Despite the Biden administration's strong outreach to Guatemala's just-inaugurated President Bernardo Arevalo, the White House made clear last Friday it would not give Arevalo and many Guatemalans something they have sought from Washington for decades: an apology for the 1954 coup d'état that brought down then-President Jacobo Arbenz and was in large part orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Asked by Newsmax at the regular White House press briefing whether an apology was discussed by national security adviser Jake Sullivan when he met with then-President-elect Arevalo last fall, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied: "Not that I'm aware of."
Arevalo, a progressive and the son of Guatemala's first democratically-elected President Juan Jose Arevalo, is reportedly anxious for an apology — believing that the coup the CIA helped craft led to years of rule for that country by military strongmen and was a major reason for the bloody Guatemalan civil war that lasted from 1960-96.
Very possibly aware of the sensitivity of the issue, the Biden administration made clear its strong opposition to any attempt by political enemies to keep Arevalo from taking office earlier this month.
At the time of the coup in 1954, the Eisenhower administration insisted it was an uprising by Guatemalans against Arbenz moving toward Communist dictatorship. In his second televised debate with opponent John F. Kennedy in 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon cited the Guatemalan coup as an example of people getting fed up with "a Communist dictator" and deciding to "throw out Mr. Arbenz." The role of the CIA in his overthrow, while widely rumored, was not revealed until years later.
Arbenz, a progressive who served the elder Arevalo as defense minister, did have some Communists in government but always insisted he was not a Communist and his only goal was land reform to help the peasants have more opportunities. Following the coup, he went into exile in Mexico and other allies including the elder Arevalo fled to other countries. The current President Arevalo was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1958 because that's where his father was in exile.
Interest in the 1954 coup and talk of a possible U.S. apology has most recently been fueled by the best-selling novel Harsh Times, by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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