[originally published on Patreon March 18, 2024]

A brief parenthetical before continuing with the story of the Guatemalan genocide, I decided to do an episode just for me (and the like three other Mormon listeners) about the Mormon church in Guatemala, though I think this will still be instructive. 

The history begins with a Mormon named John Forres O’Donnal who was hired to the US Department of Agriculture’s new agency, the Office of Rubber Plant Investigations and sent to Guatemala and more or less developed Guatemala's rubber industry for US strategic purposes. More or less downstream from that, Mormonism began to flow as a consequence of his presence in the country. Church leaders visited and US missionaries began to arrive in the 1950s after the 1954 coup.

A former Mormon missionary who learned Mayan languages went back to BYU and worked on creating the Cakchiquel Basic Course through funding via a grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare; this was published in 1969, and then expanded and republished in 1977. It is very likely that this program also received NSA funding as discussed in the Puzzle Palace by James Bamford. In turn, this facility with Mayan languages would have been used during the Guatemalan Civil War for counterinsurgency purposes.

Then, I tell the story of Cordell Andersen, a biological warfare doctor from a family with a

[originally published on March 17, 2024]

Efraín Ríos Montt's presidency was the nadir of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, and the worst period of violence - la violencia - took place during it. I begin by discussing his upbringing, class background, and early career as a Guatemalan military officer. He was trained at the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) in Georgia as well as at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) in North Carolina as well as the Italian War College and Fort Gulick (aka the School of the Assassins) in the Panama Canal Zone.

Montt converted to evangelical christianity of a variety taught by La Iglesia El Verbo, the Church of the Word, which was itself a mission of Gospel Outreach, US-based church which was an outgrowth of the older pentecostal movement, but even more accurately, Gospel Outreach was part of the Jesus Freak movement of the 60s and 70s. Gospel Outreach was started by a US Naval officer who took over an existing Jesus Freak outfit and got them to proselytize in some geopolitically hot locations (such as Guatemala). As is so often the case, too, credible allegations have been made against Gospel Outreach about the abuse of minors.

In March 1982, in response to URNG advances, factions within the Guatemalan military carried out a coup and installed a three-man junta including Montt. Montt soon consolidated power as the president, and immediately afterwards Pat Robertson was promoting Montt on the 700 Club. Montt suspended the constitution, launched an ambitious new plan for the moral regeneration of Guatemala, and consolidated his power further in preparation for genocide.

[originally published on Patreon March 16, 2024]

By 1970, the literal former head of a death squad was running Guatemala - Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio. He took the death squad model to the next level, and disappearances skyrocketed. In 1972, the survivors of FAR formed the EGP (Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, or the Guerrilla Army of the Poor) and shifted from foquismo to a protracted people's war model of insurgency.

I discuss the Catholic church's complicated legacy in Guatemala on both sides of the political spectrum. I discuss Liberation Theology, the Melville Affair, and CUC (Comite de Unidad Campesina, or the Committee for Peasant Unity) which interacted with the EGP.

I explain the major earthquake of February 1976 which triggered the influx of foreign missionaries which would have wild repercussions. I go over the 1980 Spanish Embassy Massacre. In 1982, URNG was formed - Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. There was a serious possibility that Guatemala would have a revolution similar to the one that occurred in Nicaragua in 1979. This context is important to understand what is to come.

Songs:

Interview with Marco Antonio Yon Sosa

Vos Sos el Dios de los Pobres / Canto Entrado by Carlos Mejia Godoy

[originally published on Patreon March 15, 2024]

Most stories of the 1954 coup end shortly thereafter. We continue with Guatemala barreling right into the Guatemalan Civil War. I start with the Justice Department's antitrust case against United Fruit Company in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 coup. 

From there, I go into the curious case of Carlos Manuel Pellecer, a "communist firebrand" who was causing problems for the Arbenz government. Before the coup, I found declassified CIA documents showing Pellecer's seance to contact the ghost of Josef Stalin. In the wake of the coup, it eventually became clear that Pellecer was a longtime CIA informant. 

[note: I didn't realize when writing these episodes but the Jon Lee Anderson biography of Che  laid out Guevara's suspicions of Pellecer, of which I was unaware. Che clocked Pellecer, too, lol]

In November 30, 1960, a faction of left-leaning Guatemalan military officers began an uprising which is generally viewed as the start of the 36-year Guatemalan civil war. They were responding to Bay of Pigs training bases in Guatemala as one of several direct instigations. 

Meanwhile, various other groups were beginning their respective wars against the Guatemalan government including the frequently-banned Guatemalan Labor Party. Eventually, this would coalesce as the FAR, (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, or Rebel Armed Forces) which received Cuban support. In response, President Kennedy signed off on a pacification plan which would escalate to near-Vietnam proportions.

[originally published on Patreon March 14, 2024]

I open by discussing Operation SHERWOOD, the CIA's covert attempt to support Castillo Armas' invasion, run by Tracy Barnes and David Atlee Phillips, intentionally modeled after Orson Welles' infamous 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. 

From there, I discuss the invasion proper, the Guatemalan government's diplomatic and military responses, and the chances of success without US air support. I go through the various causes of Arbenz's sudden resignation and attempt to weigh the pros and cons of continued resistance. I also attempt to evaluate the US national security state's evaluation of these events, especially through the lens of the Bay of Pigs invasion which would include so many of the same actors. 

