A Confederacy of Fear

"A Confederacy of Fear" narrates the story of the rise and fall of Guatemala's reformist President Jacobo Árbenz through the eyes of the American media and members of the United States Congress. Using declassified documents from the CIA, the State Department, and Congress, it documents American political leaders' fear of President Árbenz and Juan José Arévalo's reformist policies. As Cold War tensions fanned the flames of this deepening confrontation, many in Congress and the media understood the conflict with Guatemala in existential terms and called on Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to remove the threat. While the story of the Guatemalan revolution of 1954 has been told over the years from the point of view of the White House, the CIA, and the United Fruit Company, "A Confederacy of Fear" is the first to draw attention to the considerable role of the United States Congress and the American media.

"A Confederacy of Fear" examines the developments that led American legislators and journalists to see the reformist regime of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (1951-1954) as a beachhead for international communism in the Western Hemisphere and an existential threat to American democracy. It draws on the archives of prominent Senators and Congressmen; press accounts; Guatemalan and American print sources; and the declassified files of the CIA, State Department, and Congress to provide a narrative of the vital role Congress and the Press played in pressuring Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to act against Árbenz. This book draws heavily on the statements made by Senators and Congressmen on the floor of Congress and to members of the media regarding their fears, amplified by the Korean War and communist adventurism in Eastern Europe and Indo-China, that Guatemala was falling behind the Iron Curtain. Each development in Guatemala was analyzed by American legislators and news reporters through the lens of the confrontation with the Soviet Union and China across the globe. Letters from constituents retrieved from the personal archives of Senators and Congressmen show how Americans in the heartland feared that the potential installation of a pro-Soviet regime in Guatemala would lead to communists knocking at their front doors. While rivers of ink have been spilled on the subject of the Guatemalan revolution of 1954, no author has approached this essential Cold War narrative specifically from the perspective of Congress and the American media. This gap in the Árbenz story has led to an incomplete understanding of Truman and Eisenhower's motivation to remove Árbenz and a misreading of the role Congress has in shaping foreign policy then and now.

David Lindwall is a former American diplomat who lived in Guatemala for more than 20 years. He served a 34-year career in the United States Foreign Service as a Political Officer in Colombia, Spain, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sweden. Among his diplomatic assignments were serving as a liaison to the Nicaraguan Resistance (the Contras), helping negotiate peace between Ecuador and Peru following the Upper Cenepa River War of 1994-1995, and serving as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti during the devastating earthquake of 2010. He was the winner of the State Department's Baker-Wilkins Award for Outstanding Deputy Chief of Mission in 2010 and the Ryan Crocker Award for Outstanding Leadership in Expeditionary Diplomacy in 2016 for his service in Kabul. He is also the recipient of the Government of Afghanistan's state medal of Ghazi Mir Masjidi Khan, awarded by President Ghani in 2016. Mr. Lindwall is a graduate of the University of New Mexico's Latin American and Iberian Institute, where he received a Masters Degree in Latin American Studies.