Dear Delegates, Arbenz Administration Hi! My name is Kara Newman, and I m so excited to be directing the Árbenz Administration. I m a senior at William & Mary and first-year graduate student working towards a Master s in Public Policy (although I m definitely more emotionally invested in my Latin American Studies minor). I am currently the Director of Communications for the International Relations Club and have previously been on the secretariat of WMIDMUN (our middle school conference) and IRCares, our service committee. Other than my involvement in IRC, I founded and help run a recycling program for Solo cups through the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC). I love bananas, Spanish & Portuguese, and naps, and I m passionate about issues related to sustainability and hunger. Although I didn t participate in Model United Nations before college, I ve been staffing and attending conferences since I joined IRC at the beginning of freshman year. These experiences have been so valuable for me Model UN provides a useful skillset, including public speaking, creativity, problem-solving, working with a diverse group of people, and uniting disparate viewpoints. I hope that you all find your weekend in 1950s Guatemala as worthwhile and enjoyable as my experiences with MUN have been. I m very excited about all three of the topics discussed below. The consequences of the 1954 Guatemalan Coup are far-reaching, and it is fascinating to consider how a few decisions made by a few individuals may have altered history. In order to prepare for the conference weekend, you ll need to write a position paper addressing each of the three topics (you can find more information about how to write a position paper below). This should help you to develop some of your ideas and make you feel more prepared for the weekend in general. I hope you ll take advantage of your time preparing for and participating in WMHSMUN and in the Árbenz Administration to gain an understanding of these
topics, to improve your communication and critical thinking skills, to meet other smart, engaged, and creative delegates, and to have a blast the harder you work, both in your preparation for committee and throughout the weekend, the more fun you ll have. That being said, there s no reason to stress; if you find yourself lost or confused as you prepare for the conference or during the weekend itself, please feel free to reach out to me I m here to help! WMHSMUN requires that every delegate submits a position paper. This paper must address the topics presented by the committee through the lens of your position. For more information on what is expected from position papers, there is a link on the WMHSMUN website, under the committees tab. We highly suggest that you use this tool in order to make your position paper as effective as possible! For Specialized Agencies, we highly encourage you to email your position paper to your chair before the first committee session. If this cannot be done for any reason, you may submit a hard copy to your dais at the beginning of the first committee session. Lastly, I hope you re as excited as I am for WMHSMUN! If you have any questions about the Guatemalan cabinet, events discussed in the background guide, MUN, William & Mary, or college in general, please don t hesitate to email me at knnewman@email.wm.edu! I would absolutely love to hear from you, and I can t wait to see you all in November! Throughout our committee, I will challenge you to not only consider how the Ministers of Health can directly influence the physical health of their respective nations, but also understand how the concept of health ties to the economic stability, psychological wellbeing, international standing, and cultural sanctity of your nation. Similarly, I will ask you to develop an understanding of how we see Africa as one entity and determine when it is appropriate to act under this assumption versus when nations require individualized attention. Kara Newman Director, Arbenz Administration knnewman@email.wm.edu
Dear Delegates, Arbenz Administration Hello, my name is Hannah Major and I am a sophomore at the College of William & Mary, with a Business and Hispanic Studies double major. I am deeply involved with our International Relations Club here, and I am beyond excited to be crisis directing the Arbenz Administration! I love all things related to the Hispanic world, food, movie nights, and current events. I was somewhat involved in Model United Nations throughout high school, but did not truly love it until I came to William & Mary. Through Model UN, I have made my best friends and have had the best experiences while traveling as a delegate! I hope you enjoy this weekend and make some amazing memories here on campus. If you have any questions at all about WMHSMUN, Model UN, William & Mary, or this committee specifically, please feel free to reach out to Kara or I at any point, either now or during the conference! See you in November! Hannah Major Crisis Director, Arbenz Administration hmmajor@email.wm.edu
