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Uruguay was a nation proud of being world champions at soccer. Twice they had won the gold medals in soccer at the Olympics. And Uruguay was unique in other ways. It was the only state in South America that recognized the Soviet Union. Uruguay was a constitutional democracy led by intellectuals from the professional classes. They gave the country national insurance, old age benefits, the eight-hour day and worker's compensation. Some public utilities had been nationalized. To the displeasure of the Church they legalized divorce, and the government had ended the Church's monopoly in education. With the tensions of the depression, Uruguay's neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, feared uprisings among their own people, and viewing Uruguay's relations with the Soviet Union they accused Uruguay of serving as the focus of Communist infestations that threatened their nation.
The collapse in demand from outside Uruguay for wool and other products brought economic depression to Uruguay. Uruguay's president since 1931, Gabriel Terra, dissolved Congress in 1933 and began ruling by decree, temporarily disrupting Uruguay's democracy.
Just north of Uruguay, Brazil had enjoyed prosperity after World War I, but its government had squandered money and had accumulated a large internal and foreign debt. Then came the depression, which hurt Brazil's major industry - coffee. Brazil's coffee kings and many coffee merchants fell into bankruptcy, and unemployment rose in the cities. In 1930, a rebellion brought the president of one of Brazil's provinces to national power - Getúlio Vargas. Vargas suppressed a revolt against him that broke out in Sao Paulo, and he allied himself with an anti-Semitic fascist, Plinio Salgado.
Salgado was subsidized by wealthy German-Brazilian industrialists and by the German Embassy. His slogan was "God, Nation and Family," and he had several thousand street fighters who wore green shirts. Salgado's movement gained supporters from many leading families and secret adherents in the army, navy and in the government's bureaucracies. In 1933, President Vargas disbanded Congress, declared martial law and warned the nation against a threat from Communists. Salgado offered Vargas 100,000 armed followers to protect the nation. Vargas accepted their support and helped them set up headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.
President Vargas created a new constitution, established the eight-hour day, abolished child labor and provided medical care for sick workers and expectant mothers. He ruled the nation with dictatorial powers and controlled the press. He jailed editors and he filled Brazil's prisons with other political prisoners. He appealed to the nation with the slogan "Brazil for the Brazilians." He claimed that his rule was democratic and that he had a direct connection to all Brazilians. He established good trading relations with Germany, and by 1937 Brazil was buying twice as much from Germany as it was from Great Britain.
The depression also brought an anti-Communist and dictatorial regime to power in Argentina. Politics in Argentina, like some other Latin American nations, was a conflict been the owners of great stretches of agricultural land on one hand and those involved in modern industry and the professions on the other. Argentina - a nation predominately of immigrants from Europe - had been ruled by an oligarchy of landowners until World War I.
In 1916, Argentina had its first free elections, with a secret ballot, and in this election the opposition party, the Radicals, came to power - a party ostensibly devoted to free enterprise and industrial expansion but sympathetic toward workers and in favor of social reform. With its exports of meat and cereals, the country prospered, and wealthy young Argentinean men became a common sight in Paris and other places of glamour outside Argentina. The government of the Radical Party was at odds with the landed elite, whose sons had entered and staffed the Church and the military. Therefore the Radical Party was at odds with the military and the Church. And when the depression caught the Radical Party in power, that party, and the nation's president, Hipólito Irigoyen, were blamed for the hard times. Irigoyen was also blamed for having made a trade agreement with the Soviet Union, and the military used this as an excuse to seize power.
The leader of the coup in Argentina, General José Uriburu, made himself President. he instituted terror and torture, and he intervened in twelve of Argentina's fourteen provinces to suppress discontent and opposition to his regime. Uriburu increased the pay of his base of support: the army. He prohibited the Radical Party from participating in elections.
In November 1931 a candidate of Uriburu's choosing, General Augustin P. Justo, was elected President. With the Radical Party thoroughly defeated, Justo pursued moderate policies and reforms and brought a return of honest elections.
