Word: guatemalans
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Supreme Chief." The invading anti-Communist rebels were mainly Guatemalans who had been driven into exile in recent years. Their leader, emerging from almost total obscurity, was Carlos Castillo Armas, 40, sometime colonel in the Guatemalan army, who had been jailed in Guatemala City in 1950 after an attempted revolt, but tunneled spectacularly out of prison and fled. Living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, he made himself a symbol of the exiled right-wing opposition to Guatemala's Communists. He also began quietly collecting arms, money...
...boxes of arms appeared and were loaded into trucks. Soldiers were recruited, and promised pay of $2.50 a day. The force thus swiftly mobilized was uniformed in fresh suntans, and airlifted (in commercial DC-3s, at $400 a flight) to Macuelizo, Copan and Nueva Ocotepeque. Honduran hamlets on the Guatemalan frontier...
...shall be with you very soon," Castillo Armas radioed to the Guatemalan people. Then he strapped a string of hand grenades around his waist and clapped a steel helmet on his head. Unopposed, his men quickly crossed the border, seized Esquipulas with its famed old church...
...probably knows quite well that some Communists are cowards and some are nothing of the sort. And while he may regard Fellow Traveler Arbenz as a tyrant or a traitor, he could scarcely consider him a coward. On the contrary, military attaches, diplomats and journalists who have met the Guatemalan President are in striking agreement that the mainspring of his character is dogged, stubborn, self-willed courage. If there is any kind of bravery he lacks, it is perhaps the higher degree of courage that could enable a man to look into his own heart and see what his reckless...
...Guatemalans have no spunk!" gibed Señora Arbenz. Four months later, by way of answer, Arbenz and 13 others shot down the commander of Guatemala City's Guardia de Honor fort, won over the garrison and began shelling the capital's other two forts. A lucky hit on a powder magazine won the day spectacularly for Arbenz & friends. He and Colonel Francisco Javier Arana got a democratic constitution written and ran off a free election. It was won handily by Juan José Arévalo, a Guatemalan intellectual just back from exile in Argentina...