Idmejid Je Sullitaa
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A history of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, 1906-1953 Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Sullivan, Edmund Joseph, 1915- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 04/10/2021 05:07:04 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/319133 A HISTORX OF. THE UNITED FRUIT GOMPAH ' .: ; . 'V 'v;; ' ': v ■ • :'1 sqs-4 9 s@ , - ■ W Idmejid Je SulliTaa : ; ' A Thesis :v "*alMritted"to the faculty of the Departaient of History and Political Science in partial fulfillm ent o f"the requirements for the degree of, • mSTER OF ARTS •' in the Graduate College $ Universityof Arizona,. ‘v This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillm ent of require ments for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the dean of the Graduate College when in their judg ment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: mBIE OF COMMTS Chapter ' ■ Page Xo.- ■ X liPPSO STJG X X O M o e„ Q 0 o v. o o & o o ■ o o* o o o o o o o o o © 1 XXo THE MRLY XEilES OF THE UMITED FRUIT AMD THE ENTRANCE , IHTO GUAT1M&M (X 899r X 906) 6 o-o- o , o ® ® , s. ^ o o © 16 IXIo BUHiDXMG A FXMANCXAL EMPIRE * $y. o o o o o o . o , i © , 3#:. I? o BET W E EM WORLD YifARSo a o o o ® o o o © o. o o o $ o o © ■ SO fo : • WORLD WAR XT AH) ITS AFTERlATHo o o . , o o . «© 69 BIBLXOGRAFHXo © o o o o © © o © o © o- o © © ©■ © © © ©© 86 • ’;: mps ; RAILROAD m ? OF GUATEMAXA * e 0 © o © » © © © *:-• a i l l GUATEMALA /Ju<Z,hu£TOn<jO r,OK-ctf SonVa nnn 3 A Ll/A D O R huo.c.Vi /) /V Railway Oy s tern O f Guatemala CMPTEE I : v:r : ■ d E rcbugtioh V: : ;v - ; : The republic @f. Guatemala lie s between 1SG 42® and 17° 49* Worth asd. 8 8 ° 10* and. @2° 30® Westo The total._area of the country is 42s.55S square miles, making it slightly smaller than Nicaragua in :extent® The ■ country ■ has a coast'.linb of about seventy miles on the Caribbean and. two hundred miles on the Pacific shores @ Its boundary on the north and .'wests which touches Mexico, runs from the Suehiate River in an irregular • line nortWestward until it-st#kds the parallel of 17° 491r North, which : it follows to the border of Belize, or British Honduras» The eastern ; border follows the meridian of 89 208 Test, southward to the river Sars- toon, which it follows eastward to the Gulf of Honduras ©n the Caribbean Sea® The Gulf of Honduras, an arm of the Caribbean, forms the short shoreline of Guatemala on the Atlantic side® . , The climate is healthful, even on the coasts, where tropical dis- eases that were sq long a curse of the country haye been largely con quered by modern, medicine and sanitation® The rainy season in the interior lasts from May to October, but on the coast often continues until December® The c o ld e st month i s January and the warmest i s Hay® The racial division in Guatemala is difficult to define,, as it has ' never been a matter of satisfactory public record® The Spaniards who .came w ith Pedro.. de A.lvarad© in 1524 were few Q A fter th e area was con- ' . quered no large numbers of Europeans came in to It® The m ajority of th e 1® Encyclopaedia Britannica, .1951, Vol© 10, .p® 941. Spanish soldiers married 'Indian women and many mixed bloods; or mestizos resniiedo v ^ . ■; As timd passed^' the nrnnber of. mixed bloods standing between the peninsulars and; white; ereoles and the Indian population increaseds though the high degree of raeial intezmxture found in some of the other Spanish settlements apparently never occurred 0 -Mixed bloods tended to marry mixed bloods or Spaniards.rather than to join their fortunes- with the aborigines® As a results the crossings between persons with varying degrees of Spanish ancestry Created a complicated scale of blood inherit ance as the mestizo class grew in numbers® Ihea Hegroes began to be importedj, s till another set of blood mix ture appeared e Africans were not permitted by law to Make alliances with Indianss but, there was no similar restriction as to their relations with ‘Spaniards and mestizosg arid the number of mulattoes steadily-increased* At the'present times the portion of the population of exclusively Suropean ancestry is negligible because the immigration- of European stocks which might increase its size has failed to