With the coming of the depression, conflict and repression intensified in Peru as it did elsewhere. Before the depression, Peru had been led by military men - men involved in Peru's war with Chile. Peru's president was Augusto Bernadino Leguia, a dictator who was criticized for his compromise with Chile, criticized for the economic depression, for his financial dealings and his harsh rule. In 1930, General Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, led a coup against Leguía. In elections in 1931, a Leftist coalition, led by a group called the Popular Alliance of Revolutionary Americans (APRA), out-polled Cerro, but the counting was done under Cerro's bayonets, and Cerro became President.
The following year, the APRA led a popular rebellion. The insurgents executed some sixty army officers, and the army killed at least 1,000 of the APRA and their sympathizers, using aerial bombing for the first time in South America's history. Under President Cerro, all political activity, debate and most newspapers were silenced. Thousands were jailed - some of them chained to walls in the fortress near downtown Lima.
In 1933 Cerro was assassinated, and General Manuel Oscar Benavides became president. He promoted public works and labor legislation. He encouraged education and sanitation, and he released political prisoners.
The Latin American nation hardest hit by the depression was Chile, but here the depression caught a repressive military regime in power. The unemployed and students rioted, and in 1931 the regime's leader, Carlos Ibáñez, escaped over the Andes Mountains to Argentina. The movement that overthrew Ibáñez drafted a liberal professor of law, Juan Esteban Montero, to run for the presidency, and he won. But political turmoil soon followed. In June, 1932, a military coup placed Carlos Dávila, a socialist, in power. Washington withheld recognition from the Dávila regime, and in September another military coup ousted Dávila.
In December 1932, quarrels within Chile's military resulted in its putting in power a former Liberal Party president, Arturo Alessandri, now a Conservative. Alessandri lasted as president into the mid-thirties, when fighting between socialist and fascist groups resulted in Alessandri asking for dictatorial powers with which to suppress communism. In 1936, Ibáñez, back from Argentina, tried to seize power with the help of fascists, but the coup failed. In preparation for elections scheduled for 1938, Alessandri's government banned fascist mass meetings and parades. The fascists responded by trying to seize buildings near the presidential palace, but the rising was easily crushed, and the fascist leader, J. González von Marées, received a twenty-year prison sentence.
In Colombia it was the conservatives who were in office when the depression hit, and with the depression the public voted a conservative president out of office and elected in his place as a member of the Liberal Party: Enrique Olaya Herrera. Another Liberal, Alfonso López Pumarejo, was elected President in 1934. Pumarejo established, constitutional reforms, the eight-hour workday and the right of labor to strike. And Colombia's Liberal Party was to hold power until 1946.
In Venezuela the Depression caught the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in office. Gómez had been in power since 1908. He had amassed a fortune. He used spies and torture, and he had put dissidents into dungeons. But he had been careful not to neglect bestowing favor to the military, upon whose support his power rested. Gómez died in 1935, and pent up resentment against him and his rule resulted in people sacking and burning the homes of the Gómez family and his henchmen. General Eleázar López Contreras succeeded Gómez, and he promoted public works as relief from the depression. Civil liberties for a time were respected, but López Contreras responded to strikes and disorders by repressive measures against what his regime labeled as agitation by communists and anarchists.
Bolivia and Paraguay had been too busy warring with each other over territory and oil to be impacted politically by the depression. The fighting ended in 1936. And that year in Paraguay, Colonel Rafael Franco took over the presidency. He intended to establish a fascist regime modeled after Italy. Paraguay's army overthrew him a year later and re-established civilian rule, giving power to Félix Paiva, a university president. The formal settlement between Bolivia and Paraguay came in 1938, while in Bolivia a 34 year-old Lieutenant Colonel, Germán Busch, became president under a new constitution. In 1939, Busch died mysteriously. It was said that he had committed suicide, but his backers believed he had been murdered, and they began a new movement in Bolivia called the Movement of National Revolution (MNR).
