Guatemala and American Politics

It is possible that by the time this issue of DISSENT appears, the problem of Guatemala will have been forgotten, pushed aside by some new catastrophe. But forgotten, we are convinced, only for the moment. What happened there is so critical and symptomatic that it will have to be returned to again and again.

In the two articles that follow, Victor Alba presents a brief report on the Castillo Armas “revolution” and a speculative discussion of the Latin American problem in general. He writes from the perspective of a socialist living in Latin America; here we need only add a few words from the perspective of a socialist in the United States…

What was most astonishing was not so much the openness of U. S. int...