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Guatemala, the United States, and Communism in the Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fredrick B. Pike
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Extract

An orderly and almost bloodless movement brought Guatemala independence from Spain in 1821. The tranquil inception of national existence contrasts vividly with the ensuing century and a quarter, a period marked by turbulence and a multitude of factors tending to retard political and economic development. The 1821 Revolution resulted only in the overthrow of Spanish rule; other traditions of colonial times were not so easily cast aside. Politics continued to be the exclusive domain of long-term, personalistic rulers, while economic policy remained under the control of a numerically small land-owning aristocracy. The political chiefs generally allied themselves with the conservative lords of land. Certainly this was true of Rafael Carrera, the uneducated mestizo who dominated the country for nearly twenty years in the mid-nineteenth century. The same pattern existed during the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, 1898–1920. In spite of a few concessions to liberalism, the construction of many roads, and the redistribution of a small amount of land, there is no doubt that the rule of Jorge Ubico, 1930–1944, relied for its main support upon the arch-conservative landed aristocrats.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 1955 , pp. 232 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1955

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References

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