Building their own Cold War in their own backyard: the transnational, international conflicts in the greater Caribbean basin, 1944–1954

Abstract

Incorporating previously-untapped Dominican, Costa Rican, and Cuban sources, this article reveals how the international Cold War and US policy towards Guatemala overlapped with long-standing regional conflicts in the greater Caribbean basin. During the post-war democratic openings, exiles with patron presidents or dictators composed two loosely-formed networks seeking to destabilise opposing governments. The resulting inter-American conflicts contributed to critical events in the region, most notably US officials’ Cold War-influenced policy to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in the early 1950s. These conflicts persisted and continued overlapping with the international Cold War while often challenging US officials’ Cold War goals.

Notes

¹ Cable 0641Z, LINCOLN to Director, 11 June 1954, Document 136204, in Guatemala Collection, Central Intelligence Agency, online at: http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/guatemala.

² Department of State Instruction CA-781, John Foster Dulles, 2 August 1954, in Folder “350 Costa Rica 1953,” “Venezuela, US Legation and Embassy, Caracas, Classified General Records, 1935–1961” [Hereafter US Embassy Caracas], Box 91, Record Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State [Hereafter RG84], National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, United States [Hereafter NARA2].

³ Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2^nd Ed. (New York: Norton, 1993); John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne, 1994); Michael L. Krenn, The Chains of Interdependence: U.S. Policy toward Central America, 1945–1954 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1996); James Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism, and Inter-American Relations: Guatemala, Bolivia, and the United States, 1945–1961 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1999); David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Steven Schwartzberg, Democracy and U.S. Policy in Latin America during the Truman Years (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).

⁴ Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985, 2nd Ed. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985); Bryce Wood, The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985); Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Rev. Ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Michael Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008).

⁵ Max Paul Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent Scholarship on United States-Latin American Relations”, Diplomatic History 27.5 (November 2003): 636.

⁶ Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

⁷ Gilbert M. Joseph, “What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies”, and Daniela Spenser, “Standing Conventional Cold War History on Its Heads”, in In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008): 7, 381–2.

⁸ Ariel Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997); Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Tanya Harmer, Allende's Chile & the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Greg Grandin, “Off the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War”, in A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig (Malden: Blackwell, 2006): 426; Gilbert M. Joseph, “Latin America's Long Cold War: A Century of Revolutionary Process and U.S. Power”, in A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America's Cold War, ed. Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010): 400–1.

⁹ Charles D. Ameringer, The Democratic Left in Exile: The Antidictatorial Struggle in the Caribbean, 1945–1959 (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1974); Thomas M. Leonard, The United States and Central America, 1944–1949: Perceptions of Political Dynamics (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984); Charles D. Ameringer, The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946–1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); Richard E. Clinton, Jr., The United States and the Caribbean Legion: Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Origins of the Cold War in Latin America, 1945–1950 (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation: Ohio University, 2001); Jorge Renato Ibarra Guitart, Las relaciones cubano-dominicanas: su escenario hemisférico, 1944–1948 (Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2011).

¹⁰ Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, Eds., Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

¹¹ James Dunkerley, “Guatemala”, in Bethell and Roxborough, Latin America: 300–1.

¹² Harmer, Allende's Chile: 2; Hal Brands, Latin America's Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010): 2, 7; see the collections in Joseph and Spenser, In from the Cold; Grandin and Joseph, A Century of Revolution; Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, eds., Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).

¹³ See Bethell and Roxborough, Latin America.

¹⁴ Gustavo Alemán Bolaños, Un Lombrosiano Somoza, 1939–1944 (Guatemala: Editorial Hispania, 1945): 22.

¹⁵ Ángel Zúñiga Huete, La Carta del Atlántico (México: 1943).

¹⁶ Unión Democrática Antinazista Dominicana, América contra Trujillo (Havana: 1944), in Expediente “1945, Código 5/C”, Secretaría de Estado de Relaciones Exteriores [Hereafter SERREE], IT 2903226, Fechas extremas 1945–1952, Código 93, 606, [Hereafter IT 2903226], Fondo Presidencia, Archivo General de la Nación, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic [Hereafter AGN].

¹⁷ Alfredo Noguera Gómez, Expediciones Audaces, o el Ocaso del Tirano Somoza (Costa Rica).

¹⁸ Comité Liberal Demócrata de Honduras en México, Homenaje a las Víctimas de San Pedro Sula (Mexico, 1945): 22, 66–7.