Committee Procedure This committee is Jacobo Árbenz s cabinet. Set in 1951, the Árbenz Administration will have a chance to change the course of history starting from the beginning of his presidency. Delegates should work together to advise the president on policies, statements, and executive actions. This committee is a crisis committee that will be run using parliamentary procedure, or ParliPro for short. This means that the session will start with roll call: when your position is called, you will raise your placard and answer present. A delegate will then motion to open debate. As with all motions, the delegates will vote either in favor of the motion or opposed to the motion. A simple majority is required for a motion to pass. At any point, a delegate can motion for either a moderated caucus or an unmoderated caucus. In a moderated caucus, when the delegate makes the motion, he or she will specify the total time for the caucus, the speaking time for each speaker, and the subject of the caucus. In an unmoderated caucus, the delegate must suggest a time limit and subject. During an unmoderated caucus (or unmod for short,) all delegates move around and speak to each other casually, instead of addressing the entire room. Delegates can accomplish things both in the room and out of the room. In the room, delegates may pass directives as a body. These will be written collaboratively and must pass with a majority vote to take effect. They may also send personal (individual) and joint directives to crisis. Based on both directives and crisis notes, there will be updates about new events, situations, problems, etc. that the body will have to address. Throughout the duration of each session, please be polite and respect your peers by remaining silent while they are debating, not using electronic devices (such as cell phones) in committee, and keeping your notes professional and appropriate. While you may pass notes, these notes must be relevant to the committee. These notes may be screened, and anything offensive or inappropriate will not be passed. In extreme cases, inappropriate notes will result in school sponsor notification or removal from committee. If someone on the dais calls Decorum, this is a reminder of these expectations. If you have any questions about ParliPro, of if you want a more detailed description, please consult the Guide to MUN. If you still can t find the answer to your question, feel free to send me an email.
Introduction & Background Information Jorge Ubico, known as Central America s Napolean, was the authoritarian president of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944. He fostered a close relationship with the United States, in particular, the infamous United Fruit banana company. Ubico is credited with improving infrastructure as well as making advancements in health and fighting corruption. More importantly from an international perspective, he stabilized the economy by stimulating production of exports and making trade deals with the United States. This development often came at the price of civil liberties. Ubico centralized power, amended the constitution to extend his presidency, controlled opposition through press censorship, and maintained order through the police. He was fiercely anticommunist, and discredited any politician farther left by accusing them of being communists 1. Debt Peonage, or debt slavery, is the practice of coercing labor to pay off a debt. Under this system, debtors found themselves unable to leave their place of work, as they incurred more charges than their labor covered 2. 1 New World Encyclopedia, Jorge Ubico, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ entry/jorge_ubico 2 Encyclopedia of Latin American History, Debt Peonage, http:// While Ubico ended debt peonage, he replaced it with vagrancy laws requiring that all Mayan men that did not own land had to find a landowner for whom they could work for at least 100 days out of the year and contribute labor (without pay) on a public works project for two weeks each year. Decree 1816 made it legal for landowners to kill any indigenous person who did not abide by these new laws 3. After he suspended free speech in 1944, a widespread strike forced Ubico s resignation. After his successor was ousted by a military coup (led in part by Jacobo Árbenz,) elections were held. What followed is hailed as Guatemala s Ten Years of Spring. Considered the first democratically elected president of the country, Juan José Arévalo came to power in 1945. Despite 25 separate coup attempts, (mostly from conservative military officers,) Arévalo completed his full term in office. His regime was characterized by what he called spiritual socialism (sometimes referred to as Arévalismo). This political philosophy emphasized the importance of civil freedoms within the limits of www.encyclopedia.com/article- 1G2-3078901858/debt-peonage.html 3 Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 8-29.
