Heat on a Tyrant

Few months ago a quetzal, rare and beautiful national bird of Guatemala, was brought to Guatemala City and put on exhibition in the zoo. The people were indignant; the quetzal, their symbol of freedom, was said to die if imprisoned.* They waited. Sure enough, the quetzal died. The people nodded their heads.

Dollars & Blood. Visitors from the U.S. have loudly praised Guatemala's Dictator Jorge Ubico. They have admired Guatemala's orderliness, its clean-swept streets, its impressive public buildings. But these observers did not see, or else ignored, the real Guatemala behind this fac,ade. Last week, after a stay in Dictator Ubico's realm, a TIME correspondent reported in detail on one of the world's most flagrant tyrannies.

Back in the days of waning dollar-diplomacy, Dictator Ubico was "elected" President with U.S. blessing. Guatemalans noted that at the same time (1931) the potent United Fruit Co. wanted a juicy concession which the previous regime had refused to grant on United Fruit's terms. Ubico's first important act as President was to force the Assembly to pass the concession bill.

Three years later Ubico entrenched himself, canceled all legal limits on his tenure. Guatemalans never forgot the massacre which took place at that time in which scores of students, workers, prominent citizens suspected of plotting a rebellion were seized in their houses, killed without formality. Hundreds were thrown into prison, tortured, executed. Cried Ubico, admirer of Hitler's 1934 bloodpurge: "I am like Hitler. I execute first and give trial afterwards."

After this blood bath Dictator Ubico met little serious opposition, although he often refreshed his people's memory by preventive drizzles of blood. An efficient administrator, he kept tight rein. Plots melted before his pervasive spies, his alert police under shrewd, ruthless Roderico Anzueto. No Guatemalan felt free from secret observation. Today, even Cabinet ministers are under close surveillance.

Touring Solomon. Dictator Ubico likes to parade around the country on "trips of inspection." With a military escort, a couple of Cabinet ministers, a mobile radio station and an official biographer, he tears along the roads at breakneck speed. Landowners greet him with floral arches, sometimes line up their Indian laborers days in advance to await his coming. During brief pauses in the villages, he judges intricate cases of law in a minute flat, fires judges, reverses court decisions, releases prisoners, slaps others in jail. Often he makes up his mind simply by staring at a prisoner. Over the portable radio he gives advice on cooking, fishing, agriculture, engineering, military science, history, economics. He even teaches the natives of Lake Atitlan how to handle their boats.

The Economist. A firm believer in low wages, Ubico keeps them down by decree. Only skilled workers in the capital city earn as much as 50-c- a day. Farm workers get 12-c- to 20-c-. Food prices in Guatemala are fairly low, but hardly low enough for such wages. Most Guatemalans live in hunger and rags. Ubico often reminds callers that two Guatemalan revolutions (1898 and 1920) coincided with local prosperity. Says he: "If the people have money, they will kick me out."

Ubico's famous Ley de Probidad (Law of Honesty) requires officials to register their property on taking office, explain each new acquisition. It has undoubtedly enforced a kind of terrified probity among underlings, but it has one flaw: in practice, it does not apply to Ubico. On becoming President, he declared himself worth $89,000. Now he owns 75,000 acres, is the largest individual landholder in Guatemala. Much of his property is valuable coffee and sugar land. He lists his acquisitions under the Ley de Probidad at ludicrous valuations. No one dares to challenge his figures.

As Ubico grows richer, he grows more solicitous for property rights. His latest legal masterpiece (Decree #2795, April 22, 1944) "exempts landowners or their representatives from criminal responsibility for acts they commit against trespassers caught gathering game, fruit or firewood. . . ." In practice, a landowner may kill a hungry Indian caught plucking berries; he may kill a refractory laborer, no questions asked.

Ubico claims to protect the humble, peaceful Indians who form the bulk of the Guatemalan population (total: 3,284,269). Actually, he grants these subjects no rights at all, controls them by arbitrary vagrancy laws, makes them work three weeks a year for the State for nothing. Hundreds of these forced Indian laborers have died on a road which Ubico is pushing through the pestilential jungles of Peten.

Ubico has no children, legitimate or otherwise. "I slave day and night," he complains to intimates, "and I haven't even a son to leave my fortune to." But he tries. At 65, he continually boasts of his virility.

Whose Ally? In the official U.S. books the Dictator rates as a sturdy Central American Good Neighbor; he was just ahead of Salvador's fallen Dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in declaring war on Germany after Pearl Harbor. More than 200 Germans, who grew much of Guatemala's coffee, had a big stake in its export trade, have been shipped to the U.S. for internment. German properties have been impounded for the duration. A special tax on enemy business eats up the profits. But most Guatemalans do not take Ubico's anti-German gestures too seriously, expect him to return the holdings to German ownership after the war.

Hot Seat. Now a breath of hope stirs Guatemala. The successful revolt in El Salvador excited all Central America (TIME, May 22). There, the U.S. State Department did not intervene (as many expected) to checkmate a people's rebellion. Even in terrorized Guatemala, the news reached the people, made them wonder whether their Dictator also was vulnerable.

Ubico has heard the murmur. For years he planned "to leave the Presidency only for the cemetery." After El Salvador's revolt, he said: "A ruler should know in the seat of his pants when he ought to get out of his chair."

* Not necessarily so; there are four from Costa Rica in the Bronx Zoo. Guatemala does not allow them to be taken out of the country.

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