occur. The last official census conducted in Guatemala was in 1940o The results showed that of the 3,283,209 people reported, sixty per cent were Indian, thirty per Cent mestizo, and less than five per cent white® The balance of roughly five per cent were Negroes and mixtures of Indian-and Negro', the la t t e r proudly c a llin g them selves ?,Garib. Indians18 in some sec tions, and probably, on the Caribbean shores, the descendants of the original Garib and Mosquito Indians and the slaves brought in by the Span ish conquerors® The Negro population is now entirely an importation from 2 ® Chester lioyd Jones, Guatemala, Past and Present (Minneapoliss The University of Minnespta Press, 1940}, p® 2690 8 the British West Indies brought in for work on the banana plantations of the United F ru it Gonpanjo Guatemala8s present constitution was adopted in 1945« Its b ill of rights reflects modem/trends by ineludihg; so-called social and cultural . guarantees = But these constitutional guarantees can be easily: suspended by the execu tive in time ©f e r is is o The c o n stitu tio n may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the national congress = This .seldom happens, howevers as the executive generally has the congress under controls and; unless he has the desire.;to. amend it, it is extremely : : difficult to get the Congress to act-on its owna ; The president Is chosen by direct vote of the people for a term of s ix years 5, and may not be reelected until twelve years have passed«. His power of appointment, is extensive and he may introduce b ills in congress«. .The separation pf powers in Guatemala exists only oh a formal level® Although the separation of powers is provided for in the constitution., ' Guatemala has always been under the thumb of a dictator who has been able t© stretch the constitution to suit his own purposess either by. suspend ing guarantees or by a liberal interpretation of it to suit his particular needs/ . ■ f t: ■ The foreign policy of the United States§ at.the outset of its career as a states was largely concerned with two kinds of problems, the: social; and economic problems created by the coming of the French Revolution - and those concerning neutrality. Few American statesmen looked outside their Own borders/ Those, who did began to think of the Caribbean, and especially the island of Guba» -Early in 1809$ Thomas Jefferson spoke of Cuba as an ■ ' ' So Ibidp, 1 0 2 * ' v'- ' " ; ' " " : interesting addition, to the Federal Uniono The importance of Cuba to • the' tinited States was again noted in 182S 'sdien John Quincy Adamss then secretary of states wrote a famous letter to the,American minister in Spain in which he said that the United States would not ;accept the trans fer of Cuba from Spain to a foreign power. Such declarations,, in diplo matic business, are very .likely to conceal a. more positive interest on ' 'A'-1 ; -/ . : : : ^ .. " ,-;v ; the part:of those who enunciate theme It is probable that had it not been for the slave states and their desife to acquire more territory for the purpose of greater representation in the Congresss the territorial desires of the United States might have found more vigorous expressiona The northern States presented a united front and.blocked a ll attenpts of the South to add the island to the Union as a slave state® ; In mny instances in ' the nineteenth century the United States was called upon to act as mediator in boundary disputes involving the states of Mexico and"Central Amerieao The dispute between Guatemala, and Mexico over the status of the State of Chiapas and the coastal district of Soeonusco was the most important of these® The United States was called upon to mediate this dispute in the early 1820*s, but it was not until many years later that the matter was finally settled under the regime of General just© Rufino Barrios of Guatemala» Mexico was given the State of Chiapas and a ll of the Department of Soeonusco, and Barrios was criticized in Guatemala* It Was charged by the conservatives that Barrios was dominated by the United States and whs induced by the State Department to give up these precious landsV In addition to the Mexiean-Guatemalan ' 4» Dexter PerExns, The United States and the ,Caribbean (Cambridges Harvard University Press , 1947), p® 1190 ..