UNITED STATES—Arreola, the philosophy professor, was already something of a household name, as the author of a popular text, “Cinco pilares para lograr el cambio”—recommended for everyone who seeks a goal or change in their lives and, for some reason, cannot achieve it, the book promises to provide an understanding of issues involved. What’s more, a diagnosis can be made to pinpoint what needs to be transformed, in and of itself, and what ought to be acquired in language, emotion and body.
Juan David Arreola won the presidency with a whopping 88 percent of the vote, the first popularly elected leader in the history of Guatemala. He took the oath of office on March 15, 1945, a clear Spring afternoon. He wore a three-button business suit of dark poplin, since he was a civilian and not a general. Arreola’s inaugural address conjured a new age. Professor Arreola, when he spoke in a reedy yet strong voice, had three audiences in mind: Guateland, the United States government and the president of Allied Fruit. He spoke of his past—an impoverished childhood. He spoke of futurity—a vision of big landowners forced to reform and give their fair share. And he spoke of his heroes, g-d forbid, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt who taught “there is the concept of freedom to but also reminded from freedom from—freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, and freedom to—freedom to breathe, freedom breathe a socialist spirit into democracy. . .” At moments he stroked his chin, a nakedly professorial gesture. Arreola concluded saying he would govern by a philosophy of his own invention which he called, “mystical socialism.”
Sam Delaney had agents planted in the crowd, and to them every word of the Maestro’s speech would have been construed as a threat. It was Wild Willy Long, the King of Louisiana, all over again. The rallying cry to strengthen unions, share the wealth, break up the gargantuan land holdings of the leviathan company. There were Allied Fruit executives whose brows were furrowed, given Arreola’s impassioned and compassionate rhetoric, these executives worried from the get-go that Guatemala would go red.
“That’s B.S.,” said Delaney from his aerie atop the white-frosting mansion on Audubon Place. He looked over life now from the vantage of six and a half decades residence on this earth. “I am the president of AFCO, the president for life,” as he said it. Sam saw before his mind’s eye all the big crates on the loading docks of the port of New Orleans stenciled AFCO—it thrilled his heart.
“Don’t rain diarrhea on me,” Sam said. “I know every inch of Guatemala. I walked over it as a kid. You’re not going to convince me that the good people of Guatemala, most of them poor Indios, can buy into the sophistries cooked up by European eggheads. #&*K no.”
Arreola was a smart man who understood the limits of power. He was exceedingly careful, even dainty, in dealing with Allied Fruit. He passed strongly worded land reform measures, but did nothing whatsoever to enforce them. Instead, President Arreola devoted his energies to crowd-pleasing issues that Delaney, himself once a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, Delaney helped frame the program, one of the most lampooned, since the Agricultural Adjustment Program 1933 in essence paid farmers to not grow crops being overproduced, in order to boost sagging prices.
“Government done gone plum crazy,” said one of the old boys, pointing a virulent finger.
“They sure lost my vote, letting all that food get destroyed while there’s people starving.”
“Hank, what did you do when the hoboes came by? Put up barbed wire.”
“They’s different. Not like womun n’ children starving.”
On the Cortini farm in Watsonville California, Joe remembers when they got paid to slaughter piglets, rife with pork, and they sat out all night with their Winchester, to stave off the bindlestiffs and now people with families who went to bed hungry, meanwhile bushels of pippin apples were tossed and the piglets slaughtered. It was considered a poor comment on our civilization, that there were people, whole families starving, children suffering rickets, and that gallons of milk would be spilled and grapes left to rot on the vine.
Arreola also focused on crowd-pleasing issues that Delaney could hardly be against. A forty-four hour work week, rights of unions to organize—all rooted in the New Deal legislation that Delaney himself championed. Two years after the war with Japan and Germany, the Guatemalan congress enacted the labor code which, for the first time in history, allowed banana workers to join trade unions. In the past, violence had been meticulously used to break strikes. The point was labor leaders were free to organize on Allied plantations. The Company filed protests against the government code; they said if you don’t dump the code we will pull out of Guatemala altogether. But in the end it was business as usual on the isthmus. The mosquitos still buzzed in the steamy air, they tickled on the on the silky oily skin.
To be continued…
Grady is the Wizard of fiction.
