Premium Episode 141 - United Fruit Company, Blood Bananas and the Guatemalan Genocide pt. 8: Origins of the Civil War and the Guatemalan Phoenix Program

Programmed to Chill

[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