TO GUATEMALAN LANDOWNER, THE ENEMY IS COMMUNISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: March 13, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010015-5
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C'r; .!. E I-11 13 March 19814
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By JUAN M. VASQUEZ, Times Staff Writer
GUATEMALA CITY-To hear Roberto Alejos talk in.
his salty English, to scan the magazine titles on the
bookshelf of his spacious office-Fortune, the Harvard
Business Review-he might be an American business-
man. A very conservative businessman.
"The present problem with the United States Con-
gress," he observes with a smile as he offers a cup of
steaming Guatemalan coffee, "is what you call liberals.
We call them communists."
Communism. It is a menace that Alejos, a native
Guatemalan, has been fighting for at least 30 of his 62
years, beginning with the active support he offered to
the coup that overthrew the elected leftist government
of Col. Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954.
all about
In 1953, some of the Alejos land was expropriated, by
the Arbenz government as part of a nascent land-re-
form program. Today, more than 30 years later,: the .
mention of land reform still sparks a flash of anger from
Alejos.
"BabosadasP' (stupidities), he said. "Agrarian reform
can succeed only within the minds of those stupid
liberals in the U.S. Congress."
After 1954, Alejos became more involved in politics.
He was the first president of the country's association of
coffee growers and on the board of the General
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Bay of Pigs Role
In 1959, his concern over communism
Helping Hand to CIA
Arbenz's downfall was engineered by the Eisenhower
Administration through the CIA, and Alejos says he is
proud to have had a small role in that event, which he
declined to specify. It was not to be the last time he gave
a helning hand to the CIA.
The CIA helped to bring the coup about, to culminate
it," Alejos recalled last wee - in a intervieT,7-n-TU_s
six',. -floor office in downtown Guatemala City, "but the
makings were there already. The entire country tas
behind the movement to oust Arbenz."
Such a view may not square with other recollections
of what happened in Guatemala in 1954, but it is
consistent with the sentiments of wealthy landowners,
among whom Alejos has long been a leading member.
Like most wealthy Central American businessmen,
Alejos is surrounded by his own security guards
wherever he goes. But the presence of an armed,
fatigue-clad military policeman patrolling the corridor
outside is a clear signal that this is no ordinary
businessman's office.
The special vigil is explained by Alejos' membership
in the Order of the Knights of Malta, an order of the
Roman Catholic Church composed of distinguished
laymen and clergymen whose national offices around
the world have quasi-diplomatic status.
His us-versus-them social and political attitudes find
echo among many Central Americans of privileged,
position. For, decades, Alejos has been an outspoken
defender and valued member of this resistant, endan-
gered minority.
The Alejos family has been involved in agriculture in
Guatemala for at least a century. As is true of most other
leading families in Central America, land is the original
source of the wealth, particularly coffee plantations.
The determination by the haves to keep this land
away from the have-nots-to retain what their forefa-
thers accumulated and bequeathed to them-is in some
essential aspects what the turmoil in Central America is
wen de Castro took o': er in Vuba an regq
tried to help guerrillas in Guatemala. So, when the CIA
needed a place to train Cuban exiles who would
participate in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Alejos was
onlytoo happy to offer his #inca (estate). Helvetia. ,
"I thought, well, if Castro can try to screw us up,-we
.can try to screw him up, too," Alejos recalled with a
?smile of satisfaction. The Bay of Pigs operation failed,
but Alejos came out of it more closely identified with the
CIA than ever.
Armed with plenty of money, and believing he Kati'
the support of the United States, Alejos ran for president
in 1963 in what' he proudly called a U.S.-style,
television-and-radio campaign. "We ran a campaign the
same way you sell Coca-Cola," Alejos contended, "and,
we did it with our own funds."
?But the military intervened during the campaign, and'
'Col. Enrique Peralta took over. Peralta and his
associates believed that Alejos was plotting against
them. "I was told, 'Either you go or else,"' he recalled. -I
went." Alejos took up residence in Florida, where he
-Was to remain, except for a brief sojourn in Europe, until
J W6.
The episode demonstrated the importance that the
military had assumed in Guatemala as an independent
political institution. In neighboring El Salvador, the
upper classes and the military have easily worked
?'together-with the army customarily in a subservient
tole. In Guatemala, there have been occasional clashes
-df style and personality between the rich and the
,;military, suggesting that the army has developed into an
equal and demanding partner in the search for wealth
'end power.
Kidnaped for Ransom
Back in Guatemala in 1971, Alejos suffered a fate that
lnany wealthy Central Americans would meet in the
1970s: he was kidnaped, though he is not sure by whom.
"That's the $64 question," he grinned. "Who did it?"
Alejos was held for ransom for five months in a
dungeon he describes as a "small hole" and came out
suffering from emphysema
Continued
mounted again
+..
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010015-5