Crisis and Achievement: south and central america

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Arturo Fortunato Alessandri Palma

Arturo Fortunato Alessandri Palma was president of Chile from 1920 to 1924, again in 1925, and then from 1932 to 1938. During that time he became known as the Lion of Tarapacá. Known initially for his strident support of the poor of Chile, he was later heavily criticized by many of his former supporters when he became far more conservative.

Arturo Alessandri was born on December 20, 1868, at Linares, south of the Chilean capital of Santiago, the son of Pedro Alessandri and Susana Palma. His father's family originally came to Chile from Italy. He was educated at the Sacred Heart School in Santiago, and then he worked at the National Library of Chile. He used his position there to study for a law degree and in 1893 was admitted to the bar.

Politically, Alessandri was connected with the Progressive Club, making him a liberal, and, in fact, he later joined the Liberal Party, becoming secretary of its executive committee in 1890. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1897 and had six terms in Congress and two terms in the Senate after successfully challenging a prominent local politician for the seat for Tarapacá.

During this time he built a major political base by supporting the nitrate workers in northern Chile. He became minister of industry and public works in 1908, minister of finance in 1913, and was appointed minister of the interior in 1918.

In 1920 Alessandri was elected president of Chile, ending a right-wing domination of Chilean politics that had started in the 1830s. Alessandri faced many problems in office, and to raise more government revenue he introduced income tax for the first time in Chilean history. However, Chile was entering a period of economic hardships, and the new tax only partially made up for the shortfall in the economy.

This came from the fall in the price of nitrate, which saw the Chilean peso fall from one for 27 cents (U.S.) to one for 9 cents. His reform moves were supported by the Liberal Alliance and the Democratic Party, but unemployment rose, and the pay for civil servants and the army fell into arrears.

Furthermore, Alessandri's attempts to spend more on public education, health, and welfare proved unpopular with some sectors of the country. During his time as president from 1920 to 1924, Alessandri had to change his government 16 times until he was finally able to secure a majority in Congress.

However, Congress moved against him, and with the Chilean peso plummeting in value and his inability to pay the army, Alessandri offered to resign. In the end a military junta staged a coup d'état on September 15, 1924. Alessandri fled to the U.S. embassy and then into exile in Europe.

General Luis Altamirano Talavera headed a military junta to run the country, but when it failed to fulfill the social reform program it had promised, junior officers overthrew it and Carlos Ibáñez del Campo headed the new junta.

He allowed Alessandri to return to Chile on March 20, 1925, the former president having been promised that the constitution would be rewritten to give the executive more powers. In 1925, when Alessandri returned from exile, a crowd of 100,000 came to greet him, and several people were trampled to death in the confusion.

However, on October 1, 1925, Alessandri was again forced to resign, and Luis Barros Borgono succeeded him. In the elections that followed, Emiliano Figueroa Larraín became president, but he resigned in May 1927 to allow Ibáñez del Campo to return to power.

Ibáñez borrowed U.S. $300 million from the United States and tried to resuscitate the economy. Initially it worked, but Ibáñez was forced from power, and Anarguía Política became president. Elections were held in 1932, and Alessandri was once again elected president.

Alessandri's new administration was totally different from that of the early 1920s. He was a strict constitutionalist, and he had also become more conservative and depended on the support of the right wing.

His economically conservative policies led to his refusing to give money to the poor, especially those hurt by the fall in the price of nitrate and copper. With the depression hurting in Chile, Alessandri tried to reorganize the nitrate industry, doubling the government's share of profits, raising it to 25 percent.

Promoting building and civil engineering projects, Alessandri still wanted to improve the provision of education. The only way of raising the extra money was by using his finance minister, Gustavo Ross Santa María, to tighten up the collecting of taxes.

In early 1937 the Nacista movement began to gain support, and on September 5, 1938, it tried to stage a coup d'état to get Ibáñez del Campo back into power. Alessandri had already alienated most of his former supporters, who then formed the Popular Front.

He used the army to arrest Ibáñez del Campo. Alessandri's term as president ended in 1938, and Pedro Aguire Cerda succeeded him. Alessandri went to Europe, endorsing Juan Antonio Ríos Morales in the 1942 elections, which he won.

