Carlos Castillo Armas

Historian Nick Cullather wrote that by overthrowing Árbenz, the CIA ended up undermining its own initial goal of a stable Guatemalan government. Historian Stephen Streeter stated that while the US achieved certain strategic goals by installing the "malleable" Castillo Armas as president, it did so at the cost of Guatemala's democratic institutions. He further states that, although Castillo Armas probably would have committed the human rights violations that he did even without a US presence, the US State Department had certainly aided and abetted the process. The rolling back of the progressive policies of the previous civilian governments resulted in a series of leftist insurgencies in the countryside beginning in 1960. This triggered the Guatemalan Civil War between the US-backed military government of Guatemala and leftist insurgents, who often boasted a sizable following among the citizenry. The conflict, which lasted between 1960 and 1996, resulted in the deaths of 200,000 civilians. Though crimes against civilians were committed by both sides, 93 percent of such atrocities were committed by the US-backed military. These violations included a genocidal scorched-earth campaign against the indigenous Maya population during the 1980s. Historians have attributed the violence of the civil war to the 1954 coup, and the "anti-communist paranoia" that it generated.

Despite these efforts, Castillo Armas faced significant internal resistance, which was blamed on communist agitation. The government, plagued by corruption and soaring debt, became dependent on aid from the US. In 1957 Castillo Armas was assassinated by a presidential guard with leftist sympathies. He was the first of a series of authoritarian rulers in Guatemala who were close allies of the US. His reversal of the reforms of his predecessors sparked a series of leftist insurgencies in the country after his death, culminating in the Guatemalan Civil War of 1960 to 1996.

On 26 July 1957, Castillo Armas was shot dead by a leftist sympathizer in the presidential palace in Guatemala City. The assassin, Romeo Vásquez Sánchez, was a member of the presidential guard; he approached Castillo Armas as he was walking with his wife and shot him twice. Castillo Armas died instantly; Vásquez was reported to have fled to a different room and committed suicide. There is no conclusive information about whether Vásquez was acting alone or whether he was a part of a larger conspiracy. Elections were held following Castillo Armas's death in which the government-aligned Miguel Ortiz Passarelli won a majority. However, supporters of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, who had also been a candidate in the election, rioted, after which the army seized power and annulled the result, and another election was held. Ydígoras Fuentes won this election by a comfortable margin, and soon afterward declared a "state of siege" and seized complete control over the government.

Opposition to his government grew during Castillo Armas's presidency. On Labor Day in 1956, members of the government were booed off a stage at a labor rally, while officials who had previously been in the Árbenz administration were cheered. The Guatemalan Communist Party began to recover underground, and became prominent in the opposition. Overall, the government had to deal with four serious rebellions, in addition to the coup attempt by the cadets in 1954. On 25 June 1956, government forces opened fire on student protesters, killing six people and wounding a large number. Castillo Armas responded by declaring a "state of siege", and revoked all civil liberties. On the advice of the US ambassador, the protests were portrayed as a communist plot.

By April 1955 the government's foreign exchange reserves had declined from US$42 million at the end of 1954 to just $3.4 million. The regime was thus facing difficulties borrowing money, leading to capital flight. The government also received criticism for the presence of black markets and other signs of approaching bankruptcy. By the end of 1954 the number of unemployed people in the country had risen to 20,000, four times higher than it had been during the latter years of the Árbenz government. In April 1955 the Eisenhower administration approved an aid package of $53 million and began to underwrite the debt of the Guatemalan government. Although officials in the US government complained about Castillo Armas's incompetence and corruption, he also received praise in that country for acting against communists, and his human rights violations generally went unremarked. In 1955, during a corn famine, Castillo Armas gave corn import licenses to some of his old fighters in return for a $25,000 bribe. The imported corn, upon inspection by the United Nations, turned out to be unfit for consumption. When a student newspaper exposed the story, Castillo Armas launched a police crackdown against those criticizing him. Castillo Armas returned some of the privileges that the United Fruit Company had had under Ubico, but the company did not benefit substantially from them; it went into a gradual decline following disastrous experiments with breeding and pesticides, falling demand, and an anti-trust action.