¹⁹ Federación Estudiantil Universitaria, Los Universitarios de Santo Domingo Frente a la Dictadura Trujillista (Mexico: 1945): 5–6, in Expediente “1945, Código 5/C,” SERREE, IT 2903226, AGN.

²⁰ No. 31, John B. Stewart to Secretary of State, 10 January 1944, in “Nicaragua, US Legation and Embassy, Managua, Classified General Records, 1938–1961”, [Hereafter US Embassy Managua], Box 6, RG84, NARA2.

²¹ Report No. R13-45, Guy G. Goddard, 12 February 1945, in “Honduras, Tegucigalpa Legation and Embassy, Classified General Records, 1940–1958”, [Hereafter US Embassy Tegucigalpa], Box 26, RG84, NARA2.

²² A-297, Ellis Briggs to Secretary of State, 27 June 1944, in “Dominican Republic, US Embassy and US Consulate, Santo Domingo, Classified General Records, 1944–1961”, [Hereafter US Embassy Santo Domingo], Box 2, RG84, NARA2.

²³ Informe 275, Roberto Despradel to Manuel A. Peña, 29 August 1945, in Expediente “Legajo 3348 Oficios y Correspondencia, 1950,” SERREE, IT 2903348, Fechas extremas 1944–1950, Código 658, AGN; No. 118, Cyril Andrews to Anthony Eden, 4 October 1944, in File “38298: Dominican Relations with Caribbean Neighbors”, in Foreign Office papers 371 [Hereafter FO371], National Archives, London, England [Hereafter NAL].

²⁴ No. 2060-A, John Erwin to Secretary of State, 15 October 1945; Juan Pinillos, 23 May 1945, both in US Embassy Tegucigalpa, Box 26, RG84, NARA2.

²⁵ Report No. R-88-47, Nathan Brown, 1 August 1947, in US Embassy Tegucigalpa, Box 33, RG84, NARA2.

²⁶ See “Interview with Guatemalan Minister for Foreign Affairs”, Andrew Donovan to Secretary of State, 14 August 1946, in “Guatemala, US Embassy, Guatemala City, Classified General Records, 1937–1961”, [Hereafter US Embassy Guatemala City Classified], Box 14, RG84, NARA2.

²⁷ “Carlos Padilla y Padilla”, Gordon Reid to Ernest Siracusa, 5 January 1951, in Folder “Chronological Memoranda, 1951, “Bureau of Inter-American Affairs/Office of Middle American Affairs, Subject Files, 1947–1956”, Box 3, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State [Hereafter RG59], NARA2.

²⁸ “Memorandum de conversación sostenida la noche del 28 de diciembre de 1945, en Ciudad Trujillo, por el funcionario que suscribe con el General venezolano Rafael Simón Urbina”, in Expediente “1945, Memorandum de conversación con el general Rafael Simón Urbina, Código 5/c,” SERREE, IT 2903226, AGN.

²⁹ José Vicente Pepper to Emilio Zeller, 12 July 1946, and Emilio Zeller to R. Paíno Pichardo, 14 July 1946, both in Expediente “1946, Cartas de Zeller y Pepper, Código 5/c,” SERREE, IT 2903226, AGN.

³⁰ See Rafael Simón Urbina, Victoria, dolor y tragedia: relación cronológica y autobiográfica (Ciudad Trujillo: L. Sánchez Andújar, 1946); “Carta del general Urbina al ‘País,’ de Caracas”, La Nación (Ciudad Trujillo), 4 February 1946; No. 26, Charles Burrows to Secretary of State, 07 January 1948, in Folder “710 Venezuela, 1948”, US Embassy Santo Domingo, Box 22, RG84, NARA2.

³¹ See No. 1558, John Erwin to Secretary of State, 28 December 1944, in US Embassy Guatemala City Classified, Box 10, RG84, NARA2; Report. No. 24–45, Nathan A. Brown, 05 April 1945, in US Embassy Tegucigalpa, Box 26, RG84, NARA2.

³² No. 9198, Allan Dawson to Secretary of State, 06 September 1946, in US Embassy Santo Domingo, Box 11, RG84, NARA2.

³³ Informe 275, Despradel a Peña Batlle, 29 August 1945, AGN.

³⁴ See the chapter on Betancourt in Schwartzberg, Democracy and U.S. Policy, as well as the various writings by Betancourt.

