latter than the former.
Like the initial two chapters, the final chapter on Belize is a provocative one. Rosenthal reports that Guatemala was promised the good offices of Washington to mediate her claim to Belize, and he cites Ydígoras Fuentes as claiming that this was in return for the use of Guatemala as a Bay of Pigs training area. Later the author cites “an informed Guatemalan” as a source that “some American official . . . might have agreed. . .” to this “well-defined stand against British colonialism.” Here and elsewhere the feeling arises that this book has more than a casual relationship to the internal political problems and policies of the Ydígoras government and to a forced attempt to eulogize that administration. It would be difficult at best to show it as a “democratic” regime, but this work does not offer even the best possible apology for it. In addition, in the tragic treatment of the University of San Carlos student uprising in 1962 by President Ydígoras and in the conditions surrounding his subsequent departure from the presidency in 1963, history itself witnessed the refutation of the main theme of the book.