I cover what types of teams the CIA sent in after the coup and what they left in their wake, including plans for the creation of death squads, hit lists, and an overview of methods and training of said assassins, which included the infamous CIA manual on assassinations. I discuss Armas' initial actions, both punitive and compensatory, including paying back various Americans who assisted him. Then returned the US mafiosi, one of whom may have actually killed Armas in 1957. 

I lay out what happened to most participants in the 1954 coup, and then tell the story of a plucky Argentine doctor caught up in the madness of Guatemalan history.

[originally published on Patreon March 13, 2024]

I begin the episode with the elephant in the room - the Dulles brothers owning United Fruit Company stock. I explore Sullivan & Cromwell's connections to UFC as well as the Cabot family's ownership of UFC stock, and other government insiders. Depending on your inclinations, you can tell the story of the 1954 coup from the perspective of UFC or the CIA, but as it turns out, UFC and CIA were working symbiotically the whole time and were influencing each other in complicated feedback-loop ways.

I tell the story of Operation PBFORTUNE, the CIA's first attempt to overthrow the Arbenz government. Before that point, UFC hired Edward Bernays to promote the sale of bananas and to manage PR via weaponizing the Red Scare to go from the defensive to the offensive.

I discuss the dire state of US journalism about Guatemala. I go into the CIA's infiltration into the American Federation of Labor's attempts to do labor organizing in Guatemala. Then came the lobbying, with UFC first buying Democrats via Tommy the Cork Corcoran, then Republicans via John Clements. They acquired Castillo Armas, of whom much will be spoken soon. 

Along the way, InterArmCo and Howard Hughes show up, and various Latin American countries were bought off. Arbenz outwitted the State Department's arms embargo but lost the war when their covert weapons purchase was revealed in the press.

[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.

[originally published on Patreon February 27, 2024]

I begin discussing Guatemala as early as possible - the Olmec and Mayan civilizations, and the 200 year bloody pacification war against them by the Spanish conquistadores and the Captaincy General of Guatemala. 

From there, I jump to Manuel Estrada Cabrera, the president from 1898 to 1920. Cabrera was the president who began signing vast concessions over to Minor Keith, IRCA, and therefore UFC. Cabrera was unseated by Guatemala's National Assembly. 

Next, I discuss Jorge Ubico, president from 1931 to 1944. Ubico oversaw the forced transfer of Mayans into the wage labor economy via taxation and anti-vagrancy laws, which was fitting because he was basically a fascist. 

This led to the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944 - the other October Revolution. The revolution of 1944 led to the 10 Years of Spring from 1945 to 1955. I go through Juan Jose Arévalo, president from 1945 - 1951, and his apparently genuine if misguided attempts at Arevalismo, or spiritual socialism. 

I briefly cover Jacobo Arbenz's election as president, knowing full well that we will have to take our time with Arbenz and the events surrounding his presidency.

Guatemala by Swae Lee, Jxmmi, Rae Sremmurd

[originally published on Patreon February 23, 2024]

In this episode I discuss Colombia's relationship to United Fruit Company aka El Pulpo. In particular, I open with the massive strikes against UFC in 1928 culminating in the massacre at Ciénaga which was so memorably fictionalized in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad. 

From there, I discuss the curious case of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and his assassination in 1948 which triggered El Bogotazo, a wave of civil unrest and violence that would affect Colombia for years to come. I discuss the Rosicrucian-brainwashed patsy shooter Juan Roa Sierra and his manipulation by a German astrologer spy named Johann Umland Gerät. 

It gets even weirder as a track down claims by a Sicilian-American WWII vet named John Meeples Espirito who appears to have been involved in Operation ARTICHOKE and who found his way to revolutionary Cuba. When arrested, he told Cuban intelligence of his role in the assassination of Gaitán - claims which Cuban intelligence could never definitively prove and so did not widely publish. 

The potential reason for that, according to some, was because of Fidel Castro's role and actions in El Bogotazo, which remains obscured, as through a glass darkly. Much remains unknown.

[originally published on Patreon February 15, 2024]

Today I discuss more criminals involved in the banana trade, introducing the Vaccaro Brothers and Sam the Banana Man Zemurray. I discuss that intersection between organized crime and Wall Street that intersected precisely in the banana trade through these figures. 

I go through Zemurray's career, from his start in Alabama, his Cuyamel Fruit Company, the Honduran coup of 1911 and the concurrent takeover of Honduran national debt by JP Morgan bank, and the ensuing takeover of Honduras by United Fruit Company. Then, I discuss Zemurray's takeover of United Fruit Company (brokered by Sullivan & Cromwell) as well as the decisions Zemurray took at the helm of the company.

After that, I discuss Zemurray's role in the creation of the modern state of Israel, especially regarding the multiple votes at the United Nations for the Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. Then, I cannot avoid discussing Zemurray's children who just so happened to have become scholars of Central American studies. 

[note: at the time I wrote and recorded this episode, I had not purchased The Heritage of the Conquistadors: Ruling Classes in Central America from Conquest to the Sandinistas by "Samuel Z. Stone", but I subsequently purchased the book and confirmed that it does not mention Samuel Zemurray or Cuyamel whatsoever.