“Amplia ayuda externa" contra "la cangrena comunista": Las fuerzas anticomunistas y la finalización de la operacion PBFORTUNE, Octubre de 1952

Abstract

In contrast to the vast literature on Operation PBSUCCESS, this article explains the lesser-known history of the efforts of the self-proclaimed “anti-communist” dictatorships in the Caribbean Basin in trying to undermine the Guatemalan Revolution. Throughout the Revolution, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, Honduran dictator Tiburcio Carías, and Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo financed the conspiracies of various Guatemalan exiles against the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz. In 1952, these regional anti-communist forces organized the foundation of the first clandestine conspiracy against the Guatemalan government of Arbenz that received the support of the U.S. government and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Operation PBFORTUNE. As Colombian official Eduardo Zuleta Ángel explains in the Dominican official’s memorandum, these Latin American leaders held their own anti-communist ideology and supported Operation PBFORTUNE and the overthrow of Arbenz’s government for their own reasons.