the will of the majority 4. Though he instituted many social reforms while in office, Arévalo rejected communism in favor of capitalism: he did not legalize the communist party in Guatemala and exiled communist activists. At the end of his historic presidency, he peacefully transitioned power to his democratically elected successor. Jacobo Árbenz was elected in 1951. His most notable achievement while in office was agrarian reform. He redistributed land, the vast majority of which was owned by the United Fruit Company. In 1954, the United States Central Intelligence Agency trained rebels in Honduras and invaded the capital. Announcing themselves on the radio as liberators, they bombed Guatemala City and put Carlos Castillo Armas, a dictator, in power. Once Árbenz realized that the Guatemalan army would not fight the U.S. military, he resigned without a fight and was quickly exiled. This committee is set a few years before the coup, in 1951, soon after Árbenz began his term as president. Will the committee be able to implement the highly popular land reform without incurring the wrath of the powerful United Fruit Company and the United 4 Liquisearch, Spiritual Socialism (Arévalismo), http://www.liquisearch.com/ juan_jos%c3%a9_ar%c3%a9valo/spiritual_ socialism_ar%c3%a9valismo States government? Topic I: Land Reform To understand land reform in Guatemala, it s important to look first to Mexico. In the early 1900s, Porfirio Díaz was the president of Mexico. He was viewed favorably in the United States, as he protected U.S. business interests. However, foreigners controlled almost all of the country s resources and his unpopular policies led to the Mexican Revolution. When Francisco Madero lost the 1910 election to Díaz, he alleged electoral fraud and declared himself provisional president under the Plan de San Luís Potosí. Although it presented no framework to achieve it, the plan announced that land that had been robbed arbitrarily in the past would be returned to its original owners or their heirs. Later, in 1934, Lázaro Cárdenas became the president of Mexico. Though Cárdenas is best known for nationalizing the oil industry, he also instituted sweeping land reform. He created collectives of farmers and expropriated American-owned land. As a result of these reforms, agricultural productivity greatly increased at this time 5. Inspired in large part by the success 5 Wikipedia, Land Reform in Mexico, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/land_reform_in_mexico
Association of Southeast Asian Nations //WMHSMUN 30 of land reform in Mexico, Árbenz Árbenz s dramatic law had other implemented wide-scale redistribution of unused lands in Guatemala. Both Mexico and Guatemala suffered under the pernicious influence of U.S. business interests, and both leaders implemented ambitious redistribution policies. Although Jacobo Árbenz was by no means a populist, both politicians appealed to nationalism and a growing middle class to achieve their victories 6. Decree 900 was signed into law on June 17th, 1952. It established the National Agrarian Department (DAN), which oversaw the redistributing of any uncultivated land, as well as governmentowned fincas nacionales (national farms). The DAN s power was decentralized and requests for land were filed through local agrarian committees. More than 200,000 acres of land were expropriated from the United Fruit Company; Panama Disease (discussed in more detail below) had forced the business to leave much of its land uncultivated, making it vulnerable for seizure under the new law. More than 500,000 families received land, and coffee, corn, rice, and wheat production all increased in the years following the land reform 7. important effects: it abolished slavery and unpaid labor and ended debt peonage by banning work as rent. It also specifically abolished the relocation and reallocation of labor that had been a part of Ubico s vagrancy laws. It also included literacy programs, which were not implemented until 1954 8. The president s intention was to end the de facto feudal system that had kept many of the country s poorest inhabitants plagued by debt. He made significant progress towards that goal: one-sixth of Guatemalans received land under the new system and agricultural technology improved. Despite the flight of foreign investment, high coffee prices kept the economy prosperous 9. Árbenz instituted other reforms that undermined United Fruit s power and influence in Guatemala. Notably, he worked on constructing the Atlantic Highway, which undercut United Fruit s dominance in the transportation industry. Prior to the highway s construction, the banana company s trains were almost States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 149-169. 6 Solon L. Barraclough, The North American Congress on Latin America, The Legacy of Latin American Land Reform, https://nacla.org/article/legacy-latin-american-land-reform 7 Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United 8 Douglas W. Trefzger, Guatemala s 1952 Agrarian Reform Law: A Critical Reassessment, International Social Science Review (2002): http://www.ditext.com/ trefzger/agrarian.html 9 Wikipedia, Decree 900, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/decree_900
