Operation Success was really a failure

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story about “Operation Success.”

Never heard of it? You’re probably not alone. Most of the millions of people in the United States don’t know the tale of how our State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954.

It’s a brilliant story. It was done on a shoestring budget and in such a way as to not attract international attention to the fact that the leader of the free world, the proponent of representative government, was in fact doing away with such in a foreign land.

Of course, our reasons for supporting supposed revolutionaries in that Central American country to remove their duly-elected leader was simple: communism. Don’t want no commies on our doorstep.

Mind you, communism as practiced by the then-Soviet Union, China and others was more totalitarianism than it was an economic system where people owned and shared the means of production — which is a simplification for space purposes. It truly was something we didn’t want, with its system of oppressing and removing opposition, controlled economy and international ruthlessness.

Kind of like Russia under current president Vladimir Putin. Oops, sorry.

The thing about Guatemala then is they didn’t want that either. After decades of authoritarian rule, in 1944 the educated citizens of the country managed to oust the former dictator and install a democracy tailored to their specific circumstances.

A university professor returned from exile in Argentina, Juan Jose Arevalo, was elected president. A constitution was written, and crazy things like freedom of the press, of speech, the right of women to vote, political parties and labor unions were guaranteed.

Guatemala instituted social reforms based on the U.S.’s examples under presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Arevalo pushed “spiritual socialism” but was no fan of communism, preferring an economy based on a capitalism that treated workers fairly.

His successor, Jacobo Arbenz, continued this upon election in 1951, but pushed for more. Arbenz wanted land for his people to be able to prosper.

Trouble was, that land — the best in the country — was owned by a few corporations, the largest being the United Fruit Company out of New England. Arbenz instituted laws to seize land UFC and other owners weren’t using, and offered to pay them for it, with the price fixed at what the landowners themselves said it was worth.

But United Fruit had undervalued their land for years in order to avoid paying taxes, so for them, the price was suddenly not right. In fact, it probably never would be.

So, UFC went to their congressional representatives and called in their markers to get help. They got it from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allan Dulles — yep, brothers — who teamed to create Operation Success.

The budget wasn’t big. Enough to buy a few World War II era fighter planes and a C-30, along with some “freedom fighters” led by a guy who would never say no to anything United Fruit, eh hem, the U.S. wanted.

But the best spent bucks went to a former actor and scriptwriter, who used it buy some Spanish-speaking writers and set up a radio station, with a frequency conveniently placed near the government-run radio in Guatemala. Long story short, their transmissions and a whole bunch of leaflets dropped by those feeble planes so frightened and convinced the Guatemalan people that the army of the revolution was thousands strong instead of 150 mercenaries that they essentially gave up without a fight — forcing Arbenz to abdicate.

What followed was a Guatemala run by the army, its generals and the elite landowning class that dispensed with all of the reforms, bowed down to the U.S.’s desires and eventually waged a 36-year-long civil war against its own people under the guise of rooting out communism. Tens of thousands were killed, mostly poor peasants, and many more simply “disappeared.”

I tell this story on the eve of my sixth departure to that far off land in Central America. My reasons for telling are several.

First, Donald Trump is right. We shouldn’t be so quick to condemn intervention by other countries in the affairs of their neighbors without first remembering what we have done.

Second, Operation Success’s use of propaganda to undermine a democratically-elected government is a reminder of how important Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian tampering with our own electoral system is to our democracy.

Finally, think about what our country could be like had we allowed our southern friend’s attempt at democracy and a free-market economy to succeed. To be able to offer a future for its citizens, a reason for staying home and an example to others in the region of what success really looks like.

Perhaps we wouldn’t find the need to talk about building a wall.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].