Economic Freedom in Guatemala

In 1982, CBS News presented an unusually candid report on Guatemala by
correspondent Ed Rabel.  It featured an interview with the former head
of the US Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala, Fred Sherwood, who took no
pains to hide his approval of state terrorism in the service of business
interests (including some 200 US corporations). Sherwood himself owns
a rubber plantation, a cement factory and a textile mill where he pays
his workers about $4.50 a day.

RABEL:    The whole country of Guatemala was once virtually a
          branch office of the United Fruit Company. In the 1950s,
          it held two-thirds of the usable farmland and monopolized
          the nation's railroads in its multimillion-dollar banana
          empire. When a democraticaly elected president named
          Jacobo Arbenz tried to institute a land reform program in
          1954 so poor farmers could have land of their own, United
          Fruit lobbied the Eisenhower Administration to intervene.
          The CIA stepped in and overthrew the Guatemalan leader...
          [Sherwood says] it's an ideal place to invest...because
          profits are high, costs are low.

SHERWOOD: We have a huge labor market and the workers are very good.
          You teach them and they -- they don't mind doing the same
          thing day after day, the routine, like American workers
          like a variation. But here, people do the same thing day
          after day, and they're very good.

RABEL:    Is the government pretty cooperative?

SHERWOOD: Oh, yes. They're very cooperative. We don't have
          restrictions as to environmental things and there's just
          no restrictions or rules at all, so that makes it nice.

RABEL:    Are the people here oppressed in any way?

SHERWOOD: Really, I don't think so. I know of no individual, I know
          of no one -- I have lived here for 36 years, I've been in
          farming, in industry, in commerce -- and I don't know of
          anybody being impressed [sic]. No one forces them to do
          anything. And I think this is just something some
          reporters have thought up.

RABEL:    Most Guatemalans see a different country than Fred
          Sherwood does. Human rights organizations have repeatedly
          accused Guatemalan governments of running deliberate
          programs of political murder to maintain a grip on power.
          -- priests, nuns, labor leaders, teachers, students --
          anyone who threatened the established order. Politicians
          have always been high on the hit list...a [Christian
          Democrat] politician here in this country told me that
          more than 120 of his party's leaders had been assassinated
          in about an 18-month period.

SHERWOOD: Well, first place, I'd very much question it, because I
          don't think there's been a hundred twenty people of all
          types assassinated here in the -- last year. I mean, I'm
          not counting the peasants or the -- I mean men of that
          category. No, I think that's probably exaggerated to a
          great extent. There were a couple of politicians
          assassinated a few years ago, but believe me, they were
          way out in left field and well, these people are, I think,
          our enemies. They're -- they against our -- our way of
          life. And maybe assassination is not the right word for
          it, but I don't think they should be -- continue allowed
          to run free to try to destroy our form of government, our
          way of life in other words.

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Source: CBS Reports, "Guatemala," with CBS News correspondent Ed Rabel,
broadcast September 1, 1982.