the only way Guatemalans could move from place to place. Árbenz established the Santo Tomás de Castilla Harbor, providing an alternative to United Fruit s Puerto Barrios. Although his plans were not completed for years after his presidency, he began construction on a hydroelectric plant in an attempt to disrupt the American monopoly on energy in Guatemala 10. Árbenz s policies were dramatic, but effective. However, they upset other key players in Guatemala at the time, ultimately leading to the 1954 coup. This committee will have a chance to decide if it is possible to fulfill the promises of Árbenz s campaign while keeping powerful foreign interests pacified. Questions to Consider: 1. Were Árbenz s reforms successful in accomplishing his goals of transitioning to a capitalist system? 2. What alternatives might Árbenz have pursued to reach those goals? 3. How did these reforms affect the United States? What consequences could that have for Guatemala? 10 Wikipedia, Jacobo Árbenz, https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jacobo_%c3%81rbenz Gros Michel bananas, the variety most commonly sold in most of the world prior to 1950, do not reproduce by themselves; they must be carefully cultivated in precise conditions to grow. (Williams Cavendish, the variety we know today that replaced Gros Michel completely by 1960, faces the same problem.) Although bananas are the most popular type of fruit in the United States and Europe, they grow exclusively in tropical regions. Guatemala has the right terrain and climate to support this fragile fruit. Topic II: The United Fruit Company The beginning of large-scale banana production coincided with the invention of refrigerated ships. Known as banana boats, they were used to transport the quick-to-ripen fruit beginning in the 1870s. In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company (formed from the merger of the Tropical Trading and Transport Company with the Boston Fruit Company) dominated the industry. The company s tactics were brutal throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Based on his experiences in Honduras, O. Henry coined the term banana republic to refer to the type of government that bowed to the interests
of the United States and United Fruit. 11 The company s treatment of its workers left much to be desired. Employees of the company were generally paid in coupons to the company s commissaries, where prices were majorly inflated. Managers evaded prosecution by classifying all of their workers as temporary, and therefore not legally competent. The company ruthlessly shut down unions and protests, often with violence. Famously, workers on strike in the small Colombian town of Cienaga were slaughtered as they peacefully protested their low pay and harsh working conditions. As many as 2,000 were killed in the banana massacre 12. The influence of United Fruit and the banana industry was so pronounced in Latin America that it has been featured prominently in famous works from around the region. Pablo Neruda of Chile wrote a poem in 1950 entitled La United Fruit Co. It describes how the company instituted dictatorships (mentioning Ubico), extracting products at the expense of the Latin American people 13. 11 (William Sydney Porter), O.Henry. Cabbages and Kings. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 146639756X. 12 Gene Bell-Villada, Banana Strike and Military Massacre: One Hundred Years of Solitude and What Happened in 1928, Gabriel García Márquez s One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook (2002): 127-137. 13 Pablo Neruda, La United Fruit Co., The Essential Neruda, trans. Jack Nicaragua s Ernesto Cardenal mentions the company s revolutions, exemptions, contractual and constitutional violations, and more in his 1960 poem Hora Cero (Zero Hour). 14 Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez describes the devastating impact of the banana industry on a small, fictional town in northern Colombia. Although Macondo, the setting of the novel, is not real, the events described are (slightly exaggerated) accounts of true events 15. Early twentieth century Guatemala was a textbook case of a banana republic. United Fruit first arrived in the country in the early 1900s, while Manuel Estrada Cabrera was president. They built a town (appropriately named Bananera ) and established plantations. In exchange for building Guatemala s infrastructure (including telegraph lines, railroads, and seaports), Estrada cut favorable deals for the company. The development that occurred at this time only increased racial tensions and inequality. Mayans were increasingly marginalized while the Ladino class (those with Spanish Hirschman (San Francisco: City Lights, 2004): http://www.redpoppy.net/poem26. php 14 Ernesto Cardenal, Hora Cero, http:// genius.com/ernesto-cardenal-hora-0-annotated 15 Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006)
