The 1954 CIA Coup in Guatemala :: CIA Guatemalan Government Economy Essays

The 1954 CIA Coup in GuatemalaThe 1954 coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Guatemala has long been acknowledged to have been the result of CIA clandestine action. Recently declassified documents have shown a new, and more sinister light, on the CIAs involvement in an action that gave birth to some of the most viciously dictatorial regimes in ripe history. No one at this extremum leave behind dispute the original involvement, alone there are windlessness those who maintain that this is all water over the dam of history and that the US has not had direct responsibility for the actions of a Guatemalan government since the 1954 coup. (Evans-Pritchard)I intend to depict the background of the political circumstances that lead to the coup. This will include Guatemala, the US and the world scene at the time, when anti-communism contended with communism as claim ideologies. I will contend that the coup was all but inevitable in the prevailing political climate o f 1954. But that remedy doesnt make it right. We have been finding out for n too soon half a century how wrong it was. Opinions have always varied with the positions of their adherents, but I believe there is one thing that can no all-night be disputed the CIA catalyzed a turn for the worse, even to the inhuman, for many Latin American governments by its actions in managing the Guatemalan coup. They provided the essential weapon for the modern national security state, the knowledge of how to organize an efficient apparatus of state repression and terror. The wink and the nod that was all somehow acceptable to your primary shop caused many a dictator to adopt these methods to take and maintain power. solitary(prenominal) recently have internal CIA documents become available, allowing researchers to begin to look wrong the CIA itself. Partial as these releases are, they supply valuable insight into the machinations of this secretive organization. These documents outline the begin ning of the Terror lets hope we are seeing the end of it.The early 1950s was a time of tension and uncertainty in the world. The parky War replaced hot warfare. Humankind had gone from the terror of actual war to the terror of the potential of nuclear war. The situation was aggravated by the current conflict in Korea which pitted the forces of the Free World against the specter of outside(a) Communism. Anticommunist hysteria gripped the US political scene, mirroring many of the excesses of the Stalinist enemy that it was in struggle with in the international arena.