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Friendly Veto. To many laymen the clash in Guatemala seemed a civil conflict with some international overtones; the original staging area was certainly Honduras, and the first planes came from somewhere outside Guatemala. In the council, what it was became a legal question. Brazil and Colombia, terming it a "dispute," proposed to turn its solution over to the U.N.'s regional organization, the OAS. Guatemala, which had seen the OAS vote 17-1 against it at Caracas, howled no.. The issue, it cried, was "criminal aggression," initiated by the United Fruit Co. and "fomented by the State Department of the United States." Only the U.N., it argued, could properly deal with the matter.
Russia's Semyon Tsarapkin agreed, probably in the hope that a Security Council investigation into Central American affairs would offer Soviet diplomats endless chances for fishing in troubled waters. Lodge flared right back: "I say to the representative of the Soviet Union.
stay out of this hemisphere and don't try to start your plans and your conspiracies over here." The galleries cheered. When the other ten members voted for the Brazil-Colombia proposal, Tsarapkin cast the U.S.S.R.'s 60th Security Council veto — another shock to Guatemala's apologists in Latin America. The council agreed only on a call for the "immediate termination of any action likely to cause bloodshed." That bound no one, least of all the enemies maneuvering for good bloodshedding positions in Guatemala.
Because the veto paralyzed the council, the OAS Inter-American Peace Commission held itself in readiness to take up the Guatemalan question. But events in the narrow streets and bush trails of Guatemala could move faster than any commission ; the Arbenz regime could be shattered — or it could emerge victorious and cockier than ever. Jacobo Arbenz, stubborn as ever, clapped on a tougher form of martial law, tightened up on blackouts, authorized his cops to shoot motorists caught with headlights on during a night alert.
Then he waited, poker-faced, to see how his big gamble — with his army — would turn out.