heritage) benefitted financially. Estrada was overthrown in 1920, after years of suppression of the press and execution of his enemies. 16 Jorge Ubico was elected in 1931, and carried on Estrada s authoritarian legacy. Panama Disease, a fungal affliction affecting bananas that spreads quickly through soil, was beginning to spread through the country. United Fruit needed more and more land to make up for losses from the pernicious disease, but undervalued it so much that it was exempt from paying any taxes for it. Ubico s fierce anti-communism made life harder for laborers working for United Fruit. He banned the words trade union, strike, petition, and worker, as well as detaining and killing those he perceived as having connections with labor movements. Even Arévalo s social reforms largely did not apply to banana workers. 17 Árbenz s 1952 land reform applied only to unused land. Because Panama Disease affected so much of the company s land, acres and acres were not being used in banana production. Since United Fruit hoped to find a way to make the land productive for banana production 16 Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. (New York: Penguin Group, 2008). 17 Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. (New York: Penguin Group, 2008). once more, they chafed at having to turn it over to the government. They were compensated at the value of the land claimed on their tax returns, which was much lower than its actual value. Árbenz s administration further angered the powerful company by building ports (to compete with the Rio Dulce port, controlled by the company) and the establishment of a highway system, (which undermined United Fruit s railroad-based dominance of Guatemala s transportation). 18 The United Fruit Company had close ties with the United States Government. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959, was formerly a partner at the company s law firm. His brother, Allen Dulles, was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1953 to 1961 and was a former member of United Fruit s board. The company had a powerful influence over media in the United States as well. 19 18 Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. (New York: Penguin Group, 2008). 19 Brendan Fischer, A Banana Republic Once Again? The Center for Media and Democracy s PRWatch: http://www. prwatch.org/news/2010/12/9834/banana-republic-once-again
Questions to Consider: 1. What made Guatemala vulnerable to becoming a banana republic? Why were leaders such as Estrada and Ubico willing to work with United Fruit? 2. How was the United Fruit Company able to exert so much power in the region? 3. How could a leader mitigate that immense power without provoking the response that followed in 1954? 4. What opportunities could there have been for cooperation with the United Fruit Company while still protecting the rights of Guatemalans? Topic III: United States Foreign Policy in the 1950s The United States has a long history of interventionism. The Monroe Doctrine, described by James Monroe in 1823, designated all of the Americas as within the United States sphere of influence. It stated that any interference in the governments of the New World by European powers would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention, but also made it clear that it would not interfere in existing European colonies or the domestic affairs of Old World powers. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt established his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which explicitly stated that the use of military force could be used to enforce the doctrine. Although there was a brief departure from this attitude in the 1930s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt s Good Neighbor Policy, the change did not last long. John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State, used the Monroe Doctrine as justification for the 1954 Coup: he argued that the Soviet Union was illegally intervening in Guatemala to spread communism. After the conclusion of World War II, the uneasy alliance that had bound the United States to the Soviet Union dissolved and a new era had begun. The Cold War, a period of tension between these two powers, lasted from approximately 1947 to 1991. Although the two did not engage directly in armed conflict, each side supported different sides in various proxy wars. The nature of the Cold War varied throughout the nearly half-century of conflict. This committee is set in the beginning stages, immediately following World War II. The Second Red Scare is used to describe the period from 1947 to 1957, when McCarthyism gripped the United States. The term is derived from Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rose to prominence through his (largely baseless)
