In the intellectually fermenting years of the 1930's and of World War II, many of these intellectuals became attracted to nationalism and Marxism as offering a way out for Guatemala. The mold of the Guatemalan Communist movement was the 1944 revolution and the 1945-51 administration of President Juan José Arévalo, a self-proclaimed "spiritual socialist" schoolteacher. The revolution, which overthrew the last vestiges of the 13-year regime of Gen. Jorge Ubico, originally had the support of all of the middle classes but its leading element was the lower middle class intellectual group which sought to apply their nationalist and Marxist theories to bring about Guatemala's social transformation. Conscious of inexperience, they relied heavily for direction in labor and political organization on foreigners and Guatemalan exiles who had been involved in Communist activities in Latin America and who flocked to Guatemala after the 1944 revolution, largely unnoticed by the outside world. These Communist personalities, including such figures as Alfonso Solórzano, a Guatemalan labor lawyer closely associated with Vicente Lombardo Toledano in Mexico, and Miguel Marmol, a Salvadoran labor organizer, educated a younger generation of native Guatemalan "intellectuals" in Communist doctrine by such devices as establishing an indoctrination school in the new National Labor Federation, disseminating Communist propaganda in the administration's "revolutionary" political parties and establishing Marxist "study groups." Guatemala's postwar Communist party crystallized as a clandestine organization hidden within the Guatemalan "revolutionary" parties and labor unions supporting the Arévalo administration. According to its present leaders, it was first successfully founded on September 28, 1947, under the name of the Vanguardia Democrática as the precursor of the Guatemalan Communist Party which held its first congress 2 years later. Its leader from 1948 onward was José Manuel Fortuny, then a 32-year-old ex-law student, former radio newscaster, and ex-employee of the British Legation and of an American company, Sterling Products, Inc. At the time, he was ostensibly an officer of the Partido Acción Revolucionaria (PÁR), a leading administration party. Other probable members of the first clandestine Communist organization were also members of the PAR, the other administration parties, and the labor unions. On September 28, 1949, a day from which the present Communist Party dates its anniversaries, this secret Communist group held its First Party Congress and adopted the name of Partido Comunista de Guatemala (PCG). But it was not until May 1950, in the last year of the Arévalo administration, that Fortuny and his group withdrew from the PAR. The following month they founded a newspaper, Octubre, as the frank precursor of an open Communist party, and at the same time Victor Manuel Gutiérrez, a 29-year-old schoolteacher turned labor leader, founded a Communist-line party under the title of the Partido Revolucionario Obrero de Guatemala (The Revolutionary Workers Party of Guatemala--PROG). When Col. Jacobo Arbenz, a radical leftist-nationalist army officer, assumed the Presidency on March 15, 1951, the PCG began to make rapid strides toward becoming an open party. In April Fortuny began publicly signing documents as "Secretary General of the Partido Comunista de Guatemala." In June, on the first anniversary of the newspaper Octubre, the PCG held a public ceremony attended by several high government figures and proclaimed its intention to become a legally registered party. In October, Guatemala's labor unions were consolidated into the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG) with Gutiérrez, by that time an avowed Communist, as its Secretary General. In January 1952, after a trip to Moscow, Gutiérrez dissolved his PROG and joined the PCG which shortly thereafter achieved recognition in the Cominform Journal published in Bucharest. In October, the party was included with the other administration parties in the "Democratic Electoral Front" for the impending congressional elections. In December, the party held its Second Party Congress, changed its name to the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT), and was shortly thereafter entered on the Civil Registry as a legally constituted political party. The PGT, as it thus emerged, is a Communist party modeled on the Soviet Communist Party of the Stalinist era. Its statutes concentrate power in the hands of the Secretary General and the Political Committee whose dictates are binding on subordinate regional party organizations and cells (Basic Organizations) which are scattered through most of Guatemala with the heaviest concentration in the capital. Statistics on party membership have never been made public, but the best evidence in the spring of 1954 indicates that 3,000 would be a minimum and 4,000 a likely figure. In addition to registered PGT members, however, there is an indeterminate number of influential intellectual Communists who have apparently