Tinkering Time

During its second week in power, the revolutionary regime of President Carlos Castillo Armas tinkered busily with the governmental machine it had undertaken to control. Last week the Colonel and his Cabinet:

P: Kept police (and a new, irregular force made up of soldiers from Castillo Armas' liberation army) so busy arresting suspected Communists that the jails overflowed with 3.500 of them.

P: Fired hundreds of civil servants without severance pay in an economy drive made necessary by the empty treasury left by the former regime (see below).

P: Named new judges to every judicial post from the Supreme Court on down.

P: Killed a 20-c--a-gallon gasoline tax, thereby reducing the price to 30-c-.

P: Dissolved all the leftist parties that supported the Communist-line administration of ex-President Jacobo Arbenz.

In these measures there was little sign of the major social overhaul that Guatemala's newspapers and churchmen were hopefully talking about. Making his first speech as president, Castillo Armas concentrated on attacking the old government. He did promise that peasants who have received plots under the Arbenz land-reform law will get their titles outright; until now the government has retained the deeds, both to prevent resale and to keep political control over the farmers.* But the general reaction, even among Castillo's warmest backers, was one of sharp disappointment. They were hoping for a bold, positive program to rebuild the country's political and economic life so firmly that Communism could never rise again.

The President's hesitation at plunging promptly into drastic reform was rooted, at least partly, in a sense of unconsolidated power. Parts of the regular army, rankling at the defeat Castillo Armas dealt them with a handful of volunteers, subtly oppose him. The dangerous paradox is that he must show leadership within at most six months, or some other officer as anti-Red as he will try to fill his shoes.

The same insecurity made the new President extra conscious of the dangers of assassination. He has refused to move into the exposed Presidential House, instead renting a small residence more easily guarded by liberation soldiers. But most Guatemalans see the official residence as a solid symbol of power and expect the Chief Executive to live there. The point might be minor, but the effect, as Castillo Armas rounded out his first fortnight in power, was a certain drop in his prestige.

To balance these troubles, Castillo last week heard welcome news from Washington: the State Department recognized his government, making the U.S. the twelfth nation to establish formal relations. If there was any impatience in the U.S. embassy with Castillo Armas' slow start, the recognition covered it well. But some of the President's loyal press was turning cautiously critical. "The country's new leaders," wrote Alvaro Contreras Velez, a strong supporter of Castillo Armas, "must provide a healthy substitute for the pernicious doctrine sown in many minds by the Reds. They must tell us what they offer the people in place of Communism, whose fruits lie fallen on the ground, but whose roots are not yet pulled up."

* The law itself is in abeyance, and some land illegally occupied by squatters will be turned back to the original owners. A few landlords, out for revenge, last week turned cattle loose to trample down squatters' crops.

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