accusations of communist infiltration of the government (including President Truman s advisors, the State Department, and the Army.) The House Un-American Activities Committee conducted investigations on suspected communists. They were particularly concerned with the suspected Soviet infiltration of the film industry, and created the Hollywood Blacklist. Studios boycotted those named on the list. Of course, this widespread fear of communism extended beyond the borders of the United States. President Truman leveraged anticommunist sentiment in creating the Truman Doctrine. In a 1947 speech, he announced It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. 20 This doctrine was used to justify the European Recovery Plan, (better known as the Marshall Plan,) which gave approximately $130 billion of aid in today s terms to Western Europe. During this time, the United States adopted a policy of containment. First described in 1946 by George Kennan, a prominent American diplomat, containment is the strategy of preventing 20 Harry Truman, The Truman Doctrine. Speech presented to a joint session of the United States Congress, Washington, D.C. (1947). the spread of communism abroad. This policy can be observed both in humanitarian strategies like the Marshall Plan and in conflicts like the Korean War, a proxy war. The North Korean invasion of South Korean was backed by the Soviet Union, while the United States (as well as the United Nations Security Council) supported South Korean forces. Arévalo attracted the attention of the United States when he described his policies as spiritual socialism. However, he stopped short of implementing actual land reform and denounced communism as contrary to human nature, 21 so the State Department did not feel threatened by Arévalo at the beginning of his presidency; however, his implementation of the Labor Code in 1947 changed their perception by establishing the right to organize unions, collective bargaining, strikes, and a minimum wage. Perhaps ironically, these reforms were based on the United States own Wagner Act of 1935. Árbenz concerned the United States more. His drastic land redistribution, legalization of the Guatemalan Labor Party, and other left-leaning social reforms were enough 21 Patricia M. Plantamura. Impacts of U.S. Foreign Policy and Intervention on Guatemala: Mid-20th Century. University of South Florida Scholar Commons. (2013): p. 51 http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5942&context=etd
for the McCarthyist government officials to declare him a communist and justify the 1954 coup. 1 While the Chicago School of Economics and general economic liberalization were gaining popularity in the United States, the same models were rejected farther south. Raúl Prébisch of the Economic Commission for Latin America described how the theory of comparative advantage left the region in the periphery of the world economic system. 2 Called dependency theory, Prébisch advocated for industrialization and economic development in Latin America, not tied to commodity exports. 3 Árbenz made his attitude towards Guatemalan dependence on what Prébisch referred to as the economic centre of the world clear in his inaugural address in 1951. Foreign capital will always be welcome as long as it 1 Patricia M. Plantamura. Impacts of U.S. Foreign Policy and Intervention on Guatemala: Mid-20th Century. University of South Florida Scholar Commons. (2013): http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=5942&context=etd 2 Raúl Prebisch. The Economic Development of Latin America and its principal problems, Economic Commission for Latin America: http://archivo.cepal.org/pdfs/ cdprebisch/002.pdf 3 Raúl Prebisch. The Economic Development of Latin America and its principal problems, Economic Commission for Latin America: http://archivo.cepal.org/pdfs/ cdprebisch/002.pdf adjusts to local conditions, remains always subordinate to Guatemalan laws, cooperates with the economic development of the country, and strictly abstains from intervening in the nation s social and political life. 4 The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights had an unexpected effect on U.S. Foreign Policy: it led to the rise of covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The document affirms the importance of respecting the sovereignty of other states, and the United States signature on the document prevented it from continuing its former pattern of openly interventionist policies 5. Covert operations were, in some ways, more dangerous, as they were not subject to the same potential backlash in public opinion. The CIA-backed coup was therefore planned secretly, given a codename (PBSUCCESS,) and given a Guatemalan figurehead (Carlos Castillo Armas). 6 4 Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. (Cambridge: Harvard University David Rockefeller Center, 1999). 5 United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/ universal-declaration-human-rights/ 6 Ed. Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/
Questions to Consider: 1. How does U.S. Foreign Policy explain the country s actions in Guatemala in 1954? 2. Were the policies of Arévalo and Árbenz compatible with a capitalist system? To what extent did communism influence their regimes? 3. How do these policies limit the ability of the Guatemalan government to respond to crises?