Latin America: Plots & Whispers

Turkey and Central America are unhappy lands despite their geographical advantages because they are in the hands of the Turks and the Central Americans.

—Napoleon III

If last week's turmoil was any indication, Central America was still an unhappy land.

Comic Opera. In Guatemala, the 1½-year-old revolutionary government of Juan José Arévalo had fresh proof that implanting a democracy on inhospitable soil was far more complicated than toppling a dictator. Planters and merchants who resented middle-of-the-fence Arévalo's sops to labor had tried to buy up the army for a counterrevolution. The plot failed;...

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