Returning to Chile, in 1944 Alessandri was elected to the Senate, becoming the speaker in the following year. In the 1946 elections he endorsed Gabriel González Videla, who won. By this time Alessandri had once again become more liberal in his views.

Alessandri towered over Chilean politics, but his speech was often rough and crude. When the U.S. journalist and writer John Gunther visited him, Alessandri's office was decorated with autographed photographs of politicians from all over the world, including Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler, and Edward, prince of Wales (later the duke of Windsor).

He died on August 24, 1950, in Santiago. Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, who was president of Chile from 1958 until 1964, was Arturo Alessandri's older son. His younger son, Fernando Alessandri Rodríguez, was also active in politics.

Fulgencio Batista

Fulgencio Batista was born in Banes, located in the Oriente province of Cuba, on January 16, 1901, to a poor farming family. He received little formal schooling, although he attended night school, and joined the army in 1931, where he studied stenography. He was promoted to sergeant in 1928.

During 1931–33 he took part in a conspiracy to overthrow the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, which was successful in August 1933. In September of that year he led a revolt against Machado's successor, Manuel de Céspedes. During this period he violently suppressed a number of attempts to defeat his control.

During one attempt a number of those who surrendered to Batista and his men were executed. He was then promoted to colonel and commander in chief of the army by the provisional president, who Batista thanked by leading another revolt that overthrew him. Batista resigned from the army in 1944 and was elected president.

Batista was not allowed to succeed himself as president by Cuban law, so he left office in 1944. He traveled widely and lived in Florida for a time. He returned to Cuba and was elected to the senate in 1948. He staged another coup on March 10, 1952, and regained control of the government. He was elected president unopposed on November 1, 1954. In that election he was not expected to win and again used force to suppress his opponents.

During his presidency, Batista promoted education and public health care, encouraged independent economic development, and improved labor conditions. He also simplified administrative procedures. However, his regime was exceptionally corrupt, and that, along with his brutal terror against political opponents, turned the people against him.

There were several revolts, most notably the guerrilla campaign led by Fidel Castro in 1956, which was successful by late 1958. His regime was overthrown by Castro's forces, and he resigned the presidency on January 1, 1959, and fled the country with his family and many of his followers to the Dominican Republic.

He later settled in Portugal, where he wrote Cuba Betrayed in 1962. He also wrote I am With the People (1939), Repuesta (1960), Stones and Laws (1961), To Rule is to Foresee (1962), and The Growth and Decline of the Cuban Republic (1964). Batista died in Spain on August 6, 1973.

Plutarco Elías Calles

Plutarco Elías Calles was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, taking over from Alvaro Obregón. He was the founder of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party), which in 1946 would become the Institutional Revolutionary Party and dominate Mexican politics until 1988.

Plutarco Calles was born on September 25, 1877, the son of Plutarco Elías Lucero, a Lebanese man hired by the U.S. Army to test the use of camels in the southwestern United States. He was orphaned when he was three and went to live with his father's sister, Josefa Campuzano, and her husband, Juan Bautista Calles.

They looked after him well, and he took his uncle's surname as his own. Young Calles became one of the earliest teachers at the Colegio Sonora and also contributed some articles on problems in the Mexican educational system of the time. However, he left teaching, as he found the strictures too great for his independent thought.

During the Mexican Revolution, Calles became a supporter of Francisco Madero and became mayor of Agua Prieta, a town on the Mexican side of the Mexican-U.S. border. When Madero was deposed and killed, Calles was involved in the resistance to the new government and rallied supporters of the revolution in Sonora.

He was involved in a battle in 1915 against Maytorena, an ally of Pancho Villa, defeating him. However, he was a politician rather than a military strategist and became the interim and later the constitutional governor of Sonora.

There he introduced some of the educational reforms that he had advocated as a teacher. He was also affected by the anticlerical traditions of the period, expelling all Roman Catholic priests from Sonora. He also introduced laws prohibiting the production and consumption of alcohol.

