(5 of 8)
From that day Arbenz was as good as President, and from that day Communism's influence bounded upward; an organized party was set up within two months. In November 1950 Arévalo put down his 30th and last attempted revolution, this one led by Carlos Castillo Armas (17 dead), and conducted the election in which Arbenz "defeated" a conservative candidate. It was quite easy. The conservative candidate had been thoughtfully terrorized and run out of the country.
President Arbenz was 37, the youngest chief of state in the Americas.
Agrarian Reformer. Arbenz took office, mildly contemptuous of his predecessor Arevalo as a limited bourgeois who had exhausted himself just trying to stay where he was. Arbenz, as army boss, had no such worries; he was determined to ram through some real reforms. One was redistribution of Guatemala's land, then held half by 22 great feudal families and half by 301,132 poverty-stricken peasants. The second was the creation of a powerful, unified labor movement. To get such projects rolling, he needed advice, fast planning and energetic help; he got it, of course, from his Communist friends.
Communist Fortuny, who makes a fetish of wearing the same seedy jacket he had three years ago, masterminded the land-reform bill. Pellecer, who proclaims, "I am a Communist! I am a Communist! I am doing everything I can for Guatemala and Communism!" worked day and night to put over the land split-up among the peasants. Gutierrez, after getting expert advice from French Communist Labor Leader Louis Saillant (who was brought in for the purpose by the party), put together and ruled a 100,000-member labor confederation. It was a tidy deal, in a setup made to order for the Communists.
Communists did not occupy Cabinet posts or hold more than a few seats in Congress. But the Guatemalan Labor Party (i.e., Communist; the euphemism is a gesture of cynical courtesy to Article 32 of the constitution, which bans parties of a "foreign or international nature") became the country's dominant political force. Though his luncheon companions openly made trips behind the Iron Curtain for indoctrination, Arbenz refused to admit that the international cold war had anything to do with Guatemala or with the Western Hemisphere. When his old army friends worried about Red influence, Arbenz assured them that he could dump the Communists whenever he wanted—but he never wanted to. Perhaps he never realized how much he was coming to depend on them. Perhaps he did.
Arbenz had always been dry, chilly headstrong. He totally lacked humor or small talk, and his pained social smile was famous. Presidential power somewhat remodeled his personality. He stopped his moody drinking, started getting up early. He bought 400 Countess Mara ties and a wardrobe of tailor-made suits, mainly in shades of grey. Upper-crust Guatemalans love to gamble, and Arbenz learned to drop up to $1,000 at a friendly session of poker or chemin de fer and laugh it off. His delivery of speeches, mostly ghostwritten by Communist 'Guerra Borges, became notably confident and easy.