Word: arbenz
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Until lately, Guatemala's former President Jacobo Arbenz has enjoyed lonely notoriety as the only head (until his downfall) of a Communist-dominated government in Latin American history. Now he may have to share the title with Cuba's Fidel Castro. Last week, visiting Cuba, Arbenz felt so much at home that he decided to move in permanently...
...facing the invading forces of U.S.-backed Rebel Carlos Castillo Armas, Arbenz abandoned the presidency to make a panicky dash for safety in the Mexican embassy. He thereby won the scorn of a militant young Argentine leftist then temporarily living in Guatemala-Ernesto ("Che") Guevara. Said Che, who is now Castro's one-man brain trust: "If Jacobo Arbenz had been a man, he would have taken himself to the streets and fought...
Leaning heavily on his spirited and strongly Marxist wife Maria Cristina (nicknamed "Maruca"), Arbenz left Mexico, alighted briefly in France and in Switzerland, where $2,000,000 of Guatemalan government money reportedly waited in a numbered bank account. Then he settled in Prague. In 1956 he visited Moscow for several months, but the Russians sized him up as a lightweight, Marxist-wise. Leaving his two daughters in a Russian boarding school, he headed back to the Western Hemisphere, landing in Montevideo in May 1957. Politically, he observed the rules of asylum by masking his Communist contacts as Russian language lessons...
From Dislike to Hate. Che's progress, mostly by foot, continued to Guatemala in December 1953. The country was then controlled by the Communists around President Jacobo Arbenz, and was a natural haven for Latin American leftists of all degrees. Che fitted right in. His closest friend was a plump, almond-eyed young Peruvian girl named Hilda Gadea, an ardent, exiled member of Apra, Peru's leftist revolutionary movement. Hilda lent Che money to pay his room rent, kept him fed. For a while he peddled encyclopedias, then got a minor job in Guatemala's agrarian-reform...
...Intelligence Agency as a silent partner, a Guatemalan colonel named Carlos Castillo Armas launched his counter-revolutionary invasion of the Red-dominated country. As F-47s swooped down over Guatemala City with U.S. pilots at the controls, Guevara dashed blindly around town trying to organize a resistance force. When Arbenz caved in without a fight, Guevara's wounded idealism and urge to do battle combined with his strong dislike of the U.S. to become a deep and deadly hatred...