In 1914 President Venustiano Carranza offered Calles a cabinet position on two occasions, with Calles finally accepting the post of minister of industry, trade, and labor in 1919. By this time Calles was seen as a clear supporter of Alvaro Obregón, who was emerging as a major rival to Carranza. Both came from Sonora, and as the alliance between Carranza and Obregón began to falter Calles resigned from the cabinet and in April 1920 published his Plan de Agua Prieta calling on Sonorans to overthrow Carranza.

After the death of Carranza, Adolfo de la Huerta became president, and during his short presidency Calles became minister of war. He was then minister of the interior for three years during Obregón's period as president. It was not long before Obregón and de la Huerta were arguing, and very soon the latter was getting army support for a revolt. Calles sided with Obregón and quickly defeated the de la Huerta rebellion. When Obregón retired as president on December 1, 1924, Calles became the new president.

One of his most controversial political decisions was the Law Reforming the Penal Code. Published on July 2, 1926, this law reinforced the anticlerical provisions of the 1917 constitution by fining people who wore church decorations and even threatening five years in prison for anybody who questioned the law. Some Roman Catholics were involved in the Cristero revolt, which caused much trouble in central and western Mexico from 1926 until 1929.

Although Calles was a revolutionary, his enemies in the United States denounced him as a communist and even as a Bolshevik. On September 29, 1927, he established a direct telephone link with Calvin Coolidge.

He also managed to get the new U.S. ambassador, Dwight Morrow, who had worked for banker J. P. Morgan, to get the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh to visit Mexico City. There Lindbergh met Morrow's daughter Anne, whom he later married. Morrow was, however, critical of many of the measures that Calles had introduced.

Calles drew much of his support from the poor farmers, and his plan was to improve their lot as small businessmen. To help them, on February 1, 1926, he established the National Bank of Agricultural Credit, having overhauled the banking system and established the Bank of Mexico, modeled on the American Federal Reserve, five months earlier. He also introduced a new system of running the government finance ministry.

On November 30, 1928, Calles stood down as president, and with Obregón having been killed Emilio Portes Gil became provisional president. In 1934 Calles supported Lázaro Cárdenas, who was elected president. In the following year the press became extremely critical of Calles, who returned from retirement to defend the decisions he had made in office.

However, in 1936 Cárdenas had Calles deported after he was accused of trying to establish his own political party. After some years in exile in San Diego, where he reflected on his time in office and played golf, in 1944 President Manuel Ávila Camacho invited him to return to the country to provide more unity during World War II. He died on October 19, 1945, in Mexico City.

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940 and was drawn into Mexican revolutionary politics during the presidency of Francisco Madero from 1911 until 1913. Born on May 21, 1895, in Jiquilpan de Juárez, Michoacán, Lázaro Cárdenas was the eldest of eight children. When his father died, Lázaro Cárdenas was 16 years old and had to look after the family, working variously for a printer, collecting taxes, and even in the local prison.

In 1913, with the overthrow of Madero, Cárdenas joined the Constitutional Army and served under Álvaro Obregón and then Plutarco Calles. When Obregón signed the Treaty of Teoloyucan, sending rival politician Adolfo de la Huerta into exile, Cárdenas was one of the witnesses.

In 1928 he became a divisional general and also governor of Michoacán, where he became well known for his work on building roads, starting schools, and promoting land reform. Calles was president from 1924 to 1928, and Cárdenas served under him.

When Calles stepped down from office he was succeeded by Emilio Portes Gil, then by Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and then by Abelardo L. Rodríquez. All these men were seen as "puppets" of Calles, and when Cárdenas was nominated as the candidate for the ruling Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party), most people believed that Cárdenas was also under the control of Calles.

Cárdenas became president on December 1, 1934, and immediately set about trying to establish an administration that would earn the public's respect. In a surprise move, one of his first acts was to cut his own salary in half.

He then arrested Calles and many of his associates, and some of these were deported, including Calles himself. Sweeping away many of the political and business elite, Cárdenas changed the name of his political party to the Party of the Mexican Revolution. In 1946 it would be renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

He also established a system of government whereby large trade unions, peasant organizations, and middle-class professionals played a major role in the political party, which took on a corporatist structure. Introducing a massive land reform program, Cárdenas granted large pay raises to industrial workers.