In June 1954, Castillo Armas led 480 CIA-trained soldiers into Guatemala, backed by US-supplied aircraft. Despite initial setbacks to the rebel forces, US support for the rebels made the Guatemalan army reluctant to fight, and Árbenz resigned on 27 June. A series of military juntas briefly held power during negotiations that ended with Castillo Armas assuming the presidency on 7 July. Castillo Armas consolidated his power in an October 1954 election, in which he was the only candidate; the MLN, which he led, was the only party allowed to contest the congressional elections. Árbenz's popular agricultural reform was largely rolled back, with land confiscated from small farmers and returned to large landowners. Castillo Armas cracked down on unions and peasant organizations, arresting and killing thousands. He created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, which investigated over 70,000 people and added 10 percent of the population to a list of suspected communists.

Castillo Armas's army was not large enough to defeat the Guatemalan military, even with US-supplied planes. Therefore, the plans for Operation PBSuccess called for a campaign of psychological warfare, which would present Castillo Armas's victory as a fait accompli to the Guatemalan people, and would force Árbenz to resign. The US propaganda campaign began well before the invasion, with the United States Information Agency writing hundreds of articles on Guatemala based on CIA reports, and distributing tens of thousands of leaflets throughout Latin America. The CIA persuaded the governments that were friendly to it to screen video footage of Guatemala that supported the US version of events. The most wide-reaching psychological weapon was the radio station known as the "Voice of Liberation". This station began broadcasting on 1 May 1954, carrying anti-communist messages and telling its listeners to resist the Árbenz government and support the liberating forces of Castillo Armas. The station claimed to be broadcasting from deep within the jungles of the Guatemalan hinterland, a message that many listeners believed. In actuality, the broadcasts were concocted in Miami by Guatemalan exiles, flown to Central America, and broadcast through a mobile transmitter.

Castillo Armas's force of 480 men was split into four teams, ranging in size from 60 to 198. On 15 June 1954, these four forces left their bases in Honduras and El Salvador and assembled in various towns just outside the Guatemalan border. The largest force was supposed to attack the Atlantic harbor town of Puerto Barrios, while the others were to attack the smaller towns of Esquipulas, Jutiapa, and Zacapa, the Guatemalan Army's largest frontier post. The invasion plan quickly faced difficulties; the 60-man force was intercepted and jailed by Salvadoran policemen before it got to the border. At 8:20 am on 18 June 1954, Castillo Armas led his invading troops over the border. Ten trained saboteurs preceded the invasion, with the aim of blowing up railways and cutting telegraph lines. At about the same time, Castillo Armas's planes flew over a pro-government rally in the capital. Castillo Armas demanded Árbenz's immediate surrender. The invasion provoked a brief panic in the capital, which quickly decreased as the rebels failed to make any significant headway. Travelling on foot and weighed down by weapons and supplies, Castillo Armas's forces took several days to reach their targets, although their planes blew up a bridge on 19 June.

Árbenz decided to arm the civilian population to defend the capital; this plan failed, as an insufficient number of people volunteered. At this point, Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz de León, the chief of staff of the Guatemalan army, reneged on his support for the president and began plotting to overthrow Árbenz with the assistance of other senior army officers. They informed Peurifoy of this plan, asking him to stop the hostilities in return for Árbenz's resignation. On 27 June 1954, Árbenz met with Díaz, and informed him that he was resigning. Historian Hugo Jiménez wrote that Castillo Armas's invasion did not pose a significant direct threat to Árbenz; rather, the coup led by Diaz and the Guatemalan army was the critical factor in his overthrow.

Peurifoy was able to force an agreement due to the fact that neither Monzón nor Castillo Armas was in a position to become or remain president without the support of the US. The deal was announced at 4:45 am on 2 July 1954, and under its terms, Castillo Armas and his subordinate, Major Enrique Trinidad Oliva, became members of the junta led by Monzón, although Monzón remained president. The settlement negotiated by Castillo Armas and Monzón also included a statement that the five-man junta would rule for fifteen days, during which a president would be chosen. Colonels Dubois and Cruz Salazar, Monzón's supporters on the junta, had signed a secret agreement without Monzón's knowledge. On 7 July they resigned in keeping with the terms of the agreement. Monzón, left outnumbered on the junta, also resigned, and on 8 July, Castillo Armas was unanimously elected president of the junta. Dubois and Salazar were each paid US $100,000 for cooperating with Castillo Armas. The US promptly recognized the new government on 13 July.

