Kate Marshall at the University of California Press, who has nurtured this project with a sense of humor and sharp intellect. Only once did I call her under duress, and she was perfect then and at every other moment. Thank you to Bradley Depew for his work in the project’s final stages. My thanks must also go out to J. T. Way, Diane M. Nelson, Jaime Pensado, and an anonymous reader who read drafts of the manuscript at various stages. Thank you to C. Libby for indexing. Thank you, too, to the Editorial Board at University of California Press.
I am humbly indebted to my friends, family, and kin. Without them there would be no book, and nothing worth thinking or writing, in any case. So, thank you—
To Anne Eller, Dixa Ramírez, Greta LaFleur, Joe Fischel, Megan Fountain, Fabian Menges, Aliyya Swaby, Bench Ansfield, Bruce Braginsky, Siobhan Carter-David, Cassi Meyerhoffer, Owen Meyerhoffer, Aron Meyer, and everyone at Unidad Latina en Acción who made New Haven a place to call home.
To Jennifer Boles, Devi Mays, Tess Hannah, Laura Grover, Chris Sloan, Ponce and Growler Grover-Sloan, Dan Stevenson, Rachel Dotson, David Díaz Arias, Kevin Coleman, Kalani Craig, Erin Corber, Club Kirkwood, Microcosm Publishing, the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, and the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls who provided moral support during the long years of graduate school.
To the best letter writers, my grandparents Tony and Elaine Vrana, and to Dr. John and Jimmie Miller, whom I miss very much. I must thank my mother and father, Mary and Jon Vrana, for setting formidable examples of hard work, commitment, and love. Thank you for your unremitting encouragement. To my sister, Anna Vrana, thank you for you. Thank you, too, to Samantha Vrana, whom we lost during the book’s final revisions.
To Riedell and Dolly Vrana, who make long days bearable.
To David Kazanjian whose rigorous thinking and fierce commitment to a better world are watermarks on every single page of this book. No expression of gratitude is adequate to the debt I owe him for patiently showing me the meaning of a forgotten umbrella.
To E. Cram and Taylor Dean, who are my home no matter the distance.
Of course, always, already, alongside, and ongoingly, to kidd.
ABBREVIATIONS
| AED | Association of Law Students |
| AEU | Association of University Students |
| CACIF | Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations |
| CEEM | Coordinating Committee of Secondary School Students |
| CEH | Commission for Historical Clarification |
| CEUA | Committee of Anticommunist University Students |
| CEUAGE | Committee of Guatemalan Anticommunist University Students in Exile |
| CNT | National Workers’ Central |
| CNUS | National Committee on Trade Union Unity |
| COSEC | Coordinating Secretariat of the International Student Conference |
| CRN | National Reconstruction Committee |
| CSE | Students’ High Council |
| CSU | University High Council |
| CSUCA | Central American Universities’ High Council |
| CUC | Campesino Unity Committee |
| EGP | Guerrilla Army of the Poor |
| ESA | Secret Anticommunist Army |
| FAR | Rebel Armed Forces |
| FASGUA | Autonomous Federation of Guatemalan Unions |
| FERG | Student Front–Robin García |
| FUD | Democratic University Front |
| FUR | United Revolutionary Front |
| IGSS | Guatemalan Social Security Institute |
| INCA | Normal Institute of Central America for Girls |
| INCV | National Central Institute for Boys |
| ISC | International Student Conference |
| IUS | International Union of Students |
| JPT | Patriotic Workers’ Youth |
| JUCA | Catholic Anticommunist University Youth |
| MDN | National Democratic Movement |
| MLN | National Liberation Movement |
| MR-13 | Revolutionary Movement–13 November |
| ORPA | Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms |
| PAR | Revolutionary Action Party |
| PGT | Guatemalan Labor Party |
| PID | Democratic Institutional Party |
| PNR | National Renovation Party |
| PR | Revolutionary Party |
| PRDN | National Democratic Reconciliation Party |
| UFCO | United Fruit Company |
| USAC | Universidad de San Carlos |
MAP 1. Political Map of Guatemala. Based on a map prepared by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
MAP 2. New Transit Plan for Downtown Guatemala City, 1952. Archive of El Imparcial. Fototeca Guatemala, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA).
Introduction
“DO NOT MESS WITH US!”
TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING seemed to be a fine time to start drinking for university students in 1955, at least on Good Friday, about ten months into military rule. A group of two thousand young revelers gathered in front of Lux Theatre on Sixth Avenue in downtown Guatemala City. They passed bottles of Quetzalteca-brand aguardiente. The event was called the Huelga de Dolores, or Strike of Sorrows, though it was neither solemn nor a strike. In fact, it was an annual tradition dating to at least 1898. Year after year at the desfile bufo, students in extravagant costumes paraded alongside decorative floats that portrayed political controversies and pop culture icons. In 1955, one sign read “Adiós, Patria y Libertad” (Goodbye, Fatherland and Freedom). It was a play on the slogan of the National Liberation Movement (MLN), which vowed “Dios, Patria y Libertad” (God, Fatherland, and Freedom). Students mercilessly lampooned the MLN’s leader, president and colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had overthrown democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz the year before. Students’ signs called him “CACA” (a slang term for feces and, conveniently, the president’s initials) and made fun of his large nose. Armas brought a definitive end to the democratic period known as the Ten Years’ Spring (1944–1954), but some students were not easily cowed.
By the beginning of Arbenz’s presidency, San Carlistas, as Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) students, alumni, and faculty came to be known, had both collaborated with and opposed the government for decades. USAC was the only institution of higher learning in Guatemala until 1961, so nearly everyone with a university degree had attended the school. Many of its students became national and international luminaries. Friendships—and enmities—formed there shaped the course of the nation’s history. Sheer impact and influence is one reason to study the history of San Carlistas.
Another is how the students of San Carlos require historians to develop more complex understandings of the power of intellectual elites. While drinking and chatting, the crowd of young revelers described above read from a peculiar newspaper, the No Nos Tientes. The No Nos Tientes exemplifies San Carlistas’ relationship to Guatemalan state power and protest. Published every year since 1898, even through some of the worst years of civil war violence, this satirical paper was written and edited by San Carlistas (anonymously or using playful nicknames) for San Carlistas. Its pages were filled with comics, fictional interviews, inside jokes, crossword puzzles, and scathing editorials that spared no one. Even its title conveys this tone. Tentar, the infinitive of the verb tientes, is difficult to translate into English, but it means, roughly, “to mess with,” “excite,” “agitate,” or “disturb.” No Nos Tientes—Do Not Mess with Us—is more challenge than plea. It implies putting someone to the test, as in “Do not try us,” and “Do not tempt us.” That this warning was uttered with a wry smile confounds the images that predominate scholarship on student politics and protest: rows of
