Carlos Castillo Armas

Carlos Castillo Armas (born November 4, 1914 in Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla Department , † July 26, 1957 in Guatemala City ) was a Guatemalan colonel and from September 1, 1954, until his assassination, President of Guatemala .

biography

Carlos Castillo Armas was a cadet on the Escuela Politécnica from January 22, 1933 to June 30, 1936 . He left her as an officer . He was also a graduate of a US Army General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth . Armas was director of the Escuela Politécnica . In 1950 he unsuccessfully revolted against President Juan José Arévalo . He was then sentenced to death, but managed to break out of the high-security wing and flee to Honduras, where he worked as a furniture seller. He later got in touch with the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo . Trujillo supported the coup against Árbenz financially. Armas took some of Trujillo's secret agents into his security service. According to E. Howard Hunt , Armas was selected for Operation PBSUCCESS for his leadership qualities . From July 7th to September 1st he was a Junta Militar de Gobierno , next to him the Colonels Elfego Hernán Monzón Aguirre (1912-1981) and Enrique Trinidad Oliva belonged as members. This junta carried out a plebiscite to legitimize its takeover , which was subsequently sanctioned by the constituent assembly.

Reign

In 1956 a new constitution came into force. Under Arma's government, the agrarian reform carried out by Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was reversed. He had the mini-funders evicted from their new plots and returned the land to United Fruit and the latifundists by 1956 . With the beginning of his reign, the word reforma agraria in Guatemala got the meaning of colonization projects.

The literacy campaigns were broken off, civil society organizations smashed and the communist party banned. Many committed activists and supporters of agrarian reform and the popular education movement were murdered. At the same time, housing programs for workers were initiated and other social needs were instrumentalized for propaganda purposes such as “Vida mejor”. After the end of the international boycott , the road from Guatemala City to the Atlantic could be completed.

The port of Santo Tomás de Castilla has been restored. Urbanization projects have been started, such as the “Centro Cívico” and a plan-free traffic junction, called the shamrock “El Trebol”. Both were inspired by studies by the architect Roberto Aycinena Echverría. A bridge was built in the Ciudad de los Deportes in Zona 5 of Guatemala City .

On his 40th birthday, Armas was elected President by the Constituent Assembly. The group of putschists he led was transformed into a party, the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional . On July 26, 1957, Carlos Castillo Armas was shot and killed with a rifle by a soldier from his Schutztruppe, Romeo Vásquez Sánchez, at dinner in his presidential palace. This should on behalf Rafael Trujillo acted and committed immediately after the act of suicide .

Others

The events surrounding the actions of Castillo Armas are one of the topics of the historical novel Harte Jahre by Mario Vargas Llosa, which will be published in German in 2020 .

literature

• Carlos Castillo Armas , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 34/1957 of August 12, 1957, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ¿Triunfo o traición ?, 1954, la caída de Árbenz ( Memento of February 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Prensa Libre , June 4, 2004.
2. ↑ The CIA's Cover Has Been Blown? Just Make Up Something About UFOs , New York Times , July 6, 2003.

predecessor	Office	successor
Junta Militar de Gobirno under Elfego Hernán Monzón Aguirre	President of Guatemala September 1, 1954–26. July 1957	Luis Arturo González López