Jorge Ubico Castañeda

Jorge Ubico Castañeda (1931)

Jorge Ubico Castañeda also known by the nickname "Number Five" or the " Napoleon of Central America " (born November 10, 1878 in Guatemala City , † July 14, 1946 in New Orleans ) was a Guatemalan general , politician and dictator .

Life

Ubico, who came from a well-to-do family, enjoyed a good upbringing and education; he attended the most prestigious educational institutions in Guatemala and prestigious military academies in the USA and Europe. His father was Arturo Ubico, lawyer, politician, functionary of the Partido Liberal and from 1880 ambassador for the government of Manuel José Estrada Cabrera in Washington, DC

In 1897, Ubico was appointed military commissioner in Alta Verapaz and was in charge of tactics and quickly rose in the military hierarchy. In 1906, at the age of 28, he was Brigadier General and defeated Tomás Regalado with his troops in Guatemala. In 1906 Ubico became military governor of Alta Vera Paz and in 1907 military governor of Retalhuleu .

On the night of December 5 to 6, 1921, he participated in the coup against Carlos Herrera y Luna and was appointed Minister of Defense in the government cabinet of José María Orellana Pinto from 1922 to 1926 .

On March 1, 1922, he was the presidential candidate of the Partido Liberal Federalista , but was defeated by the incumbent President José María Orellana Pinto .

In 1926 he founded the Partido Liberal Progresista . In the elections on December 2, 1926, he was defeated by Lázaro Chacón González . On February 9, 1931, Ubico was elected President.

Although he was democratically elected, he established a military dictatorship during his tenure from 1931 to 1944 . Elections were abolished, political parties banned and opposition and political opponents persecuted. In terms of economic policy, however, Ubico was successful, under his rule Guatemala recovered from the global economic crisis .

Relationship to fascism

When the League of Nations condemned the Italo-Ethiopian War , Ubico withdrew the representative of Guatemala from the League of Nations assembly. His government was one of the first to recognize the regime of Francisco Franco , and his congratulatory telegram was received by the Republicans in Madrid. The word "worker" should be deleted from the vocabulary on Ubico's instructions. In 1936 he founded the Order of the Quetzal , which he awarded to Benito Mussolini in 1937 . The ambassador of fascist Italy became one of his advisors. The regime imported 180 Beretta automatic cannons , 60 anti-aircraft machine guns and 70 cannons from Italy.

In 1937 there were around 3,000 people of German origin in Guatemala . On September 4, 1939, Ubico declared the strict neutrality of Guatemala. On December 11, 1941, Guatemala declared war on the German Reich. 325 people of German origin suspected of having voted for the NSDAP or involved in other pro-German activities were extradited to the USA in 1941 and 1942 and interned in prisons in Texas , and Ubico also had their property nationalized.

An acquaintance of Ubico, Erwin Paul Dieseldorf, Cafetalero of the Finca Santa Margarita , had already during his tenure as governor of Alta Verapaz , with positive reference to the legislation of the colonial administration of German South West Africa, about its later law against vagrancy , the so-called Ley contra la vagancia inspired.

Agricultural and Labor Policy

According to the “Ley contra la vagancia”, the indigenous population of the country had to work free of charge 120 days a year for the latifundists in the coffee fincas or in road construction. From then on, peasants who had not committed to work on latifundia and owned less than 3 hectares of land were considered to be tramps. The number of annual working days that the forcibly recruited smallholders had to do depended on the size of the land they owned: the smaller the field, the more days. Indigenous people, who made up the majority of the population, were forced to always carry the so-called work book with them, in which the days of unpaid compulsory labor were recorded. If, in the opinion of the inspectors, one of them had only poor work performance, he was sentenced to six months of field work. Ubico granted the latifundists the right to kill at their own discretion. In State Decree No. 2795 it said: "The owners of plantations are relieved of all criminal responsibility."

Ubico militarized all areas of life and provided the cafetaleros with their own police units.

He brutally suppressed any opposition, and hundreds of union officials , academics and politicians were executed. In 1933 he had more than 100 workers, students and members of the opposition murdered. The so-called Ley de la Fuga was used: death marches .

Relationship with the United Fruit Company

In 1936 Ubico signed a contract with the United Fruit Company (UFCO) , which guaranteed the company all land it needed tax-free and without payment. In return, UFCO undertook to build railway lines, roads and port facilities. From this point on, the expropriations of agricultural land by indigenous farmers increased. Ubico also awarded the UFCO a concession to grow bananas on the Pacific coast. For a period of 99 years, the company was again exempt from all taxes and duties, it was allowed to import all goods duty-free and the wages of the plantation workers were reduced by government decree.

Public buildings

Huge structures were built under Ubico's rule:

• Palacio Nacional Is now known as the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura and is used as a government building.
• Dirección General de Correos y Telecomunicaciones  : is still used today as the headquarters of the Guatemalan Post.
• Dirección General de la Policía Nacional is now used as the government ministry.

General strike and fall

In May and June 1944 there were protests against the regime, most of which were carried out by teachers. On June 25, 1944, the teacher María Chinchilla Recinos was shot. On June 26, 1944, the shops closed and the haulage companies ceased operations, and there was a general strike . On July 1, 1944, Ubico passed power to a junta made up of Generals Federico Ponce Vaidez, Eduardo Villagrán Ariza and Buenaventura Pineda.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ April 16, 1922, RECOGNIZE ORELLANA AS GUATEMALAN RULER; State Department Action Follows Extended Inquiry - Dr. Bianchi Prefers to Live Here Ubico now Minister of War ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Prensa Libre 22 de febrero de 2009, La cuestionada Orden del Quetzal ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ John L. Spivak (1897–1981), Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare , Exposing Hitler's Undeclared War on the Americas , 1939
4. ^ Max Paul Friedman: Nazis and good neighbors. The United States campaign against the Germans of Latin America in World War II. Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 82
5. ↑ Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica, Decreto Número 1996: Ley contra la vagancia
6. ↑ Mary Kreutzer, "The foreign German can be nothing else than National Socialist!" German-Austrian fascism in Guatemala ( Memento of the original from February 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

predecessor	Office	successor
José María Reina Andrade	President of Guatemala February 15, 1931–1. July 1944	Junta: Juan Federico Ponce Vaidez Eduardo Villagrán Ariza Buenaventura Pineda