³⁵ Piero Gleijeses, “Juan José Arévalo and the Caribbean Legion”, Journal of Latin American Studies 21.1 (February 1989): 133–45; Schwartzberg, Democracy and U.S. Policy.

³⁶ The items obtained concerning the Cayo Confites expedition derive from Record Group 84 for the US Embassies in Havana, Santo Domingo, Port-au-Prince, and Caracas; files at the Archivo Nacional and the Archivo Central del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores in Havana; files at the National Archives in London; and files at the Archivo General de la Nación in Santo Domingo. Histories have been produced about Cayo Confites by José Diego Grullón, Humberto Vázquez García, and Charles Ameringer, but no historian has brought together the sources from all of these countries, as well as those that might be found in Caracas and Guatemala City.

³⁷ Rómulo Betancourt to Ramón Grau San Martín, 21 August 21 1947, in “Expediente 1947”, Caja América Latina/Venezuela/1909–1956/Patrimonio, Archivo Central del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Havana, Cuba [Hereafter ACMINREX].

³⁸ Arturo Despradel to Rafael Trujillo, 16 July 1947, in SERREE, Caja IT 2903349, Fechas extremas 1947–1950, Código 658, [Hereafter IT 2903349], AGN.

³⁹ “Dominican Republic Foreign Office, Official Announcement”, 18 July 1947, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁴⁰ Cable 558, Gustavo Julio Henríquez to Rafael Trujillo, 27 August 1947; and Cable, Rafael Trujillo to Gustavo Julio Henríquez, 28 August 1947, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁴¹ No. 361, Edwin Jackson Kyle to Secretary of State, 9 October 1947, 814.00/10-947, in “Decimal File 814: Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Guatemala 1945–1949”, RG59, NARA2, Roll 1, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1527.

⁴² Joaquín Balaguer to Rafael Trujillo, 18 May 1948, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁴³ 308, Víctor Ant. Fernández J. to Arturo Despradel, 5 August 1947, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁴⁴ Confidencial 290, Víctor Ant. Fernández J. to Emilio García Godoy, 28 July 1947; and “EXPOSICION SOBRE LOS ASUNTOS RELACIONES con GUATEMALA”, Arturo Ramírez, 27 July 1947, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁴⁵ As with the Cayo Confites, items regarding the Browder and Eisenhart cases are scattered throughout various US Embassy files and Dominican collections. For US materials, one can consult Boxes 15 through 19 in US Embassy Santo Domingo, RG84, NARA2, as well as Box 5625, Decimal File 1945–1949, RG59, NARA2.

⁴⁶ José María Nouel, 27 June 1947, in Expediente “1947, Memorandum del Ministro Consejero José María Nouel, hijo, Código 5/C”, SERREE, IT 2903226, AGN.

⁴⁷ A few reports on this plot are scattered in the US Embassy files, but see No. 116, Maurice Bernbaum to Secretary of State, 3 March 1948; No. 120, Maurice Bernbaum to Secretary of State, 5 March 1948; No. 129, Maurice Bernbaum to Secretary of State, 10 March 1948, in Folder “800 Nicaragua, General Confidential, 1948”, US Embassy Managua, Box 26, RG84, NARA2.

⁴⁸ See Ameringer's works and Kyle Longley, The Sparrow and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States during the Rise of José Figueres (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).

⁴⁹ Anastasio Somoza to Rafael Trujillo, 17 April 1948; and Anastasio Somoza to Rafael Trujillo, 10 April 1948, in Expediente “1948, Código 5/C”, SERREE, IT 2904052, Fechas extremas 1948–1956, Ref. Antigua 2339 [Hereafter IT 2904052], AGN.

⁵⁰ No. 99, René de Lamar y Capó to Carlos Hevia, 14 December 1948, in “Expediente 1948”, “Caja A Latina/Costa Rica/1914–1949/Ordinario 1,” ACMINREX; Undated Cable, Anastasio Somoza to Rafael Trujillo’; and Handwritten Note, Telésforo Calderón to Rafael Damirón Díaz, 25 September 1948, in Expediente “1948–1950, Código 5/C”, SERREE, IT 2903961, Fechas extremas 1948–1951, Ref. Antigua 2270, AGN.

⁵¹ “Anti-Communist Pact”, with No. 172, Maurice Bernbaum to Secretary of State, 2 April 1948, Folder “800 Nicaragua, General Confidential, 1948”, US Embassy Managua, Box 26, RG84, NARA2.