The money to pay for these developments was largely drawn from Mexican oil revenue, which followed the nationalization of the petroleum reserves. Cárdenas tried to negotiate with Mexican Eagle, a company controlled by Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Royal Dutch/Shell. However, oil executives refused a plan to establish a presidential commission to look into compensation for the companies.

Eventually, on March 18, 1938, the oil companies agreed to accept 26 million pesos in compensation but rejected some of the other terms. For Cárdenas, the decision came too late, and at 9:45 p.m. he nationalized the oil reserves. This resulted in some 200,000 people marching in the streets of Mexico City to celebrate for the next six hours.

On the home front, Cárdenas also had to deal with an internal rebellion led by General Saturnino Cedillo. It was believed that he had been supported by foreign oil companies, and Cárdenas tried to negotiate personally with the rebel commander. With the death of Cedillo in January 1939, Mexico's last military rebellion came to an end.

For his foreign policy, Cárdenas was resolutely left wing and issued strong condemnations of the invasion of Abyssinia by Mussolini, the Japanese actions in China, the German Anschluss of Austria, and the German persecution of the Jews. Britain severed diplomatic relations with Mexico, which, curiously, led to the Mexicans' selling oil to Nazi Germany.

With the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, Cárdenas proclaimed his support for the Spanish Republic, supplying weapons and ammunition. At the end of the war, he allowed 30,000 Spanish republicans to migrate to Mexico. After the outbreak of World War II, Cárdenas condemned the German invasions of Belgium and the Netherlands and also the Soviet Union for invading Finland.

After his term as president ended on December 1, 1940, Cárdenas became secretary of defense until 1945. Never wealthy, he retired to a modest house on Lake Pátzcuaro and died of cancer on October 19, 1970. His son, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, contested the Mexican presidential elections in 1988, and his grandson, Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, was also prominent in Mexican politics.

Venustiano Carranza

Venustiano Carranza Garza was president of Mexico from 1914 to 1920, having been a supporter of the Mexican Revolution of Francisco Madero. Born on December 29, 1859, at Cuatro Ciénegas, in Coahuila, he was the son of Colonel Jesús Carranza, who had served in the army of Benito Juárez, and María de Jesús Garza.

Carranza was educated at the Ateneo Fuente in Saltillo and then at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, returning to Coahuila, where he took part in running the family farm and ranch. At school he had become interested in Latin American history, and this led him into a late involvement in politics when he became an opponent of Porfirio Díaz, leading a successful revolt against Diaz's handpicked governor of Coahuila.

Carranza, who had been a municipal president, was allowed to retain much of his political power in Coahuila and was also a senator in the national congress. He initially became a supporter of General Bernardo Reyes but quickly came to support the presidential candidate Francisco Madero.

Madero was forced to flee into exile in Texas, and from there he rallied his supporters for an attempt to overthrow Díaz. It had been Díaz who had narrowly beaten Madero in the 1910 election, but many, like Carranza, felt that Díaz should not have been allowed to stand, as it went against the Mexican constitution.

Madero became president in November 1911, and Carranza, who had been his secretary of war and of the navy, was appointed governor of Coahuila, where he improved working conditions for people. However, Madero was soon faced with several rebellions against him, and in February 1913 he was overthrown and replaced by General Victoriano Huerta.

Carranza then led a rebellion against Huerta, leading what became known as the Constitutionalist Army, as it supported the reinstatement of Benito Juárez's liberal constitution of 1857.

On May 1, 1915, Carranza became president and immediately tried to continue the reforms introduced by Madero. This included land reform, the formation of a more independent judiciary, and the decentralization of political power. He wanted to control the developing Mexican Revolution by trying to regulate the economic problems facing the country.

Carranza introduced rules to regulate the economy, regulating banks and forcing foreign investors to renounce any diplomatic protection they had previously enjoyed. One of his major targets was the U.S.-owned oil companies, from which the taxation revenue rose 800 percent during Carranza's five years as president.

