Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Juan José Arévalo and the Caribbean Legion

1989; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0022216x00014450

1469-767X

Piero Gleijeses,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

On 15 March 1945 Juan José Arévalo became president of Guatemala. His inauguration marked the beginning of an unprecedented democratic parenthesis – ‘spring in the land of eternal tyranny ’ 1 – a spring that ended abruptly with the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Arévalo was an anti-communist, a nationalist, and a reformer. He was an anti-communist who believed that individual communists should not be persecuted unless they violated the law. He was a nationalist who accepted that Guatemala was in the US sphere of influence. He was a reformer who eschewed radical change.