Newspapers and the Militarized State in Counterrevolutionary Guatemala Damon Pichoff
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 "Acribillados Y Torturados": Newspapers and the Militarized State in Counterrevolutionary Guatemala Damon Pichoff Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERISITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “ACRIBILLADOS Y TORTURADOS:” NEWSPAPERS AND THE MILITARIZED STATE IN COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY GUATEMALA By: Damon Pichoff A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2007 The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Damon Pichoff defended on April 6, 2007 _______________________ Robinson Herrera Professor Directing Thesis _______________________ Matt Childs Committee Member _______________________ Max Paul Friedman Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named Committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to show my overwhelming gratitude to my major professor, Robinson A. Herrera. Surely without his insightful criticisms, this study would have suffered. His intimate knowledge of History and of Guatemala provided me with an invaluable source for advice and encouragement. I am indebted deeply to his editing prowess. I expect his guidance will continue to shape my understanding of history and of life. There are several people in the History Department who have contributed to this study. I want to thank Matt Childs and Rodney Anderson. Both have provided me with plenty of manual labor keeping my body fit and my spirits high. They have taught me the importance of carving out a special place for myself. Also, I thank Max Paul Friedman for posing a daunting intellectual challenge in my final semester in the History Department. My fellow graduate students have also provided me with encouragement and stimulating conversation. Lastly I want to thank my family. My wife, Lacey, has been a welcomed critic and supportive companion. I am also very grateful for the emotional support given by my brother, Dexter and my parents. This thesis, I hope, will provide other students and scholars some inspiration to continually question the relationship between the past and present. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………….……v ABSTRACT.………………………………………………………………...…………………...vi 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………...1 2. MULTIPLE MESSAGES OF VIOLENCE…………………………………………………..17 3. CONSUMER AND POLITICAL ADS……………………………………………………….41 4. DESARROLLO: CONTOURS OF DEVELOPMENT……………………………………….63 5. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………..81 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………90 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………113 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………...118 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Female Oriented Advert……………………………………………………………....90 Figure 2: Household Appliance Advert………………………………………………………....91 Figure 3: A Selection of Film Adverts…………………………………………………………..92 Figure 4: Florida Lifestyle Advert……………………………………………………………….93 Figure 5: To New Orleans Advert……………………………………………………………….94 Figure 6: Idealized Female Advert………………………………………………………………95 Figure 7: Idealized Male Advert…………………………………………………………………96 Figure 8: “Norforms” Advert…………………………………………………………….………97 Figure 9: Stereotyped Male in Advert…………………………………………………………...98 Figure 10: Male Virility Advert………………………………………………………………….99 Figure 11: Male Virility Advert………………………………………………………………….99 Figure 12: Male Virility Advert………………………………………………………………….99 Figure 13: Militarized Paint Advert…………………………………………………………….100 Figure 14: Plaza Cigarettes Advert……………………………………………………………..101 Figure 15: Gallo Beer Advert………………………………………………………………......102 Figure 16: Toyota Advert…………………………………………………………………….....103 Figure 17: Cine Paris Natives Advert………………………………………………………......104 Figure 18: Cine Paris Foreign Advert…………………………………………………………..104 Figure 19: Cine Paris with Anglicism Advert…………………………………………………..105 Figure 20: Sexualized Foreigner Film Advert……………………………………………….....105 Figure 21: Exoticized Africa Film Advert……………………………………………………...106 Figure 22: Natives Caricature Restaurant Advert………………………………………………106 Figure 23: Natives Caricature INDECA Government Advert………………………………….107 Figure 24: Rural Caricature IGSS Government Advert………………………………………...108 Figure 25: Ladino Caricature IGSS Government Advert……………………………………....108 Figure 26: Central American Brewery “We Believe in Guatemala” Advert…………………...109 Figure 27: Central American Brewery “We Have Faith in Guatemala” Advert……………….110 Figure 28: Central American Brewery “We Invest in Guatemala” Advert…………………….111 Figure 29: Carlos Arana Osorio Political Ad…………………………………………………...112 Figure 30: Carlos Arana Osorio Political Ad…………………………………………………...112 v ABSTRACT This thesis is a discursive analysis of the daily Guatemalan newspaper, El Imparcial. It is a cultural study of attitudes toward the illegitimate militarized state, the role of ethnicity and class, and modernization as a shared goal between traditional elites and the burgeoning class of military officers turned economic elites. Based on an examination of hundreds of pages of Guatemalan newspapers, spanning nearly a decade, and housed in special collections in the Latin American Libraries of the University of Florida and Tulane University, the thesis treats topics such as how elites chose to make sense of a rapidly changing and uncertain world. The thesis focuses on three central elements: violence reporting, consumer and political advertising, and reporting of national development. I argue that El Imparcial, as a supposed elite vehicle within the militarized state, presents many contradictory messages for its readers. El Imparcial wavered in its political support for the state as demonstrated by the trends in violence reporting; the paper’s consumer and political ads that sent similar contradictory messages of the state. Conversely, the adverts did send a consistent message of rigid social hierarchies promoted by a limited consumption style. El Imparcial’s coverage of developmental projects reveals the paper’s closest marriage to the militarized state. Development strategies served both civilian elites and the militarized state in mutually self-interested ways. Taken together, these elements reveal a complex cultural artifact with many opportunities for complicit and dissenting voices. It also shows how newspapers contributed to making the perception of violence into an unremarkable quotidian reality and how they encouraged the virulent dehumanization of Native peoples. The thesis shows the necessity of cultural history to explore the complexities of a contested history during a key transitional period in Guatemala’s history, from a state dominated by elites and protected by the military, into a full fledged militarized state where military officers became coequals with traditional elites. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “There has never been a separation between the private sector and the army… particularly in these times which are so crucial to our country. In these times, private initiative is very much threatened and the only thing that can save private initiative is the army.” —Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio, 19821 Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio, known as the “Butcher of Zacapa,” made the statement above, eight years after he left the presidency to his fellow military cohort, Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García.2 A belief in the central importance of the military has been a major theme of Guatemalan history since Central American Independence in 1821. But Arana Osorio’s words also speak of the growing obsession within the Guatemalan military of its self-hallowed destiny. Following the coup of 1954, the army has taken up a long and bloody struggle against its own people to define the boundaries of what it considers the appropriate nation. It hoped to define a nation on its own terms dispensing with resources as it saw fit. For this hope to come true, the military would have to create the militarized state. Military involvement in politics had been nothing new in Guatemala. A quick glance at the heads of state in the twentieth century implicates many infamous (and famous) names such as: General Jorge Ubico Castañeda and Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, to name but two. Clearly, the military has long served as springboard institution for individuals to seek power and prestige. What unites these individuals is definitely not a shared political ideology, neither is it a simple urge for self-enrichment. The union may arguably be their internal belief in the right to 1 Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History, Eds. Jonathan L. Fried, Marvin E. Gettleman, Deborah T. Levenson, and Nancy Peckenham (New York: Grove Press, 1982), pp.112-113 2 I borrow this term from Jim Handy. See Jim Handy, Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (Boston: South End Press, 1984), p. 191 1 rule. While Jorge Ubico maintained a right to rule by catering to the propertied elements of society; Jacobo Arbenz maintained a right to rule through popular sentiment. But neither basis could prove adequate in the face of immense internal and external pressures. The exertion of internal pressure came from the multitude of dissidents, poor Guatemalans calling for land and the few holding onto very large shares of the national wealth. These pressures contributed to Ubico’s deposition in 1944, but the army would play an important role supplying two of the three major