not joined Fortuny's PGT and sometimes appear to be quarreling with it on organizational and tactical grounds though not on ultimate objectives. The PGT leadership, headed by Fortuny as party Secretary General, consists of characteristically young ladinos of the lower middle class. The known ages of the 11-man Political Committee range from Fortuny's 37 to 24, with the exception of one member who is 47. Seven of the 11 were university students or schoolteachers (some with sidelines in journalism or office work) before entering politics while the remaining four were skilled workers including a printer, a carpenter, and a tailor. There are no pure Indians and none who have been previously employed in industry or transportation. The party leadership is closely tied to Moscow. Fortuny and at least 5 others of the 11 on the Political Committee have visited Moscow and the key personnel of the Communist-controlled labor and "mass organizations" have also been there. There is a constant flow of propaganda material and instructions from Moscow and from the Soviet-controlled international labor and "mass" organizations to Guatemala. The PGT publicly recognizes its debt to what it terms the "example" of the Soviet Communist Party and its aims and tactics must be viewed in the framework of the orthodox Communist thesis of the "inevitable victory" of communism throughout the world rather than on the local plane of gaining control of the Guatemalan Government as quickly as possible. In international affairs, the party has emphasized as its first task the "Peace" campaign which is defined as preventing the harnessing of Guatemala to the "war chariot of imperialism"i. e. preventing Guatemala from taking its role in the defense of the Western democratic community grouped around the United States. As the corollary in domestic Guatemalan politics the PGT has announced as its first task the implementation of Guatemala's 1952 Agrarian Reform Law which is designed to transfer much of the country's potential arable land to new small farmers, and as its second the heightening of the struggle against United States "monopolistic" companies operating in Guatemala. These domestic programs tend toward the breakdown of the established order and are thus simultaneously adapted to the immediate objective of weakening Guatemala's position in the Western community and the ultimate objective of preparing the ground for the Communists' coming to power. The PGT leadership attempts to achieve its objectives largely through indirect influence and control over government agencies, political and labor organizations, and Communist-front youth, students', and women's pressure groups. In the government, as illustrated by its 1951-54 growth, the party's chief asset is the sympathy of President Arbenz, with whose approval key government posts are filled with party workers and sympathizers. A key instrument is the "National Democratic Front," the formal alliance of the political parties and labor organizations supporting Arbenz which is dominated by the Communists and has all but replaced the Cabinet as a policy making agency. The National Agrarian Department is the stronghold of avowed PGT members; the government educational and propaganda systems have been infiltrated with numbers of Communists; and the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security with its large cash income is dominated by Solórzano and his group. The PGT's ability to influence the government is greatly enhanced by its control and influence over organized Guatemalan labor which takes in well over 100,000 workers as compared to a total vote in the 1950 presidential elections of 415,000. In the CGTG, the Secretary General is Gutiérrez, head of the PGT Central Committee's Labor Union Commission, and most of the officers in key positions on the Executive Committee are PGT members and the party's control of the organization is effective. To a somewhat lesser extent, the PGT exerts influence over the Confederación Nacional Campesina de Guatemala (CNCG), the national federation of small farmers, tenants, and those organized farm laborers not incorporated in the CGTG. Its principal leaders have been associated with such Communist causes as the "Peace" movement and its program is closely in line with those of the PGT. The principal "mass" organizations which support the party's efforts are the National Peace Committee, whose Secretary General is Mario Silva Jonama, Secretary of the PGT and head of its Education Commission; the Alianza de la Juventud Democrática de Guatemala (AJDG), the youth organization whose Secretary General is Edelberto Torres Rivas, a 1953 visitor to Moscow, and one of whose most influential leaders is Huberto Alvarado, member of the PGT Central Committee and head of its Youth Commission; and the Alianza Femenina Guatemalteca (AFG), the women's organization whose Secretary General is Dora Franco y Franco, a Communist and one of whose founding members was Sra. de Arbenz. These organizations with the aid of the administration parties and