David Talbot Interview (Evidence 2)

Below is a photo Of David Talbot.

David Talbot interview (Evidence 2): 

“The CIA and Allen Dulles told Eisenhower after the Guatemala coup, 'Oh, it was a clean coup. You know, hardly anyone died,' But the fact is, tens of thousands of people died in the killing fields of Guatemala as a result of that coup, and that violence continues today.”

-David Talbot

This is a quote from David Talbot, a journalist and independent historian who was born 3 years prior to the coup d’etat in Guatemala and this quote is from an interview with Amy Goodman. David Talbot has a guess on what the CIA told Eisenhower about the coup and it is pretty accurate. He says that Allen Dulles and the CIA think that very few people died but in reality many Guatemalaans died during the battles that took place and will continue to die due to poor conditions on banana plantations. Allen Dulles is partially correct that very few people died during the battles especially because they were nothing compared to the casualties in much bigger wars. To Guatemala however those casualties meant a lot because the population was struggling and it is not a big country. Not only were there casualties but there also was destruction and many cities in Guatemala including the capital of Guatemala, Guatemala City, were all bombed and destroyed by the rebellion which caused many civilian deaths, many of which were unaccounted for and not affecting the casualty list that Allen Dulles and the CIA had been looking at. This quote also directly proves the thesis as David Talbot states that the violence is still happening today, which even though this interview was in 2015 it is still currently a very poor country as the country could not fully recover from the attack. This attack still kills today as Guatemalans who could’ve been successful otherwise can’t due to poor education and poor health care.