⁵² “MEMORANDUM”, with “Unsettled Conditions in Central American-Caribbean Area”, George Marshall, 25 June 1948, “Costa Rica, US Embassy, San José, Classified General Records, 1938–1961”, Box 64, RG84, NARA2.

⁵³ Cable, Anastasio Somoza to Rafael Trujillo, 25 October 1948, in Expediente “1948–1949, Código 5/C”, SERREE, Caja IT 2904052, AGN.

⁵⁴ See Undated Cable, Costa Rican Legation in Managua, in Expediente “2775, Relaciones Exteriores, Nicaragua”, Archivo Nacional de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica [Hereafter ANCR]; Undated Cable, Costa Rican Legation in Managua, in Expediente “2574-bis, Relaciones Exteriores, Nicaragua”, ANCR.

⁵⁵ 381–50, Ramón Brea Messina to Telésforo Calderón, 27 October 1950, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁵⁶ No. 128, Héctor Incháustegui Cabral to Rafael Trujillo, 28 January 1950, in Expediente “1950, Código 5/C”, SERREE, IT 2904052, AGN.

⁵⁷ No. 236, Rafael Damirón Díaz to Virgilio Díaz Ordóñez, 26 November 1949, in SERREE, IT 2903349, AGN.

⁵⁸ Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi to Rafael Trujillo, 21 July 1952, in Expediente “Nicaragua, Sec. Calderón, 1948–1952, Código 5/C”, SERREE, IT 2903958, Fechas extremas 1939–1952, Ref. Antigua 2270, AGN.

⁵⁹ Despatch 388, Henry A. Hoyt, 28 August 1952, in Folder “320 Venezuela and Colombia, Jan 1950-Dec 1952”, US Embassy Caracas, Box 79, RG84, NARA2.

⁶⁰ Edward G. Miller, Jr., to Fletcher Warren, 8 October 1952, in Folder “350 Caribbean Area, Jan 1950-Dec 1952”, in US Embassy Caracas, Box 79, RG84, NARA2.

⁶¹ Declassified US embassy files as well as items found in Records of the Office of Middle American Affairs, Records Relating to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, 1951–1955, RG59, NARA2, reveal how State Department officials struggled to prevent the invasion of Costa Rica, even as they noted the actions of the counter-revolutionary network.

⁶² Informe Confidencial, Unnamed to Mario Esquivel, 21 April 1954, in Expediente “2637, Relaciones Exteriores, Nicaragua”, ANCR.

⁶³ Roberto Rodríguez Segura to José Figueres, 27 November 1954, Expediente “607, Relaciones Exteriores, Cuba”, ANCR.

⁶⁴ Informe, Unnamed, Undated, in Expediente “2711, Relaciones Exteriores, Nicaragua”, ANCR. Alberto Cañas, Costa Rica's Ambassador to the United Nations between 1948 and 1949 and Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations between 1955 and 1956, suggested that the individual who met with Somoza and produced this report was Jaime Solera, a trusted confidante of both Figueristas and Calderonistas, and the US report below confirmed this; Alberto Cañas, interview by author, 9 October 2013.

⁶⁵ Telegram, Robert Woodward to Department of State, 22 December 1954, Document 613, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: Volume IV, The American Republics (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1983): 1390.

⁶⁶ See Longley, The Sparrow and the Hawk.

⁶⁷ See items in Folder “320 Venezuela and Guatemala 1953”, US Embassy Caracas, Box 89, RG84, NARA2.

⁶⁸ See Informe Confidencial, Nicolás Cartaya Gómez, 30 April 1955, in Expediente “C-4 Programa oficial para la toma de posesión de Batista”, “Jefe del Departamento de Dirección, Departamento de Dirección, Marina de Guerra”, [Hereafter JDDDDMG], Archivo del Instituto de Historia de Cuba, Havana, Cuba [Hereafter AIHC]; No. 94-955, E. A. Cantillo, 1 May 1955, in Expediente “C-5 Actividades subversivas desde México”, JDDDMG, AIHC.

⁶⁹ Guillermo Salazar, 27 April 1958, in Expediente “1958”, “Caja: A Latina/Costa Rica/1950–1961/Ordinario 2”, ACMINREX.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Coy Moulton

Aaron Coy Moulton is completing a doctorate in history at the University of Arkansas with a dissertation entitled ‘Rafael Trujillo, the United States, and the International, Transnational Counter-Revolution against the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944–1952.’ He is currently on a Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Truman Library Institute. Email: [email protected]