Pattern of Revolution

As the long rainy season drew to a close last week, troops of El Salvador's Dictator Osmin Aguirre y Salinas, using Lend-Lease planes, bombed and strafed 1,000 shabby rebels back over the Guatemalan border. In Guatemala, meanwhile, the people celebrated their successful revolution (TIME, Oct. 30) by turning out in masses to vote in their first honest presidential election. These were just the high lights in Central America's recent unrest.

As heedless of boundary lines as rain in the lush jungles, revolution had swept Central America for nine months -- not only in Salvador but in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The military rulers who survived the revolutionary purge killed, tortured, imprisoned hundreds of men & women, drove thousands into exile. The people continued to fight back with guerrilla warfare, bombs, strikes, captured Lend-Lease equipment, pamphlets -- and even an underground radio.

Old Tyranny. Behind this shifting pattern of unrest were some solid political, economic and social facts. Central America, whose tyranny was older than Spanish rule, had been unsettled like the rest of the world by World War II. Before 1939, politically and economically, most of Central America had not yet entered the 20th Century. German and Ladino landowners raised coffee in the highlands, paid their peons as low as 20-c- a day, shipped much produce to Europe. U.S. fruit companies dominated the coastal jungles, paid peons higher wages but took them away again at company stores.

Central America's politics were even more backward than its feudal economic system. For centuries the millions of illiterate Indians had been ruled by caciques or headmen. Modern caciques adopted the title of "general," set up military despotisms. Central America, which separated from Spain in 1821, fell into five republics shortly after armed Indians revolted, led by a former pig-driver called the Angel Rafael. Ever since, the Ladinos had kept the little countries in turmoil with a meaningless, serial struggle between political ins & outs, usually labeled "Liberals" and "Conservatives."

New Influence. Then World War II cut the land of the blue volcanoes from its European markets, brought it more strongly into the U.S. political sphere of influence. For security reasons the U.S. made friends with the modern caciques, granted them big loans, including Lend-Lease arms. Inflation swelled like a tumor. But Lend-Lease generosity made Franklin Roosevelt so popular with the dictators that, when Wendell Willkie ran against him, a nephew of Carias Andino asked bewilderedly: "Why doesn't Roosevelt have him shot?"

Thousands of Central Americans educated in the U.S., England, France, faced death at home for speaking out against the dictators. They gave thunderous greeting to U.S. propaganda posters proclaiming the Four Freedoms, believed that at last the U.S. was giving them a chance to speak freely, live decently. But when the revolution broke, these U.S. well-wishers were disillusioned. U.S. embassies, which seemed to many Central Americans to exist chiefly to protect business interests, were embarrassed by the Four Freedoms propaganda. The State Department declared a "nonintervention" policy which was heavily weighted by Lend-Lease to favor the dictators.

This week Guatemalans lined up peacefully to vote for Juan Jose Arevalo, who plans to introduce "enlightened socialism," and his chief opponent, the State Department's friend Adrian Recinos. All Central America watched this pattern of successful revolution.

Meanwhile the Salvadoran rebels nursed their wounds. They admired the ideals of their leader, young Doctor Arturo Romero, but regretted his lack of military experience. Dictator Aguirre's threats of "dangerous consequences" to Guatemala for harboring Salvadoran rebels frightened that country's Revolutionary Junta into talking of a Mexican-Guatemalan-Costa Rican alliance against the dictators. The rest of Central America continued to strain and heave.

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