In 1929, United Fruit of Boston bought out its major competitor in Honduras, Cuyamel Fruit, which had been owned by a former fruit jobber in New Orleans, Samuel Zemurry. The price was 25 million dollars - five times what the former owner had paid for it eighteen years before. Zemurry had been a hands-on operator and well liked by the Hondurans. He had been generous with his growers, providing local people with interest free loans and gifts. He had been a financial supporter of the Liberals and opposed to the leader of the National Party: General Carías Andino. With Zemurry not around to help them, by 1932 the Liberals were low on funds, and that year they lost the presidency to General Carías.
With Zemurry having sold out to United Fruit, the company befriended General Carías. Carías had a paramilitary force that moved like Mussolini's fascist squads against dissidents. Labor leaders and social activists were killed. And all opposition was branded as foreign-inspired subversion. In crushing opposition, Carías claimed to have brought Honduras a "blessed peace." Carías' National Party newspaper, La Epoca, adulated him. His birthday became a national "day of peace and thanksgiving to God." When election-time rolled around in 1936, Carías abrogated the constitution to extend his term office. And in 1939 the legislature in Honduras authorized him to remain in power six more years.
In Guatemala, meanwhile - where United Fruit was also involved in banana growing - dictators had been in charge through most of its history as an independent nation. In the early thirties, the U.S. was second in Guatemala's coffee industry, behind Germany. Britan the U.S. and Germany were Guatemala's primary sources of investment, the German investments dispersed in small enterprises, including retail establishments. The largest of their enterprises were devoted to finance, among them Banco Aleman.
In 1930 the depression arrived in Guatemala, and General José María Orellana took power in a coup. In accordance with its policy of supporting order and opposing coups, the U.S. refused to recognize the new regime, and Orellana resigned. From the landowning oligarchy a single candidate ran for the presidency in February 1931, unopposed - General Jorge Ubico. He was popular and a man with ideas, an energetic man who appeared honest. He spoke of corruption as having caused the government's inadequate response to the economic crisis and as having used up resources needed by the government. He pointed out that he was wealthy, that he had his "own resources" to sustain him and was in no need to accumulate wealth that belonged to the government.
Ubico made economic development the primary objective of his government. Guatemala had little to sell abroad but agricultural products. Ubico wanted increased sales abroad for the purpose of acquiring foreign exchange. He encouraged investment from the United States and Europe. Only from 15 to 20 percent of Guatemala's land was under cultivation, and he wanted to increase that acreage and production. Ubico was frugal, and in the U.S. he was described as a progressive. With U.S. aid, Ubico pursued public works, including the building of a network of roads, and he improved health and school facilities.
Ubico traveled about Guatemala, inspecting and visiting schools. He exhibited concern for the masses and was committed to acting on complaints, such as that of a mother deserted by her husband. Guatemala was 54 percent Indian in population, and Ubico wanted to help the nation's Indians - who furnished most of the labor in agriculture. He hoped that improved roads and transportation would join Indians in the nation's commercial production. He wanted Indians to give up subsistence agriculture and become commercial farmers.
From colonial times, Indians had been on large estates (the haciendas), exchanging their labor for a small dwelling and a bit of land to farm. They had been furnished with food on credit, always in debt and in effect bound to the estate - debt peonage, equivalent to serfdom. An Indian leaving the estate without permission was treated as a criminal according to law favored by the landed oligarchy. Ubico abolished debt peonage while preserving incentives to encourage Indians to work. In 1934 he passed a "vagrancy law." Indians were to enter a transitional phase of two years labor for the state, and all Guatemalans were to maintain a means of supporting themselves and their families. This meant working on a plot of land of at least 1.6 acres (15/16 of one manzana.), or, if one worked on a smaller plot he was required to do additional work elsewhere for at least 100 days of a year, or, if one cultivated no land he was obliged to be employed for a least 150 days of a year - a span of time that assured labor for the growing seasons. Indians were now free to seek work where they wished, which was supposed to result in employers competing for labor and paying the Indians higher wages.
