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If his goal was peace and prosperity why did he send death squads to murder peasants and overthrow the (democratic and very successful) government of Guatemala, in order to increase profits for American companies?

Honest question




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

The short answer is that the new government in Guatemala was perceived as being communist and therefore potentially hostile to the US, as well as being a “foothold” that could then spread communism to other Latin American countries.

Purely on a geopolitical basis I think it was a bad decision, as it had major blowback on Cuba for example (Che was actually in Guatemala at the time.) Similarly to Iran the year before - it made sense to them at the time but had major negative effects, and so ended up being a really stupid decision.

This policy of intervention was actually a deliberate strategy of Eisenhower’s though, as from his perspective these clandestine regime changes were preferable to outright war and using nuclear weapons, which is what pretty much everyone around him wanted him to do in Korea, Vietnam, and China.

Retrospectively it seems to me that the avoidance of outright war was a noble aim, but the strategy put into practice wasn’t very well thought through.


Again, that's a lot of words for "we murdered a few peasants and set the rest back into debt bondage to increase the profits for a handful of Americans". I don't see the relevance of talking about nuclear weapons either, when discussing what to do when a small Central American country sets a tax on large properties; seems like a non sequitur.

Considerations about "preventing the spread of communism" don't really have much strength when you call "communism" something which (1) is the lightest possible land reform (expropriating land which is *both* unused and above a large threshold, and paying fair compensation for it), and (2) had tremendous effects on poverty levels, child mortality, economic productivity, etc, in just a few short years.


Uh..I'm not Eisenhower and as I said twice in my comment, I think these were ultimately dumb decisions. I am summarizing a complex event based on a few books I read, and I am telling you what the decision-making rationale was (according to the books I read) from the people that made the decisions, not that I thought they were good decisions.

My mistake for thinking you actually wanted an answer and not just to argue with the messenger. Next time, go read the book yourself if you want a comprehensive answer.


No, I understand the "stated reasons", the point is they were not the real reasons. That's like saying the motivation for the 2022 Ukraine invasion was "denazification": yes it's the stated reason, no it's not the real reason.


Again - if you read about the era and understand that the US was in various proxy conflicts with the communist USSR, and understand the motivations of the people in power at the time, the stated reason of trying to curb communism is entirely logical - although again, the reason of protecting American corporate interests was a factor too, although not the main factor.

If you read the history and can make an alternative argument that cites actual evidence, I’d be glad to hear it. Otherwise you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.


> Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected U.S. president in 1952, promising to take a harder line against communism, and his staff members John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had significant links to the United Fruit Company.

Yup, it was all about keeping those commies out.


As I just said, the perceived issue was communist influence, which yes, included actions taken against American business interests by the Guatemalan government. And again, this communist / Soviet influence turned out to be mostly illusory and lead to all sorts of bad blowback afterward, ultimately being a bad decision IMO.

It turns out that history is complicated and a single line from a Wikipedia article doesn't quite sum up everything. You also need to factor in other ongoing issues around the world at the time, like the Korean War, the Eisenhower-sponsored coup in Iran the previous year, and so on. The Guatemala coup happened in context with those events, not solely because some US elites felt like helping US corporations.




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