I recall reading this book for the first time in Spanish almost 30 years ago. It was before the Alliance for Progress; we were cheering for Fidel in the hills, and deploring the Latin American policy of the Dulles brothers. It is hard to believe the assertion made by Gregorio Selser in his introduction, that Time magazine fired Krehm for writing a book about the Caribbean and Central America that criticized U.S. policy and the United Fruit Company, or that no U.S. publisher would accept the book because it was too controversial. In its coverage of Latin America, Time generally was more indifferent than suppressive, evoking a criticism from José Figueres no more severe than that it reported only UFO sightings and soccer riots. Moreover, there were outspoken journalists active in those days, such as Ruby Hart Phillips, Tad Szulc, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times and Bertram Johansson of the Christian Science Monitor. Nor is this book more daring than contemporary works in English by such scholars as Robert Alexander, Harry Kantor, Edwin Lieuwen, and Frank Tannenbaum.
This is not to quibble, only to suggest that Krehm’s book deserves better than to be advertised now as “a long-suppressed history of the U.S. role in Latin America.” It stands on its own as a good book, written in a spirited fashion by an insightful journalist with a keen eye and an artistic feel for language. It is useful to be reminded again of the incredible greed and cruelty of the tyrants who ruled the Caribbean not too long ago: Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, Jorge Ubico, Tiburcio Carías Andino, Anastasio Somoza García, Juan Vicente Gómez, and Rafael Trujillo. Krehm relates stories that are very familiar today, causing regret at the lack of documentation, because one would like to know the sources, or give credit where due. As an eyewitness account, the book is more descriptive than analytical, with the one clear theme that these rulers were quite mad. One of the most succinct comments occurs on p. 60, referring to Guatemala after Ubico’s fall: “By identifying every aspiration for social betterment with communism, the reactionaries were rendering a priceless service to the handful of Communists.” I am not certain why no one would publish the English version of Krehm’s book earlier, but it is unfortunate, because it might have done some good.