The U.S. had been invited into Central America as the arbiter of disputes, a recent arbitration resulting in a 1930 protocol signed by Guatemala and Honduras, regarding a longstanding boundary dispute - arbitrated by the Chief Justice of the United States. When Ubico took office in 1931 he spoke openly about Guatemala's interests being in harmony with U.S. interests. Ubico's desire for peace and stability in the Central America region matched that of the United States. U.S. naval forces often sailed by, to Nicaragua where Marines were stationed or to the Panama Canal. And occasionally U.S. aircraft flew by, giving a picture of U.S. power. And occasionally the U.S. naval officers came ashore for courtesy calls.
Guatemalan landowners and businessmen during the 1930s had, in general, a favorable impression of U.S. businessmen. United Fruit and Ubico got along. Investments from the United States were welcome for the jobs it was creating, while some were calling United Fruit Company El Pulpo (the Octopus) because of its domination of the nation's railway. The United Fruit Company also controlled the facilities at Guatemala's Atlantic Coast port, Puerto Barrios, from which its fruit was shipped. From Ubico's government the United Fruit Company received import duty and real estate tax exemptions.
Rather than fear of control by U.S. businessmen, it was communism that concerned Ubico, including an uprising in El Salvador in 1931 purported to have been led by communists. Ubico believed that communists were evil and beyond the law. He considered anybody opposing his regime as probably a communist. Dissenters were therefore treated harshly. Under Ubico, the press closely watched for articles unfriendly to the government. There was government censorship and some of what is called self-censorship, also called intimidation.
In September 1934 an anti-Ubico plot is said to have been uncovered by police. The election of a new president was scheduled for February, 1935, which may have had something to do with the event. Police tortured prisoners who implicated prominent politicians, some military officers and members of Ubico's dominant political party, the Liberal Progressive Party. The conspirators were said to have been communists planning to assassinate Ubico, to set fires, loot, bomb indiscriminately and spread chaos in an effort to disrupt society through terror. Sixteen accused plotters were executed.
Guatemala's constitution barred an incumbent president from re-election, but it had been common for Guatemalan presidents to defy this. It was called continualismo. Ubico's successes were cited - his restoration of vigor to the government, his stabilization of the nation's finances and his elimination of corruption. He was portrayed as necessary for Guatemala. By "plebiscite" Ubico's presidency was extended to 1943.
Unlike Guatemala, Costa Rica was a nation with a tradition in democracy. It had few Indians with whom landowners could be in conflict, and it was progressive in education, civil rights and good government. But the depression hit Costa Rica hard, and trying to take advantage of the depression, Rightists attempted a coup - to no avail. Tradition accounted for something, and the coup was easily suppressed and civilian rule and Costa Rico's constitutional democracy maintained.
Unlike Costa Rica, neighboring El Salvador had a past of political unrest and military coups. The depression ruined El Salvador's coffee growing industry. In January 1931, in its first free elections in twenty years, the nation elected a new president, but in December the new government was overthrown by General Maximiliano Hernandez Martínez. He made decisions in consultation with occult powers and had all streetlights painted blue to cure an epidemic. Those peasants who protested against his rule he labeled communists - despite peasants by nature being wedded to private property. A peasant rebellion in 1932 was indeed led by a Communist, Farabundo Martí. El Salvador's army crushed the revolt and massacred thousands of peasants and Indians.
In Nicaragua, the United States had been withdrawing its Navy, including Marines. From 5,673 sailors and Marines in 1928, their total number was down to about 1,000 in 1932. And the withdrawal of these were delayed by an earthquake, as the Marines were used in disaster work.
