Word: asylumed
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...been heard, the border guard reported. The passionate discussion came next day. Usually, unarmed strays from either side are herded back without argument. But this time a Czech major said that his government would swap the Americans for three Czechoslovak forestry workers who had fled to Germany seeking asylum on June 30. The Communists appeared hotly anxious to get the three Czechs back...
...anti-Communist blood bath was in prospect. Arbenz and his top cronies were mostly safe in embassy asylum and likely to get out of the country scot free (see below). Two ranking Communists-Carlos Manuel Pellecer and Victor Manuel Gutierrez-had quit embassies and joined a third, Alfredo Guerra Borges, in hiding. They might try to make backlands trouble for Castillo Armas, if they were willing to risk being caught and shot. Two thousand minor suspects were held for questioning in jails just vacated by the anti-Communists Arbenz kept there...
Never in Latin American history had the tradition of diplomatic asylum been so heavily used or so flagrantly abused. With the collapse of Jacobo Arbenz' Communist-manned government, about 900 people fled to nine embassies, taking the time-honored escape route after losing a revolution. Some of the refugees were top officials of the old regime, notably Arbenz himself, most of his Cabinet and a quorum of Congress. Others were panicky henchmen, fearful that they might be held responsible for the last month of Red terror, beatings and killings. In bad conscience, many thought it prudent to take with...
...reward, his midtown embassy got 416 of the new refugees. The building is a high-ceilinged old house of 20 offices and rooms but without grounds or garden. Together with a hastily rented house next door, it soon took on the look of an 18th century slave ship. Asylum seekers, including 60 squalling babies, sprawled on mattresses spread in halls, offices and reception rooms. There was no privacy; on the stairs, people slept, read, quarreled or flirted, oblivious to the constant traffic. Long queues stretched back from the four bathrooms...
...Guillermo Toriello visited the ex-President from time to time, but most of the other inmates never saw him. Jose Manuel Fortuny, No. I Communist and longtime Arbenz adviser, had an urgent personal problem: his wife was at the point of giving birth. The former Health Minister, also in asylum, delivered the baby, a boy, whom Fortuny gratefully saddled with the name Cuauhtéemoc, in honor of Mexico's last Aztec prince...