The old militarized humanitarianism: contradictions of counterinsurgent infrastructure in Cold War Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Debates about the ostensibly new militarized humanitarianism engage narrowly with historical and geographical precedents. Rarely taken into account is Kennedy-era counterinsurgency in Latin America which had much in common with the whole-of-government approach of the United States and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. This article addresses this gap in the literature by documenting counterinsurgent nation-building promoted by the US government in Latin America during the Cold War. Specifically, this article examines the tensions and contradictions that emerged as US and Guatemalan military and military-led organizations opened an agricultural frontier through the elaboration of infrastructure. Diplomats, army officers, and politicians organized a transnational institutional infrastructure that redirected flows of resources and knowledge. Military experts harnessed these flows to create development infrastructure – roads, hospitals, schools, airstrips, and more – that provided settlers with conditions to invest in land and rendered landscapes and populations legible to the state. Finally, a promotional infrastructure was created to persuade Guatemalan and international publics of the military’s contributions to national development at a time when counterinsurgency itself threatened national stability. This article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this racialized counterinsurgency for analysing contemporary imbrications of humanitarianism and militarism and for reckoning with histories and legacies of the Guatemalan civil war.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• counterinsurgency
• military civic action
• humanitarianism
• infrastructure
• Guatemala

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the many people who contributed to this study. Juanita Sunderg conducted archival research at the National Security Archive, and Barbara Bottini-Havrillay worked at the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica with the support of archivist Thelma Porres Morfin. Thanks to Laura Jordan and Gwen Muir for their able research assistance. I also acknowledge archivists Regina Greenwell at the Lyndon Baines Johnson library, Stephen Plotkin at the John F. Kennedy library, and Anna Carla Ericastilla at the Archivo General de Centro América, as well as the staff at the Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala and the Hemeroteca Nacional in Guatemala City. This article benefited from close readings by Killian McCormack, Silvia Posocco, Tracy Y. Zhang, and two anonymous reviewers, and especially from Alicia Ivonne Estrada and Emily Gilbert. For their valuable comments and questions, I acknowledge audiences from the University of San Carlos (Petén and Guatemala City), and the Departments of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University in Ontario. This research was supported by a grant from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, Programme d'etablissement du Nouveaux Chercheurs. The author takes responsibility for any remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Kennedy-era counterinsurgency in Latin America is well researched, e.g. Rabe (1999), Streeter (2001; 2006), and Field (2014), but largely omitted from debates about humanitarianism and militarism and the new counterinsurgency (but see Bhungalia 2015). These debates do engage, however, with Central American campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s which relied more on ‘assaultive violence’ (Koonings and Kruijt 2002; Grandin 2006; Greentree 2008; Bryan and Wood 2015; Lopez, Bhungalia, and Newhouse 2015; 2232; Hochmueller and Mueller 2016).

2. The precise definition of counterinsurgency used by the Kennedy administration is also used in the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, (US Army and Marine Corps 2007) which is the basis for the ‘new’ counterinsurgency: ‘those military, paramilitary, political economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat the subversive insurgency’ (Identical quotes are found in the two texts: Barber and Ronning 1966; 7; Sewall 2007b; xxiii).

3. Often characterized as economic development, Kennedy’s aid policies of the 1960s were also humanitarian since they aimed to relieve poverty by providing homes, work and land, health and schools (for more on Cold War development and humanitarianism, see Calhoun 2010; Attewell 2015; Bhungalia 2015).

4. The US military supported dozens of so-called frontier colonization projects in forested areas of Latin America (Barber and Ronning 1966; see also ‘Frontiers of South America’, Department of State, Policy Planning Council. NSF Country File, Latin America, Volume 4, Box 2, 1966.05.19. LBJ Archive). I employ the term “frontier colonization,” which was used by Guatemalan military and government officials, recognizing that it violently erases historical and existing indigenous claims and uses of the land.

5. While this document is without date or author, its resemblance to other declassified materials and an interview conducted for this study suggest it was written by the US MCA advisor to the Guatemalan armed forces in 1967.

6. In this regard, this article builds especially on the work of Hurtado (2010) and Posocco (2014).

7. Spain overcame Maya Itza resistance and established a small colonial settlement in the last years of the seventeenth century in what is now northern Petén. Some surviving indigenous people lived in the settlements and others created communities in forest areas beyond colonial influence (Jones 1998). During the nineteenth century, Mexico and Britain annexed Chiapas and British Honduras (Belize) respectively from the region (Quesada-Saldaña 2005), and by the time Arevalo inaugurated the national agricultural colony, the settled population of Petén, approximately 15,000 people, had more exchange with Mexico and Belize than with Guatemala (Schwartz 1990, 11).

8. Between 1963 and 1969, the US Military Assistance Program provided Guatemala with US$ 12.6 million, equal to 11% of the Guatemalan military budget. Of this amount, 29% was allocated to MCA, 49% to internal security, and 8% to supply operations (Sereseres 1971, 195).

9. From Robert Foster John Corrigan (US Embassy) to Department of State, Telegram #262, 5 January 1962, National Security Files, Box 101, John F. Kennedy National Archive. Note: like many Guatemalan politicians before and after, Ydigoras Fuentes believed that Belize rightfully belonged to Guatemala.

10. 2 August 1962. Acción Cívica del Ejército se hará cargo del FYDEP en Petén. Impacto. No page number.

11. Department of State Airgram from Albert Post, the Counselor of US Embassy for Economic Affairs to the State Department on 12 September 1962, A-143.

12. Consistent with the ‘new’ whole-of-government approach, this committee included representatives from the Mayor’s office, the municipalities, FYDEP, the postal service, the Catholic Church, the rural guard, prominent hospitals, and schools, as well as judges, business leaders, journalists, and more (Boburg 2013, 224–5).

13. Casasola’s attempt to exclude Q’eqchi’ was problematic because they have lived and travelled in the region since time immemorial.

14. Internal FYDEP communication, 24 February 1964, in Recopilación expositiva para asuntos tierras en Petén. Municipal library, Flores, Petén.

15. Before and after his deployment in Guatemala, this officer fought in US counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam. He would later participate in MCA elsewhere in Latin America and eventually served as commander of the United States Southern Command.

16. It is important not to overstate FYDEP’s reach. FYDEP worked mainly in the larger towns and on the road-building operations (Hurtado 2010).

17. While the Guatemalan army has never mounted a large-scale invasion, many have been planned (Vela-Castañeda 2010).

18. As the population recognized that military officials put personal and military institutional interests above the needs of settlers by accepting bribes, speculating on land, and stealing resources, they lost faith in FYDEP and other authorities, diminishing the effects of MCA (Schwartz 1987; Vela-Castañeda 2010; Hurtado 2010; Grandia 2013).

19. Interview transcript conducted by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) consultant for the writing of Casasola’s memoir, published in 1968 (author’s collection).

20. Thomas L. Hughs to the Secretary of State. 23 December 1967. US Department of State, Guatemala: A counterinsurgency gone wild. <http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB11/docs/doc04.pdf>.

21. Exemplary edited volumes concerned with the war and its aftermath dedicate little or no analysis to political dynamics in Petén (Grandin, Levenson-Estrada, and Oglesby 2012; McAllister and Nelson 2013).