Amanda Doyle

He's a democratically elected capitalist with a plan for land reform.

not by taking back from UFC the unused land given to it by an authoritarian in its pocket, but by buying it back at the same value that UFC itself had claimed the property worth on its own tax declaration.

But you'll be shocked to learn that UFC had grossly undervalued its land on its own tax filings to avoid paying taxes.

So when our Benz used those same declared values to calculate compensation, UFC went, and please forgive me, bananas.

Not only was this value that UFC had set itself an insult, but the problem was existential for UFC because suddenly here was a Guatemalan leader who was acting like a leader of his people and not a client of UFC, and this could not be permitted.

So UFC launched an aggressive lobbying campaign of the United States government and public relations campaign of the American people.

Luckily for UFC, it didn't have to do much convincing of the U.S.

government and Eisenhower administration.

The U.S.

Secretary of State at the time, John Foster Dulles, had been a UFC attorney while at Sullivan and Cromwell, advising UFC on corporate and international legal issues and helping protect the company's interests in Guatemala and other countries.

His brother, Alan Dulles, who was then the director of the CIA,

also worked at Sullivan and Cromwell during their representation of UFC.

The brother of John Morris Cabot, an important State Department official on Inter-American affairs, had been the president of the UFC.

And Ann Whitman, President Eisenhower's personal secretary, was married to Edmund Whitman.

UFC's PR director and principal lobbyist.

Okay, so you have to understand this is the early 1950s during the heart of Cold War anxieties.

And UFC and its friends in the government framed what was in actuality a threat to the profits of one corporate interest as a Cold War emergency.

American media was flooded with stories depicting Arbenz's land reforms as a communist threat, a Soviet foothold in the Western hemisphere, even though Guatemala had no alliance with the Soviet Union.

and a threat to regional stability.

Under the leadership of UFC-connected government officials, Americans began to view the Guatemalan government under Arbenz as a threat to American democracy, not what it actually was, a threat to multinational corporate profits.