Under Western Eyes

July seems to be the month for violence in Guatemala. In that month of 1949, the assassination of Colonel Francisco J. Arana, chief of the armed forces, sparked a brief, bloody revolt against the left-wing government of President Juan Jose Arevalo. The following July, anti-Arevalo demonstrations in Guatemala City touched off another uprising. Last week again, there were gunfire and bloodshed in the streets of the capital.

"Enemies of the People." Trouble began when Gabriel Alvarado, director of the National Orphanage and an avowed Communist, dismissed three Roman Catholic nuns of the Sisters of Charity, which founded the orphanage in 1867. A mob, made up largely of market women and university students, broke into the orphanage, beat up Alvarado and his aides, Another mob smashed up the offices of the Communist newspaper Octubre.

Next day, in the name of President Jacobo Arbenz, who took over from Arevalo last March, the government radio broadcast a threat: the "enemies of the people" planning the overthrow of his government would be given "a lesson they would never forget." Undeterred, a crowd of 10,000 gathered in front of the National Palace, chanted the national anthem, flourished anti-Communist placards.

Police tried to break up the demonstration by firing rifles into the air. The crowd held its ground. The police lowered their rifles and fired at the demonstrators. Screaming, they stampeded. At least five were killed, some 60 wounded.

"To Save the Nation." President Arbenz declared a state of siege, suspended constitutional guarantees for 30 days, banned gatherings and meetings "likely to affect public order." Then, in a gesture to antiCommunists, he dismissed Marxist Alvarado, appointed as the new orphanage director Roman Catholic Ernesto Cofino, who reinstated the three nuns.

The Association of University Students called upon Congress to "save the nation from totalitarian (i.e., Communist) slavery." But some anti-Communist Guatemalans were beginning to wonder whether Arbenz wanted to save the nation from the Red totalitarians. No Communist himself, he seemed to be a prisoner of the Communist bureaucrats, politicos and union bosses who grabbed power during the Arevalo regime. Said a student wounded during last week's fray: "We Guatemalans must face up to the fact that ours is the only country west of the Iron Curtain where peaceful anti-Communist demonstrators are dispersed by government bullets."

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