Programmed to Chill Jimmy Falun Gong

[originally published on Patreon March 15, 2024]


Most stories of the 1954 coup end shortly thereafter. We continue with Guatemala barreling right into the Guatemalan Civil War. I start with the Justice Department's antitrust case against United Fruit Company in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 coup. 



From there, I go into the curious case of Carlos Manuel Pellecer, a "communist firebrand" who was causing problems for the Arbenz government. Before the coup, I found declassified CIA documents showing Pellecer's seance to contact the ghost of Josef Stalin. In the wake of the coup, it eventually became clear that Pellecer was a longtime CIA informant. 



[note: I didn't realize when writing these episodes but the Jon Lee Anderson biography of Che  laid out Guevara's suspicions of Pellecer, of which I was unaware. Che clocked Pellecer, too, lol]



In November 30, 1960, a faction of left-leaning Guatemalan military officers began an uprising which is generally viewed as the start of the 36-year Guatemalan civil war. They were responding to Bay of Pigs training bases in Guatemala as one of several direct instigations. 



Meanwhile, various other groups were beginning their respective wars against the Guatemalan government including the frequently-banned Guatemalan Labor Party. Eventually, this would coalesce as the FAR, (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, or Rebel Armed Forces) which received Cuban support. In response, President Kennedy signed off on a pacification plan which would escalate to near-Vietnam proportions.

A series of increasingly right-wing presidents would then take office, each one with the novel premise of taking a hard line with the rebels. Formal death squads began to form, and US counterinsurgency troops coincidentally appeared around the same time. Each power base in Guatemalan society had their own respective death squads, and foreign fascists also appear to have blooded combatants in extrajudicial killings in Guatemala.

Finally, I discuss what appears to be a bust-out of UFC at the hands of strange con men and mafia elements including Eli Black (Leon Black's father) and Carl Lindner Jr. (Ohio ice cream billionaire), eventually acquired by Chiquita.

Songs:
The American Way by Sacred Reich
Banana Phone by Raffi

[originally published on Patreon March 14, 2024]


I open by discussing Operation SHERWOOD, the CIA's covert attempt to support Castillo Armas' invasion, run by Tracy Barnes and David Atlee Phillips, intentionally modeled after Orson Welles' infamous 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. 



From there, I discuss the invasion proper, the Guatemalan government's diplomatic and military responses, and the chances of success without US air support. I go through the various causes of Arbenz's sudden resignation and attempt to weigh the pros and cons of continued resistance. I also attempt to evaluate the US national security state's evaluation of these events, especially through the lens of the Bay of Pigs invasion which would include so many of the same actors. 



I cover what types of teams the CIA sent in after the coup and what they left in their wake, including plans for the creation of death squads, hit lists, and an overview of methods and training of said assassins, which included the infamous CIA manual on assassinations. I discuss Armas' initial actions, both punitive and compensatory, including paying back various Americans who assisted him. Then returned the US mafiosi, one of whom may have actually killed Armas in 1957. 



I lay out what happened to most participants in the 1954 coup, and then tell the story of a plucky Argentine doctor caught up in the madness of Guatemalan history.

Songs:
Hit Mane by Maxo Kream
Luces y Sombras by Alberto Iglesias
Piano Theme by Michael Gordon
Fusil Contra Fusil by Silvio Rodriguez

[originally published on Patreon March 13, 2024]



I begin the episode with the elephant in the room - the Dulles brothers owning United Fruit Company stock. I explore Sullivan & Cromwell's connections to UFC as well as the Cabot family's ownership of UFC stock, and other government insiders. Depending on your inclinations, you can tell the story of the 1954 coup from the perspective of UFC or the CIA, but as it turns out, UFC and CIA were working symbiotically the whole time and were influencing each other in complicated feedback-loop ways.



I tell the story of Operation PBFORTUNE, the CIA's first attempt to overthrow the Arbenz government. Before that point, UFC hired Edward Bernays to promote the sale of bananas and to manage PR via weaponizing the Red Scare to go from the defensive to the offensive.



I discuss the dire state of US journalism about Guatemala. I go into the CIA's infiltration into the American Federation of Labor's attempts to do labor organizing in Guatemala. Then came the lobbying, with UFC first buying Democrats via Tommy the Cork Corcoran, then Republicans via John Clements. They acquired Castillo Armas, of whom much will be spoken soon. 



Along the way, InterArmCo and Howard Hughes show up, and various Latin American countries were bought off. Arbenz outwitted the State Department's arms embargo but lost the war when their covert weapons purchase was revealed in the press.