The government also took over the railways and boosted support for the Compañia Telefónica y Telegrafica Mexicana (CTTM). Although some commentators have seen Carranza as being anti U.S. and seeking to move against foreign companies, he was actually more focused on promoting Mexican industry.

Facing criticism for being too dictatorial, Carranza was eager to prove that his moves were popular, and in November 1916 he held a constitutional convention in Querétaro, which resulted in the 1917 constitution. Carranza felt that it was too radical but agreed to implement it.

It made extensive provisions for education and labor, ensuring that government schools were "free and secular," and limited work to the eight-hour day, with minimum wages, the right to collective bargaining, and the right to strike. In March 1917 special presidential elections were held, and Carranza was reelected.

Carranza became involved in the Plan de San Diego Revolt, whereby Mexican Americans in Texas staged a rebellion that they hoped would bring Texas back under Mexican control. To help, many hundreds of Mexican soldiers, disguised as civilians, crossed into Texas to launch attacks, which ended in October 1915 when the U.S. government recognized Carranza.

In 1916, in answer to attacks across the border by Pancho Villa, the U.S. government sent Brigadier General John J. Pershing with 10,000 soldiers, mainly cavalry, to pursue Pancho Villa into Mexican territory with reluctant help from Carranza. Pershing had to withdraw in February 1917 without capturing Villa.

As well as international problems, Carranza had some immediate trouble from revolutionary insurgents. However, he put a bounty on the head of Emiliano Zapata, who was killed soon afterward. He then turned to grooming Ignacio Bonillas as his successor, but this was to annoy Alvaro Obregón. One of Obregón's men tried to kill Carranza on April 8, 1920, forcing the president to flee Mexico City for Veracruz.

He was deposed on May 7, and on his way to Veracruz, on May 21, in Tlaxcalantongo, in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, he was assassinated by Rodolfo Herrera. He was succeeded as president by Adolfo de la Huerta, who was president until November, when he was replaced by Alvaro Obregón.

Cristero Revolt

Between 1926 and 1929 a localized uprising exploded in Mexico's western states in reaction to the anti-Catholic policies of Mexican president Plutarco Calles, which attacked the privileged position of the Catholic Church.

Many Mexican revolutionaries viewed the church as the enemy and worked toward stripping it of its political power and landholdings. The writers of the constitution of 1917 sought to tip the balance of power by weakening the church and subordinating it to a strong Mexican state through a variety of provisions. The constitution prohibited the church from owning property and barred clergy members from voting, holding political office, or assembling for political purposes.

Calles enforced these constitutional provisions with anticlerical legislation that forbade the wearing of religious clothing in public, placed all primary education under state control, required the registration of clergy, allowed state governors to reduce the number of practicing ecclesiastics, and called for the deportation of foreign-born clerics. In reaction Mexican priests suspended their religious duties in July 1926, refusing to hold Mass, hear confessions, or administer the sacraments.

The attack on the Catholic Church enshrined in the constitution of 1917 had aroused considerable interest and action from many Mexicans. A few priests and several lay leaders encouraged direct action. One group to heed that call was the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty (LNDLR), a civic organization that formed in May 1925.

Responding to the religious strike by the clergy, the LNDLR called on Mexican Catholics to rise up in arms against the Calles government in the name of Christ and as defenders of the faith. The rebels, dubbed Cristeros due to their battle cry, "Vivo Cristo Rey," or "Long Live Christ the King," targeted schools in particular, the new symbol of the revolutionary regime in rural Mexico. They burned several to the ground and murdered teachers.

Calles's administration listed national education as a priority and viewed the building of 2,000 rural schools as a success; rural residents resented the schools, which placed financial and land burdens on poor communities and challenged traditional Catholic norms.

Full-blown rebellion exploded when Catholic insurgents bombed a government troop train. Sporadic unorganized guerrilla warfare characterized most of the violence, with local leaders recruiting a dozen to a hundred horsemen as a mounted fighting force, supported by groups of peasants serving as the infantry.

Few of the leaders had military experience. The LNDLR attempted to direct the rebellion and create national cohesion among the Cristeros, but its members lacked knowledge of military tactics and command.

