611.14/9–2552
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Guatemala (Schoenfeld)
- Participants: His Excellency Señor Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, Constitutional President of the Republic of Guatemala, and
- Mr. Rudolf E. Schoenfeld, American Ambassador.
After discussing the OFAR and Rubber Agreements1 with President Arbenz, I inquired whether he had any messages he wished me to convey to Washington.2
President Arbenz said he was eager to complete the construction of the Guatemalan Section of the Pan American Highway. He hoped that when I was in Washington I would do what I could to further that project. He expressed the opinion that the road was not only desirable for Guatemala but also for the unity of the hemisphere.
I told him I had no doubt that the American authorities desire to complete the Highway as early as practicable. As regarded the Guatemalan Section, three practical considerations were involved: (1) a covering agreement; (2) a Congressional appropriation; and (3) priorities in relation to available funds.
As he knew, there had been difficulty about a US-Guatemalan Agreement. Guatemala had had reservations about accepting certain of the standard specifications. President Arbenz said he was confident an agreement could be arrived at.
[Page 1040]As regarded (2), the U.S. Congress was not in session at this time. It would not convene until 1953. After it met it was still difficult to forecast when it would get round to making such an appropriation.
I went on to say that I thought in frankness I ought to add that public opinion also had an influence on the matter. As he knew, American public opinion with regard to Guatemala left much to be desired. The U.S. Congress was very sensitive to public opinion. It was a real factor.
President Arbenz said he thought the American press had painted a false picture of Guatemala. It gave the impression that the Guatemalan Government was Communist. As I knew, it was not Communist.
I said I doubted whether people in the United States regarded the Guatemalan Government as a Communist Government. But they did feel that the Communists were unduly influential. They saw Communists holding key positions in various agencies and institutions and many evidences of Communist activity. They concluded that this denoted a serious degree of Communist infiltration in the country and a tolerance for it.
I thought it a mistake to think this was merely an idea of the press. For example, Mr. Serafino Romualdi, an official of the American Federation of Labor, had publicly stated a few days ago that Communism had been losing ground throughout Latin America except in Guatemala. This came from an independent labor leader.
President Arbenz said that the Guatemalan people had had only a short experience with democracy. They had emerged only a few years ago from a long series of dictatorships. They were finding their way. As a practical matter, it had been the local experience that when attempts were made to suppress any political movement, it tended to grow. I said I recognized the risks of mere suppression. The art of governing, it seemed to me, consisted in finding means of coping with disruptive elements.
I knew it was claimed that there were few Communists in Guatemala. As a matter of fact, Communists were usually a minority everywhere. But the Communists had made a study of the key positions and always directed their efforts toward getting control of them. Their influence was consequently often far out of proportion to their numbers. Moreover, from my own experience, I knew how dangerous it was to underestimate them.
I went on to say that I was aware of the natural sensitivity to any interference in any country’s internal affairs. The problem of Communism in Guatemala was of course an internal problem. It was his problem. But it also had an international aspect.
Today at luncheon Dr. Noriega Morales3 (President of the Bank of Guatemala) and I were discussing the problem. He had mentioned the [Page 1041] great sensitivity here about outside interference. I told him the United States was a strong partisan of every country’s running its own affairs. It strongly favored the principle of “self-determination”. Its quarrel with the Communist movement was precisely that it sought to use local Communists in the interests of an alien power. The U.S. however also had an equally pronounced sensitivity, a sensitivity to international Communism. As he knew, it was making great expenditures of blood and treasure so that other countries could be free to live their own lives.
President Arbenz smilingly assented but expressed doubts as to the accuracy of the estimate of Communism in Guatemala. I went on to say that there was a feeling in the United States that the Guatemalan authorities, perhaps as a result of less direct experience with Communism, tended to underestimate the danger. I also thought it was desirable not to overlook the factor which public opinion abroad represented, even if he doubted its accuracy. Sometimes it was necessary to bear in mind La Rochefoucald’s maxim that the appearance of truth sometimes did more harm than truth itself.
President Arbenz was patently interested and attentive but gave no hint that he planned to take any action.
When I took my leave, he wished me a happy trip and said he would look forward to seeing me on my return.
- Reference is to the agreements relating to the establishment in Guatemala of agricultural and rubber research programs by the Department of Agriculture. Through the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations (OFAR), the United States maintained the Guatemalan Instituto Agropecuario Nacional which engaged in agricultural research and experimentation. The program was established pursuant to a memorandum of understanding and an exchange of notes signed at Guatemala City, July 15, 1944, supplemented and amended by a memorandum of understanding signed at Guatemala City, Mar. 10, 1945; for text of the agreement, see 58 Stat. (pt. 2) 1429 and 59 Stat. (pt. 2) 1471. The Guatemalan Government terminated the agreement on Aug. 4, 1950. The rubber research program was established in June 1941 through an informal letter of agreement which expired on June 30, 1951. Although both programs continued to operate without agreements, the negotiation of new agreements for existing cooperative programs was required under the provisions of the Mutual Security Act of 1951. In despatch 601, from Guatemala City, dated Jan. 12, 1953, not printed, Ambassador Schoenfeld reported on the status of negotiations for new agreements (714.5 MSP/1–1253). Additional pertinent documentation is in files 814.00 TA and 814.20 for the years 1953 and 1954.↩
- Ambassador Schoenfeld was in Washington for consultations at the Department of State from late September until early December; he returned to Guatemala on Dec. 4.↩
- Manuel Noriega Morales.↩