I argue that Arbenz was not the political babe in the woods or naif that he's been made out to be. Finally, I cover Guatemala's increasing isolation on the world stage before the events of June 1954.

Songs:
Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas
Chiquita Bananas Commercial
Banana Co by Radiohead

[originally published on Patreon February 27, 2024]



I begin with an extended meditation about Arbenz's position in 1951 and the state of the Guatemalan economy. This leads to a discussion of Decree 900, the agrarian reform bill which was passed in 1952. I discuss what it did and did not entail and compare it to Mexico's agrarian reform law as well as the US Alliance for Progress recommendations later. Despite this, United Fruit Company's leadership began to close ranks and draw up battle plans. That leads us to a natural question: who exactly owned UFC, anyway?



I discuss UFC ownership particularly through the various boards of directors both before and after the Zemurray era. Unsurprisingly, it consists of many Boston Brahmins and, for lack of a better term, the Power Elite from the US, the UK, and Germany. At one point, the Swedes try, successfully, to buy in.



I make a major tangent via UFC vice president Arthur Pollan and his feud with Honduran communist Manuel Cálix Herrera, whose story I also share. Then, discussing Zemurray's new guard, I bring up Hillyer Vaughn Rolston and the curious case of the Rolston Letter. The Rolston Letter is like a mini-Dreyfus Affair, which occurred shortly before la gran huelga de 1954, the great strike of 1954 in Honduras.


I analyze various analyses of the Rolston letter which allows us to discuss the Honduran coup of 2009. This, in turn, allows us to discuss the less-known ZEDES, or economic development zones, which are attempting to break up and sell off Honduran sovereignty piece by piece, as in the case of Próspera in Roatán, Honduras.

Finally, I discuss the occulted nature of family trusts and how the blood-soaked stolen wealth of Central America exists in perpetuity in New England sending many a failson and faildaughter to clown colleges or academic sinecures for perpetuity.

note: I wrote the baleada thread after I wrote this episode, and it weaves through much of this history - https://twitter.com/JimmyFalunGong/status/1755993585890054451

Songs:
Wealth Won’t Save Your Soul by Hank Williams Jr.
El Machangay, a song from the Great Strike of 1954
Verde by Manzanita

[originally published on Patreon February 27, 2024]



I begin discussing Guatemala as early as possible - the Olmec and Mayan civilizations, and the 200 year bloody pacification war against them by the Spanish conquistadores and the Captaincy General of Guatemala. 



From there, I jump to Manuel Estrada Cabrera, the president from 1898 to 1920. Cabrera was the president who began signing vast concessions over to Minor Keith, IRCA, and therefore UFC. Cabrera was unseated by Guatemala's National Assembly. 



Next, I discuss Jorge Ubico, president from 1931 to 1944. Ubico oversaw the forced transfer of Mayans into the wage labor economy via taxation and anti-vagrancy laws, which was fitting because he was basically a fascist. 



This led to the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944 - the other October Revolution. The revolution of 1944 led to the 10 Years of Spring from 1945 to 1955. I go through Juan Jose Arévalo, president from 1945 - 1951, and his apparently genuine if misguided attempts at Arevalismo, or spiritual socialism. 



I briefly cover Jacobo Arbenz's election as president, knowing full well that we will have to take our time with Arbenz and the events surrounding his presidency.



Guatemala by Swae Lee, Jxmmi, Rae Sremmurd

[originally published on Patreon February 23, 2024]



In this episode I discuss Colombia's relationship to United Fruit Company aka El Pulpo. In particular, I open with the massive strikes against UFC in 1928 culminating in the massacre at Ciénaga which was so memorably fictionalized in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad. 

From there, I discuss the curious case of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and his assassination in 1948 which triggered El Bogotazo, a wave of civil unrest and violence that would affect Colombia for years to come. I discuss the Rosicrucian-brainwashed patsy shooter Juan Roa Sierra and his manipulation by a German astrologer spy named Johann Umland Gerät. 

It gets even weirder as a track down claims by a Sicilian-American WWII vet named John Meeples Espirito who appears to have been involved in Operation ARTICHOKE and who found his way to revolutionary Cuba. When arrested, he told Cuban intelligence of his role in the assassination of Gaitán - claims which Cuban intelligence could never definitively prove and so did not widely publish. 

The potential reason for that, according to some, was because of Fidel Castro's role and actions in El Bogotazo, which remains obscured, as through a glass darkly. Much remains unknown.