[originally published on Patreon February 27, 2024]

I begin with an extended meditation about Arbenz's position in 1951 and the state of the Guatemalan economy. This leads to a discussion of Decree 900, the agrarian reform bill which was passed in 1952. I discuss what it did and did not entail and compare it to Mexico's agrarian reform law as well as the US Alliance for Progress recommendations later. Despite this, United Fruit Company's leadership began to close ranks and draw up battle plans. That leads us to a natural question: who exactly owned UFC, anyway?

I discuss UFC ownership particularly through the various boards of directors both before and after the Zemurray era. Unsurprisingly, it consists of many Boston Brahmins and, for lack of a better term, the Power Elite from the US, the UK, and Germany. At one point, the Swedes try, successfully, to buy in.

I make a major tangent via UFC vice president Arthur Pollan and his feud with Honduran communist Manuel Cálix Herrera, whose story I also share. Then, discussing Zemurray's new guard, I bring up Hillyer Vaughn Rolston and the curious case of the Rolston Letter. The Rolston Letter is like a mini-Dreyfus Affair, which occurred shortly before la gran huelga de 1954, the great strike of 1954 in Honduras.