Complete Thesis_double spaced abstract.pdf

Communist party and instituted the Committee of National Defense Against Communism and the
Preventative Penal Law Against Communism. The former was tasked with hunting down alleged
Communist supporters, leaders and sympathizers. The latter was used to prosecute and execute
those accused of crimes associated with Communism. The Armas regime arrested and
imprisoned approximately 12,000 opposition supporters, exiled approximately 2,000 opposition
leaders, and killed approximately 8,000 peasants in the first two months of his regime, in an
attempt to crush the opposition movement (REMHI, 1999, 189). An expanded discussion of the
political violence during this period is described in more detail in the following section. The
domestic groups who retained power and influence under the regime of Colonel Armas and
General Ydígoras were the “agro-export elites,” the petty bourgeoisie living in the urban areas
and the Catholic Church (Jonas, 1991, 43). As the counterrevolution continued to introduce and
encourage industrialization, and expand exports to the Guatemalan economy the old elites were
compelled to merge with new members from the industrial and cotton growing sectors. There
was also a small ladino petty bourgeoisie employed in the urban areas and working for elites, they
too enjoyed privileged status during the counterrevolution.
At the start of the counterrevolution in 1954 Colonel Armas abolished all labor groups,
political parties, and social organizations. Labor and union groups suffered persecution,
membership in labor parties declined significantly throughout the 1960s, from a peak of nearly
100,000 members in 1954 to 27,000 in 1961. Urban ladinos, who had previously comprised the
bulk of the military and who accounted for the majority of the membership of the urban labor
unions, student groups, and revolutionary parties, now explicitly and tacitly supported the
counterrevolution. Some ladinos had been alarmed by the radicalization of the peasant groups
during the revolution; others were pacified by their perceived position in society, as members of
the socially and economically mobile middle class (Jonas, 1991, 44). Most were concerned with
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