A Round for the Reds

Guatemala's 6,000 rail workers went out on strike. In all the republic not a boxcar moved; 2,000,000 bananas rotted on the tracks. Passengers stranded as long as 40 hours in strike-halted trains finally had to beg for food in mountain hamlets and hitchhike back into the cities. Cattle died in stock trains marooned on main lines and sidings.

Even troubled Central America had seen few strikes as cynical or strange. The walkout had nothing whatever to do with wages or hours. Union bosses called it, charging that the International Railways of Central America had refused to rehire seven workers previously fired for stealing, or to fire three superintendents (all Guatemalans) who were on the union's grudge list. The leaders launched the strike even before the U.S.-owned company's management could .reply to their demands.

What was it all about? The Reds who have bored into Guatemalan labor were boldly forcing a quick showdown with the country's new President Jacobo Arbenz. Only seven weeks ago, Colonel Arbenz took over from "Spiritual Socialist" Juan Jose Arevalo, who for six years had run the hemisphere's most left-wing regime.

Last week, faced with his first crisis, President Arbenz huddled in his green granite palace with the members of his government. The unions demanded intervention. The government set one deadline and let it pass without intervening. Finally at week's end a settlement was forced on the railroad: reinstatement of the discharged men pending labor court hearings, transfer of the blacklisted supervisors, payment to strikers of three-fourths of the wages lost during the eleven-day stoppage.

The Reds had won the round; the strike had compelled Arbenz to show his hand. "We consider this a complete victory," said the rail union secretary. "The handwriting was on the wall of the boxcar," said a businessman. "Arbenz will follow Arevalo down the left side of the road."

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