WI *Earlier* Coup in Guatemala--Arana seizes power in 1949

Instead of asking what if there had been no CIA-backed rightist coup against Arbenz in 1954, or if it had not succeeded, I would here like to ask, What if there had been an earlier--purely Nicaraguan--coup led by Franciso Arana, preventing Arbenz from coming to power in the first place. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article on Arana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Javier_Arana is very short and unsatisfactory. My main source is Piero Gleijeses, " The Death of Francisco Arana: A Turning Point in the Guatemalan Revolution": http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/guatemala/francisco-arana.pdf All quotes here are from that article.

"In vain had Arana's advisers pleaded with him before he went to the Presidential Palace that he should forego complicated games and simply seize power. In vain did they argue, after he returned from the palace, that he could not rely on Arevalo's promises. In vain did they stress 'that in a coup d'etat there's no time for talk - you act or you fail'"

So let's say that Arana overthrows Arevalo before Arevalo can kill him. (In OTL Arana was reluctant to lead a coup. He really thought for a long while that he could win the 1950 presidential election--Arevalo had privately assured him of his support--but it is very difficult to win an election in Guatemala if you don't have the military on your side, and Arevalo and Arbenz were undermining Arana's power in the military. But even at the last moment, when he realized an "electoralist" strategy was not enough, Arana thought an old-fashioned straightforward coup was unnecessary--that he could pressure Arevalo into dismissing Arbenz and his followers, paving the way for an easy Arana victory in 1950. Arevalo would not do this: he pretended he would go along, but in fact decided either to arrest or to kill--there is some dispute about which--Arana. But in any event Arana was killed, whether that had been Arevalo's intention or not. Gleijeses rightly ridicules the idea put forward by some Arevalo/Arbenz supporters that Arana was killed by rightists because he would *not* lead a coup. As he notes, this makes no sense: a living Arana--not a "martyred" one--was the right's only chance of coming to power.)

If Arana had decided on an old fashioned coup, he would have won:

"Arana knew that if he were to launch a coup, he would succeed. True, Arbenz had many supporters within the officer corps; there were also minor cliques that retained their independence and many officers who remained indifferent. But Arana had used his authority as Chief of the Armed Forces to place his supporters in key positions. They controlled the Guardia de Honor and the Base Militar, the two important military units in the capital. Aranistas were the commanders of each of the country's seven Zonas Militares. The sole arbencista officer in command of troops was Colonel Francisco Cosenza, the head of the minuscule air force. The police force, under Arevalo's brother-in-law Colonel Victor Aldana Sandoval, was not aranista, but,poorly armed and poorly trained, its power was negligible. And Arevalo's Presidential Guard consisted of only a few men under a loyal officer..."

So Arana is less Hamlet-like, and the Right seizes power in Guatemala five years earlier than in OTL--and without CIA aid. (The US at this point was not particularly worried about Arbenz. They felt that he had no firm convictions, that his leftism was just demagogy for electioneering purposes, and that if he became president he would be amenable to US pressure. )

This means that the 1954 operation is not there to strengthen the CIA's belief that the Bay of Pigs would succeed. Also, presumably Ernesto Guevara is not in Guatemala in 1954. His first wife later wrote that it was Guatemala which convinced him of the need for armed struggle (he thought Arbenz should have taken to the hills with armed workers and peasants to fight on). Furthermore, Guatemala also persuaded him of the need to purge the armed forces, which he felt had betrayed Arbenz--a lesson he would not forget in Cuba.
 
Last edited:
Top