Fruit of the Doom: The Dismantling of Guatemala

The final episode covers how presidents after Ike engaged with Guatemala. Superficially idealist, practically brutal and like so many other countries in Latin America, things get exponentially worse when Reagan shows up. The civil war escalates as right wing paramilitaries roam the countryside, murdering and kidnapping supposed insurgents with impunity. The military class amasses power and status...

Arbenz is exiled as Guatemala backslides into facsism with the State Departments approval. But the new military government presses too far, igniting a civil war that would tear the country apart for decades to come. United Fruit faces its own obstacles as the 20th century progresses, finding itself subsumed by the twisted economic logic that rewards financial speculation instead of actually produc...

Where the League of Nations failed, the UN will succeed, right? Will international diplomacy and cooperation act as a bulwark for Guatemala's defense? How will the CIA organized invasion succeed with scant fighting forces and very little popular support? What fate will meet Jacobo Arbenz? Will these rhetorical questions compel you to tune into this episode? Only one of the above questions is yet t...

The counterfeit liberation force finds it's frontman as the CIA plots behind the scenes to put their pawns in place while diplomatic attempts to resolve the situation stall. An analysis of the efficacy of Arbenz's reform and the ideological composition of his government is included within to answer the question; was his regime REALLY a "communist beachhead"?

What happens when United Fruit's stockholders are elected to the Senate? What happens when the legal counsel of United Fruit rises to the highest office in the State Department? What happens when the head of the CIA is personal friends with the owners of the New York Times, Time and Life Magazine? Revolutionary Guatemala gets off to a rough start.

We are first introduced to the iconic yellow fruit that changed the fates of an entire region and the fortunes of a few men, including a forgotten American titan of agriculture and industry, and a sinister monopoly known colloquially as "The Octopus" We will also briefly cover the socio-economic context that made Guatemala ripe for both bananas and revolution.