Soon after taking power, Castillo Armas faced a coup from young army cadets, who were unhappy with the army's capitulation. The coup was put down, leaving 29 dead and 91 wounded. Elections were held in early October from which all political parties were barred from participating. Castillo Armas was the only candidate; he won the election with 99 percent of the vote, completing his transition into power. Castillo Armas became affiliated with a party named the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN), which remained the ruling party of Guatemala from 1954 to 1957. It was led by Mario Sandoval Alarcón, and was a coalition of municipal politicians, bureaucrats, coffee planters, and members of the military, all of whom were opposed to the reforms of the Guatemalan Revolution. In the congressional elections held under Castillo Armas in late 1955, it was the only party allowed to run.

In August 1954, the government passed Decree 59, which permitted the security forces to detain anybody on the blacklist of the CDNCC for six months without trial. The eventual list of suspected communists compiled by the CDNCC included one in every ten adults in the country. Attempts were also made to eliminate from government positions people who had gained them under Árbenz. All political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations were outlawed. In histories of the period, Castillo Armas has been referred to as a dictator.

Castillo Armas's dependence on the officer corps and the mercenaries who had put him in power led to widespread corruption, and the US government was soon subsidizing the Guatemalan government with many millions of dollars. Guatemala quickly came to depend completely on financial support from the Eisenhower administration. Castillo Armas proved unable to attract sufficient business investment, and in September 1954 asked the US for $260 million in aid. Castillo Armas also directed his government to provide support to the CIA operation "PBHistory", an unsuccessful effort to use documents captured after the 1954 coup to sway international opinion in its favor. Despite examining many hundreds of thousands of documents, this operation failed to find any evidence that the Soviet Union was controlling communists within Guatemala. Castillo also found himself too dependent on a coalition of economic interests, including the cotton and sugar industries in Guatemala and real estate, timber, and oil interests in the US, to be able to seriously pursue reforms that he had promised, such as free trade with the US.

The operation had a budget of between five and seven million dollars. It involved a number of CIA agents, and widespread local recruiting. The plans included drawing up lists of people within Árbenz's government to be assassinated if the coup were to be carried out. A team of diplomats who would support PBSuccess was created; the leader of this team was John Peurifoy, who took over as the US ambassador in Guatemala in October 1953.

Prior to the 1954 coup, Castillo Armas had been reluctant to discuss how he would govern the country. He had never articulated any particular philosophy, which had worried his CIA contacts. The closest he came to doing so was the "Plan de Tegucigalpa", a manifesto issued on 23 December 1953, that criticized the "Sovietization of Guatemala". Castillo Armas had expressed sympathy for justicialismo, the philosophy supported by Juan Perón, the President of Argentina.

In November 1952 Dwight Eisenhower was elected president of the US, promising to take a harder line against communism. Senior figures in his administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother and CIA director Allen Dulles, had close ties to the United Fruit Company, making Eisenhower more strongly predisposed than Truman to support Árbenz's overthrow. These factors culminated in the Eisenhower administration's decision to authorize "Operation PBSuccess" to overthrow the Guatemalan government in August 1953.

Following the end of Arévalo's highly popular presidency in 1951, Árbenz was elected president. He continued the reforms of Arévalo and also began an ambitious land reform program known as Decree 900. Under it, the uncultivated portions of large land-holdings were expropriated in return for compensation and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. The agrarian reform law angered the United Fruit Company, which at the time dominated the Guatemalan economy. Benefiting from decades of support from the US government, by 1930 the company was already the largest landowner and employer in Guatemala. It was granted further favors by Ubico, including 200,000 hectares (490,000 acres) of public land, and an exemption from all taxes.

Castillo Armas had encountered the CIA in January 1950, when a CIA officer learned he was attempting to get weapons from Anastasio Somoza García and Rafael Trujillo, the right-wing authoritarian rulers of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, respectively. The CIA officer had described him as "a quiet, soft-spoken officer who [did] not seem to be given to exaggeration". Castillo Armas met with the CIA a few more times before November 1950. Speaking to the CIA, he had stated that he had the support of the Guardia Civil (the Civil Guard), the army garrison at Quezaltenango, as well as the commander of Matamoros, the largest fortress in Guatemala City.

The CIA considered several candidates to lead the coup. Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, the conservative candidate who had lost the 1950 election to Árbenz, held favor with the opposition but was rejected for his role in the Ubico regime, as well as his European appearance, which was unlikely to appeal to the majority mixed-race "Ladinos", or mestizo population. Castillo Armas, in contrast, is described by historian Nick Cullather as a "physically unimposing man with marked mestizo features". Another front-runner was coffee planter Juan Córdova Cerna, who had briefly served in Arévalo's cabinet. The death of his son in an anti-government uprising in 1950 had turned him against the administration. Although his status as a civilian gave him an advantage over Castillo Armas, he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1954, taking him out of the reckoning.

