was printed at a shop in Tegucigalpa called Talleres La República and edited by Cosme Viscovich Palomo, Mario López Villatoro (secretary of relations), and Lionel Sisniega Otero (CEUA general secretary).21 In the pages of the Bulletin, Catholic anticommunists shared their conviction that Arbenz had imperiled the nation and its citizens’ natural rights. They charged that he had violated the Constitution by forcing them into exile and censuring their political meetings. They called the students, faculty, and administrators who supported Arbenz communist dupes and wrote that the Association of University Students (AEU) was filled with liars. From exile, the CEUAGE pledged to be “a strong nucleus of men imbued with the feelings of Nation, Home, Religion, and Liberty, who [would] try to win for their pueblo the conquest of real democracy.”22 This conquest would demand “great sacrifices, painful work, enormous doses of civic will, a lot of patriotism and honor and more honor.”23 In no uncertain terms, the CEUA’s promise evoked the responsibilities of student nationalism.
The group debuted its Plan de Tegucigalpa in the Christmas Eve edition of the Bulletin. It circulated quickly in a pamphlet. The U.S. Library of Congress catalogued one copy before the end of the year. In March 1954, some students traveled to Caracas to present the plan at the Tenth Inter-American Conference.24 The Plan’s focus on education reflected the interests of its authors, who were all students and young professionals. In many ways, its educational ideals were not so different from those of the Revolution. Echoing the neo-Lamarckism that informed indigenismo in previous decades, the CEUA prioritized building strength of character. Guatemalan youth “marched blindly” because of a defective educational system. Their personalities were undeveloped, demonstrated by “the skittishness, the fickle spirit, the instability of purpose, the inconsistency of moral values, [and] the lack of constancy in the achievement of the highest ideals.”25 The Plan remedied this by providing an education that attended to the growth of the personality as much as the intellect. It included free and mandatory primary education, a literacy campaign, art schools, and centers for rural instruction. Under the Plan, the purpose of the university was to “enlighten” and “restore” the pueblo of Guatemala, complementing the government’s role as moral guide.26 Again, this was quite like the role of the university in the revolutionary governments.
There were some marked departures from the Revolution’s educational philosophy. A long section entitled “University Autonomy” proposed a budget that eliminated university fundraising from the manufacture and sale of liquor (a significant source of income, especially during the Huelga de Dolores). For the moral compass of anticommunist San Carlistas, it was “a great contradiction that, to a large extent, our greatest cultural institution lives on death.” They added that a basic function of the university ought to be to “combat, by all means at its disposal, the destruction of the alcoholic scourge . . . a prelude to crime and prostitution, determinant factor in vagrancy and misery and an imponderable burden on society.”27 Under the Plan, the government of Guatemala would become a representative democracy led by the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. This resonated with the platform of the Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional (MEP) nearby in Mexico, established by the Episcopate and Mexican Catholic Action between 1945 and 1947.28 CEUA students likely met the MEP at one of the many anticommunist congresses held throughout the region, perhaps at the Congreso Contra la Intervención Soviética en América Latina, held in Mexico City at the end of May 1954 and advertised on the cover of the Boletín.
Like their peers who had helped to draft the 1945 Constitution, CEUA students were concerned about Guatemala’s large indigenous population. The Plan called for a “government of the pueblo, by the pueblo, for the pueblo” and “attendant to the idiosyncrasies of Guatemala.”29 Like newspaper editors a decade earlier, the CEUA explained how centuries of repression had left indigenous communities “isolated, fearful, distrustful, and suspicious of the ladinos.” As a result, the nation formed into two distinct societies, preventing the construction of a “healthy and organically capable pueblo.”30 The CEUA students explained:
FIGURE 4. Cover of the Boletín del CEUAGE, May 22, 1954. Collection of Lionel Sisniega Otero. Archivo Histórico, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA).
For centuries, for the entire History of Guatemala, there has been a foolish zeal among the men of the government to undervalue the autochthonous, the traditional [típico], that which is our essence—the very soul of the Nation—in exchange for ideas and systems that are hardly compatible with the peculiarities of the environment, obliging Guatemala’s people to take erroneous routes that, disfiguring the physiognomy of the pueblo, have prevented her from standing up in front before the world and proclaiming aloud: “This is Guatemala.”31
Instead of celebrating Guatemala’s indigenous culture, most statesmen had championed foreign ideas at the pueblo’s expense. The toll was exacted upon the very physical body of the nation, disfiguring the body politic by forsaking its indigenous essence. In other words, national unity was necessary for progress and the fight against communism. Only once foreign ideologies had been expunged could Guatemala be herself. The CEUA wrote, “now is the time for us to stop being vessels for imported thoughts, for strange forms and exotic ideologies . . . we remember that we are Guatemalans, and that, with mighty national sentiment, founded in the true presence of the fusing [of] indios and ladinos, Guatemala stands tall [and] will follow its path.” Whether a sincere or strategic appeal, the students sought an authentic nationalism that was “[n]either the extreme right nor the extreme left [but rather] the heart of Guatemala.”32
Guatemala, a nation figured as female, was the progeny of the indigenous and the ladino. In kaleidoscopic language reminiscent of Mexican pedagogue José Vasconcelos’s cosmic race, the CEUA students went on to predict, “like the sexes, the two halves of one destiny will come together to generate the future, and then, the genius of the Guatemalan people will shine.” Then, the students added, “Guatemala will be herself.”33 The Plan detailed specialized institutions for guidance in “cultural, social, and economic improvement” in order to develop “what [the indios] have that is useful.”34 It offered an education system with curriculum taught by indigenous teachers, attentive to the needs and customs of each region.35 Educational centers (colonias escolares) would be built to increase access to education for indigenous communities.36 The autonomous university was protected under the Plan, for without it, “scientific speculation stagnates, spiritual disquiet goes up in smoke, and the founts of knowledge and desire for knowledge run dry.” Only USAC could confer degrees and the doors to the university would be open to anyone who could fulfill the prerequisites of enrollment, “regardless of sex, color, nationality, citizenship, political or religious creed, and economic or social position.”37 Whether ladino or indigenous, the Plan affirmed each citizen’s right to education alongside their responsibility to seek self-improvement. In sum, its education reforms were moderate.
The Plan’s land reforms were also moderate. The Plan rejected the land expropriations of Arbenz’s Agrarian Reform and proposed that the seized property be returned to its previous owners. But it also advocated what the CEUA called a “humanized” version of the modern trade system with fixed minimum export prices, greater domestic investment in industrialized agriculture, and the provision of low-interest loans for campesinos. This would increase the number of landowners while avoiding “the minifundio trap,” because, the CEUA claimed, maximizing private property was the most effective way to generate wealth as well as “the most just way to achieve the primary aims of life.”38 For the CEUA, the primary aims of life were national economic productivity and individual material advancement. Finally, the Plan returned property rights to the Catholic Church and permitted religious instruction in public schools.39
As I mentioned above, a small Army of the Liberation invaded from Honduras
