Foreign News: Tyrant Defied

Hardly had TIME’S report on Guatemala’s tyranny appeared last week than a popular movement to overthrow Guatemala’s tyrant began. Striking students p raded the streets of Guatemala City, defied the martial law imposed by Dictator Jorge Ubico (TIME, June 26). Bystanders and women trailed along, trembling at first, then gaining courage. The tyrant’s police and soldiers were ready. They routed the unarmed paraders with tear gas and bullets, killed an undisclosed number. The seething city settled down to whispering quiet.

But the Dictator’s troubles had only begun. The disciplined people’s strike which overthrew El Salvador’s Theosophist-Dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martinez (TIME, May 29) set a pattern for revolt in Central America. Reports from neighboring countries revealed that plans for a similar campaign in Guatemala were already well advanced. Cleverer than Martinez and no less ruthless, Ubico clearly intended to drown any such movement in blood. In repression, his was a practiced hand.