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Those were tough, frustrating times for State Department careerists in Washington, and in 1953 Mann got "fed up with all the McCarthy stuff," asked for an overseas assignment, went to Athens as embassy counselor. But even if he had wanted to, Mann could not shake his reputation as an expert on Latin America. A Communist-riddled government, with President Jacobo Arbenz as the front man, had taken over Guatemala. The State Department began its strategy—to isolate the country under the Rio Treaty. But at the same time the Central Intelligence Agency plunged ahead with a plot to back an armed assault on Arbenz' gang by Guatemalan exiles from neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua. Mann was summoned from Athens for a consultation, heard both plans, favored the CIA. "I was an activist in that case," he recalls. A short time later, the U.S.-backed exiles stormed into Guatemala City, ousted Arbenz.
Mann was offered the ambassador's post in Guatemala but turned it down because "I didn't feel I was really qualified by age or service experience." He went instead as deputy chief of mission to Guatemala, a year later was named ambassador to El Salvador, and in 1957 returned to Washington to serve with Douglas Dillon, then Ike's Deputy Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.
Symbol of Victory. The years of the Latin American revolution were at hand. One of the first inklings of the deep and dangerous emotions brewing in Latin America came in 1958, when Vice President Richard Nixon was nearly killed under a rain of saliva, stones and sticks during a visit to Caracas. The U.S. was shocked, frightened, incredulous at such fierce hatred from a supposedly Good Neighbor. A few months later, Fidel Castro and his followers swept out of the hills of Oriente province in Cuba and overthrew the cruel regime of Dictator Fulgencio Batista. No sooner had he taken over than Castro turned dictator himself, began slaughtering those who had opposed him. Even in his scurrilous attacks on the U.S., Castro became an idol to many Latin Americans, for they saw him as a heroic nationalist—a symbol of victory by the oppressed.
In a faltering way, the U.S. set out to meet the situation. It loosened up its economic policies, made loans easier to get. In 1960, with decisive U.S. support, the Inter-American Development Bank was set up, with a $1 billion lending capacity. Then Dwight Eisenhower went before the Congress and asked for $500 million that would be spent on projects "designed to contribute to opportunities for a better way of life for the individual citizens of the countries of Latin America."
The dream of a Latin America prospering with U.S. help seemed on the way to becoming reality. And with the arrival of the Kennedy Administration in 1961 came the brightest hopes of all. During his campaign, Kennedy talked at length and with devastating political effectiveness about the "battlefield" of Latin America and about its being "the most critical area in the world." But in practice, the Kennedy Administration's Latin American policy proved to be more a proliferation of personnel than of promises kept.