Arevalo Bitter On Anti-Kommunism

ANTI-KOMMUNISM IN LATIN AMERICA, by Juan Jose Arevalo, translater from the Spanish by Carleton Seals, Lyle Stuart, 224 pp., $4.95.

Late in March, 1963, Juan Jose Arevalo was smuggled into Guatemala City to be a leftist candidate in the crucial presidential elections. In reaction to his presence, the government of Guatemala toppled within days; rightist Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes was replaced by fartherrightest Enrique Peralta, a military dictator in the old style. If the election had ever taken place, Arevalo would probably have been victorious.

Mention Arevalo to a Guatemalan peasant (or to almost any Latin American peasant), and he will chatter excitedly, full of enthusiasm. A former professor of philosophy, Arevalo returned to Guatemala in 1944 when the brutal dictator Jorge Ubico was overthrown; braced by his proclaimed policy of "spiritual socialism," he was a natural choice to lead his country. Guatemalans remember Arevalo's presidency for land reforms and the organization of labor.

Communism Influential

It is a matter of history by this time, however, that during the terms of Arevalo and his successor Jacobo Arbenz, Communism rose to ascendency. Finally in 1954 a C.I.A.-inspired invasion overthrew Arbenz, and rightist democratic regimes followed.

Juan Jose Arevalo has every right to be a bitter man. Both in office and from exile, he has watched the Latin American nations buffeted about by the worst of Western imperialism and capitalism. His protest has been recorded in a long line of volumes, some of the most widely-read political works in Latin America. Two of these have now been translated into English, The Shark and the Sardines and Anti-Kommunism in Latin America.

In the latter work, Arevalo has created the concept of "anti-Kommunism,"--by which he means those policies used to combat social reform in the Latin republics. He describes the structural anti-Kommunism of the "Police Rulers," the anti-Kommunism of American capitalists, and the more sophisticated, determined anti-Kommunism of the organized Catholic Church, claiming that all work together to prevent social evolution. He points out that the United States' twentieth century diplomacy in Latin America has not recognized the difference between the threat of international Communism and the necessary reforms labelled red.

Shocking Presentation

Arevalo's presentation of his case is staggering. He flogs the United States mercilessly, especially the McCarthy era with which he was so familiar. ("From an alliance against Hitler alive, the United States had gone on to an alliance with Hitler dead.") He mocks Eisenhower's statement that "nationalist self-sufficiency has gone out of style," calling the former President a self-styled "Christian Dior of politics."

Much of Arevalo's analysis could have been performed by any Latin politician, if less forcefully. His great contribution in Anti-Kommunism in Latin America is his unique discussion of the Catholic Church and its role. He makes an impassioned plea for liberal thought by the Church, and systematically tears down the conservative positions that have long been advanced on the part of Catholicism. One feels his deep sense of tragedy when he concludes his discussion of the Church: "Respectable public: the comedy is over. Too bad that we have ended up in Hell."

To those who have enjoyed the sensationalism of The Shark and the Sardines, this volume may prove somewhat of a disappointment. It is a little less exciting to read and in a sense, terribly convincing. The rhetoric and stinging satire are still present, but now the generalizations are not quite as sweeping, the attacks and conclusions not quite as unbelievable. In this book, one need not agree whole-heartedly with Arevalo in order to admit that he has some vital points to make. Fidel Castro's rise to power and the Panama Canal crisis are far less shocking when one realizes that Arevalo's arguments have been read widely in Latin America for many years.

Anti-Kommunism in Latin America is more respectable than The Shark and the Sardines. It is surprising to find acknowledgements at the end of chapters this time; every assertion cannot be accounted to Arevalo-the-madman exclusively.

Irresponsibility has far from disappeared from the present volume, however. Inexcusably, Lyle Stuart has publicized the book in huge New York Times advertisements as the "real truth about Latin America" which can be told at last. It may sell almost as well as The Shark and the Sardines.

Arevalo's writing is turgid, and his often-undocumented charges still become tiring. The real truth about Latin America is not so apparent