The U.S. and Nicaragua agreed that elections would be held in 1932 and supervised by the U.S. Emerging as president from these elections was Juan B. Sacasa, the leader of Nicaragua's Liberal Party. With the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy and Marines, Nicaragua's national guard came under the authority of General Anastasio Somoza, who was Minister of War. Augusto Sandino, the general who had fought on the side of the Liberals in the recent civil war and had refused to bring his men out of the jungle, signed an agreement with the new president in early 1933. Upon leaving the presidential palace, Sandino was shot and killed by members of the National Guard. Anastasio Somoza, was accused of having ordered the killing, but these accusations were denied.
The troubled economy in Nicaragua worked against President Sacasa, and he was forced to resign in 1936, with a provisional president named until the elections of that year. In those elections Somoza was elected president, and as president he initiated public works and established friendly relations with the United States. Somoza became known as a bloody tyrant, and Sandino became a legend and the national hero for Nicaragua's Leftists.
Cuba's sugar industry and economy as a whole was hit hard by the Depression. Public works brought little relief, and President Gerardo Machado applied repressive measures against the rising threat of those opposed to his rule. In 1933, a violent uprising and general strike forced him from office and into exile. A coalition of political parties named a provisional president, and in August, 1933, a cabal of rank and file soldiers overthrew the government and set up a revolutionary junta. Turmoil and bloodshed followed, and after four months the junta surrendered power to Colonel Carlos Mendieta, who was backed by the coalition of political parties trying to bring order and legitimate rule to Cuba. The United States and other countries recognized Mendieta's government. Strikes and disorders continued. Mendieta's commander of Cuba's armies, Fulgencio Batista, became the power behind the presidency, and Batista was to rule Cuba as a dictator until Fidel Castro overthrew him in 1959.
In 1930, General Rafael Leonida Trujillo Molina was elected president of the Dominican Republic, and he remained undisputed ruler thereafter, becoming one of the world's most notoriously brutal dictators. He ruled with murder, torture and theft. He, his family, and a few cronies grabbed all the best land and acquired monopolies on all businesses, from salt to selling girls in the white slave trade.
Next door to the Dominican Republic, Haiti was still under occupation by a small U.S. military force. Latin American nations were criticizing the United States for this, while the U.S. was trying to organize what it hoped would be a proper government there. In 1936, the U.S. ended its military occupation of Haiti, nineteen years after it had begun, the Roosevelt administration hoping that Haiti would now embark on a path of independence and stability.
In Mexico in the mid-twenties the Church was unhappy over the government creating state elementary education in place of what had been the Church's monopoly in elementary education. And the Church had been resisting a ban on religious processions, deportation of foreign priests, orders that priests must register with the government and the closings of monasteries and convents. In 1926, Catholics - some of them priests - took up arms against Mexico's federal and state governments - known as the Cristero war. Trains were blown up. Public schools were attacked and burned and teachers were killed. The government retaliated and tried to kill a priest for every murdered teacher. The government wore down the Cristero Rebellion, but on July 17, 1928, a Catholic partisan murdered the President-elect, Alvaro Obregon (Obregón).
The revolutionary regime begun by Carranza in 1917 still held power, and a peaceful passage of power based on free elections had become tradition. The presidency in 1934 passed to General Lázaro Cárdenas. Cárdenas was unpretentious, and he could not be bribed. His main interest was improving the lives of the Mexican people, and he launched a six-year plan to advance agriculture and industry. He nationalized foreign-owned oil companies and became known for making Mexico independent of foreign capital. Britain and the United States responded with boycotts.
Cárdenas divided agricultural lands for Mexico's numerous peasants, creating what became known as mini-fundia, which proved a disaster in that it was poor in productivity and its harvests fed hardly more than the families of the proprietors, leaving little in agricultural surpluses for export and foreign currency. Bigger farms began to develop as people got around the law by putting adjacent lands in the names of relatives.
Meanwhile, with the depression, industrial productivity was falling. Mexico neared bankruptcy. But unlike many other Latin American nations, Mexico remained politically stable, with Cárdenas duly elected president again and maintaining the respect of the Mexican people.
Recommended Books
Nicaragua in Perspective, by Eduardo Crawley, 1979.
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