the labor unions have recently set themselves a goal of 125,000 signatures on a "Peace" petition, thus giving an indication of their ability to simulate "mass support" for Communistic causes. The PGT has thus become in 1954 the most influential single organization in Guatemalan political life and has established its dominion over the key institutions in Guatemalan political life, with the exception of the armed forces, which, however, have not opposed communism. The momentum it has achieved indicates further successes unless there is a change in the world situation or a successful but unforeseeable revolt by the Guatemalan Army or some other group. The party still has a few weaknesses: It still relies to a great extent on the good will of the Guatemalan President and his replacement by one less sympathetic to communism would be a serious blow; it is still faced to some extent with the danger that the Guatemalan revolution will turn into opportunist un-Communist channels since the indoctrination of most of the current sympathizers outside of the party is only superficial; and in the last analysis it is dependent on the international Communist movement for guidance and cohesion and probably could not long survive a major Soviet setback. However, the PGT has the salient advantage that it alone has the political initiative with the administration parties tending increasingly to follow in its ideological wake while the opposition has for the past 18 months increasingly become sterile and ineffectual. Moreover, the path of agrarian reform and extreme nationalism on which the Arbenz administration has hurried has been directed at breaking down the existing order without an immediate substitute, a situation which cannot but enhance the Communist position. 13. COMMUNIST SHIPMENT OF ARMS TO GUATEMALA: Statement to the Press by the Department of State, May 17, 1954 1 The Department of State is in receipt of reliable information to the effect that an important shipment of arms has been effected from Soviet-controlled territory to Guatemala. On May 15, the ship Alfhelm, believed to be under charter, arrived at Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, carrying a large shipment of armament consigned to the Guatemalan Government. This armament is now being unloaded at Puerto Barrios. We are advised that the armament was shipped from the Communist-administered port of Stettin. 1 Department of State Bulletin, May 31, 1954, p. 835. Because of the origin of these arms, the point of their embarkation, their destination, and the quantity of arms involved, the Department of State considers that this is a development of gravity. 14. SIGNIFICANT FACTS IN JUDGING COMMUNIST INFLUENCE IN GUATEMALA: Transcript of a News Conference of the Secretary of State, May 25, 1954 (Excerpts)1 The Guatemalan nation and people as a whole are not Communists. They are predominantly patriotic people who do not want their nation to be dominated by any foreign power. However, it must be borne in mind that the Communists always operate in terms of small minorities who gain positions of power. In Soviet Russia itself only about 3 percent of the people are Communists. In judging Communist influence in Guatemala three facts are significant: 1. Guatemala is the only American State which has not completed ratification of the Rio Pact of the Americas.2 2. Guatemala was the only one of the American States which at the last inter-American Conference at Caracas voted against a declaration that "the domination or control of the political institutions of any American State by the international communist movement, extending to this hemisphere the political system of an extracontinental power, would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and political independence of the American States, endangering the peace of America". 3. Guatemala is the only American nation to be the recipient of a massive shipment of arms from behind the Iron Curtain. It has been suggested from Guatemala that it needs more armament for defense. Already Guatemala is the heaviest armed of all the Central American States. Its military establishment is three to four times the size of that of its neighbors such as Nicaragua, Honduras, or El Salvador. The recent shipment was effected under conditions which are far from normal. The shipment was loaded at the Communist-administered Port of Stettin. The ship was cleared for Dakar, Africa. The operation was cloaked under a series of chartering arrangements so that the real shipper was very difficult to discover. When he was discovered he claimed that the shipment consisted of nothing but optical glass and laboratory equipment. When the ship was diverted from its ostensible destination and arrived at Puerto Barrios, it was landed under conditions of extraordinary secrecy and in the personal presence of the Minister of Defense. One cannot but wonder why, if the operation was an aboveboard and honorable one, all of its details were so masked. 1 Department of State Bulletin, June 7, 1954, pp. 873-874. Supra, doc. 10. |