For seven months, between October 1945 and April 1946, Castillo Armas received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he came in contact with American intelligence officers. After serving on the General Staff, he became director of the military academy until early 1949, at which point he was made the military commander at Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez, a remote military garrison. Castillo Armas had eventually risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was at Mazatenango when Arana launched his failed coup attempt against Arévalo on 18 July 1949, and was killed: Castillo Armas did not hear of the revolt until four days later. Historians differ on what happened to him at this point. Historian Piero Gleijeses writes that Castillo Armas was expelled from the country following the coup attempt against Arévalo. Nick Cullather and Andrew Fraser state that Castillo Armas was arrested in August 1949, that Árbenz had him imprisoned under doubtful charges until December 1949, and that he was found in Honduras a month later.

This led to the selection of Castillo Armas, the former lieutenant of Arana, who had been in exile following the failed coup in 1949. Castillo Armas had remained on the CIA payroll since the aborted Operation PBFortune in 1951. Historians have also stated that Castillo Armas was ultimately seen as the most dependable leader from the CIA's perspective. He also had the advantage of having had a clerical education during his exile, and therefore the support of Guatemala's archbishop. In CIA documents, he was referred to by the codename "Calligeris."

Castillo Armas's junta drew support from individuals in Guatemala that had previously supported Ubico. José Bernabé Linares, the deeply unpopular head of Ubico's secret police, was named the new head of the security forces. Linares had a reputation for using electric-shock baths and steel skull-caps to torture prisoners. Castillo Armas also removed the right to vote from all illiterate people, who constituted two-thirds of the country's population, and annulled the 1945 constitution, giving himself virtually unbridled power. His government launched a concerted campaign against trade unionists, in which some of the most severe violence was directed at workers on the plantations of the United Fruit Company. In 1956 Castillo Armas implemented a new constitution and had himself declared president for four years. His presidency faced opposition from the beginning: agricultural laborers continued to fight Castillo Armas's forces until August 1954, and there were numerous uprisings against him, especially in the areas that had experienced significant agricultural reform.

Born to a planter, out of wedlock, Castillo Armas was educated at Guatemala's military academy. A protégé of Colonel Francisco Javier Arana, he joined Arana's forces during the 1944 uprising against President Federico Ponce Vaides. This began the Guatemalan Revolution and the introduction of representative democracy to the country. Castillo Armas joined the General Staff and became director of the military academy. Arana and Castillo Armas opposed the newly elected government of Juan José Arévalo; after Arana's failed 1949 coup, Castillo Armas went into exile in Honduras. Seeking support for another revolt, he came to the attention of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1950 he launched a failed assault on Guatemala City, before escaping back to Honduras. Influenced by lobbying by the United Fruit Company and Cold War fears of communism, in 1952 the US government of President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFortune, a plot to overthrow Arévalo's successor, President Jacobo Árbenz. Castillo Armas was to lead the coup, but the plan was abandoned before being revived in a new form by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.

In June 1944, a series of popular protests forced the resignation of dictator Jorge Ubico. Ubico's successor Federico Ponce Vaides pledged to hold free elections, but continued to suppress dissent, leading progressives in the army to plot a coup against him. The plot was initially led by Árbenz and Aldana Sandoval; Sandoval persuaded Francisco Javier Arana, the influential commander of the Guardia de Honor, to join the coup in its final stages. On 19 October, Arana and Árbenz launched a coup against Ponce Vaides' government. In the election that followed, Juan José Arévalo was elected president. Castillo Armas was a strong supporter and protégé of Arana, and thus joined the rebels. Speaking of Castillo Armas, Árbenz would later say that he was "modest, brave, sincere" and that he had fought with "great bravery" during the coup.

Carlos Castillo Armas (locally ['kaɾlos kas'tiʝo 'aɾmas]; 4 November 1914 – 26 July 1957) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala, serving from 1954 to 1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National Liberation Movement (MLN) party, his authoritarian government was closely allied with the United States.

Carlos Castillo Armas was born on 4 November 1914, in Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa in the department of Escuintla. He was the son of a landowner, but was born out of wedlock, making him ineligible to inherit the property. In 1936 he graduated from the Guatemalan military academy. His time at the academy overlapped with that of Jacobo Árbenz, who would later become President of Guatemala.