Jacobo Arbenz Speech to the Nation
​​​​​​​(Evidence 5)

Jacobo Arbenz Speech to the Nation (Evidence 5): “Our only crime consisted of decreeing our own laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform that affected the interests of the United Fruit Company. Our crime is wanting to have our own route to the Atlantic, our own electric power, and our own docks and ports. Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights.”

-Jacobo Arbenz June 19th, 1954

This is Jacobo Arbenz’s speech to Guatemala just 8 days before his resignation speech. He is explaining to his people why they are under attack and says it because they’ve committed “crimes.” Of course, these aren’t real crimes that they’ve committed but they are attacks that the Guatemalan government performed on United Fruit while Jacobo Arbenz was the president. The first one of these “crimes" he mentions is “enacting an agrarian reform” which is the redistribution of agricultural land to a nation’s people. The agricultural land of Guatemala wasn’t owned by Guatemalans for it was owned by United Fruit. The second one of these “crimes” was wanting to control their country's transport and trade. Guatemala’s railroads and docks were all used to transport bananas, and thus were owned by United Fruit. Jacobo Arbenz also wanted to make a second canal in Guatemala so that the United States/Panama didn’t have a monopoly on transport by boat through Central America but Guatemala is much longer than Panama and this would’ve never happened with or without the coup d’etat. The third “crime” he mentions is that Guatemala wants to advance, they want to advance both economically to improve the welfare of the country and likely militarily as well so that they can be seen as a more powerful country. Jacobo Arbenz finally says that they are being puished for doing these “crimes” and the person who is condemning them is United Fruit and the United States governor. You could think of it as Guatemala being an innocent person trying to change the world, but then two cops appear, one a higher rank which is United Fruit, and the other being the United States. The higher-ranking officer then orders the lower-ranking officer to beat Guatemala and then drive away.