The group named a journalist living in the United States, René Capistrán Garza, as the head of the Catholic revolution. Garza never assumed military command of the rebellion and worked unsuccessfully toward gaining the support of U.S. Catholics against the anticlericalism of the Mexican government.

Conversely, many of the rebel leaders in the field simply ignored the leadership of the LNDLR or were disenchanted with the organization's inabilities to send supplies or reinforcements. Although many Cristeros fought courageously and mounted a significant challenge to the federal army, in the end they did little to threaten the stability of the Calles government.

The diplomatic work of U.S. ambassador Dwight Morrow brought the Cristero rebellion to an end. Morrow worked diligently to convince Calles to create peace in Mexico with the Catholic Church, and in 1929 negotiations between the government and the church resulted in a truce.

The church agreed to operate within the law and resumed services, but it would never again command the prominent place in Mexican social and political life it had enjoyed for over two centuries. Although a minority of Catholics participated in the rebellion and it was centered in the western states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Colima, by the end of the violence over 50,000 Mexicans had died, and many others had fled the country.

El Salvador / La Matanza

La Matanza, a Spanish phrase translated as "the massacre" or "the slaughter," refers to the aftermath of an indigenous, communist-inspired uprising in El Salvador in 1932. Although precise figures of the dead are difficult to discern, it is estimated that between 8,000 and 30,000 Salvadoran Indians were killed in the state-sponsored violence.

The roots of the insurrection lay in the appropriation of communal lands for coffee production by the elites and the resulting dislocation of a large number of peasants, many of them indigenous. In the 1880s the Salvadoran government passed laws outlawing Indian communal landholdings and passed vagrancy laws that forced the landless peasants to work on the large coffee plantations owned by the elites. In response peasants in El Salvador launched four unsuccessful uprisings in the late 19th century.

Coffee production expanded into the 20th century, as the country was ruled by a coalition of the coffee-growing oligarchy, foreign investors, military officers, and church officials. In the 1920s land used to grow coffee had expanded by more than 50 percent, causing the Salvadoran economy to be heavily dependent on the international price of coffee. This expansion also created a number of peasants with vivid memories of their recent displacement.

The Great Depression in 1929 resulted in a dramatic decline in coffee prices. By 1930 prices were at half of their peak levels, and by 1932 they were at onethird of the peak levels of the mid-1920s. In response the coffee producers cut the already low wages of their laborers up to 50 percent in some places, in addition to cutting employment.

Meanwhile, the country was experiencing a period of democratic reform unusual in Salvadoran history. In 1930 President Pío Romero Bosque announced that the 1931 election would be a free and open election. This democratic opening allowed Arturo Araujo to win the presidency with the support of students, peasants, and workers.

Araujo was distrusted by much of the elite, whose distrust grew with his attempted implementation of a modest reform program. Araujo's presidency would be marked by increasing social and political unrest and a deepening economic crisis, accompanied by the growth of leftist unions and political groups. On May Day 1930, 80,000 farm workers marched, demanding better conditions and the right to organize.

On December 2, 1931, Araujo was deposed in a military coup, and his vice president, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, assumed the presidency. Martínez quickly ended Araujo's program of social reform and also ended the democratic opening.

In early 1932 Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS) members led by Augustín Farabundo Martí planned a revolt against the landowning elite. The insurrection was to be accompanied by a revolt in the military. Before the revolt could begin Martí was captured, and the rebels in the army were disarmed and arrested. Martí would be executed in the aftermath of the failed revolt.

Despite these setbacks Indian peasants heeded the call of the PCS and revolted in western El Salvador. On the night of January 22 farmers and agricultural workers armed with machetes and hoes launched attacks against various targets in western El Salvador, occupying Juayúa, Izalco, and Nahuizalco in Sonsonate and Tacuba in Ahuachapán.

The military counteroffensive quickly defeated the rebels and retook towns that had fallen to the rebels. While an estimated 20 to 30 civilians were killed in the initial revolt, thousands would die in its aftermath. The military along with members of the elite organized into a civic guard and carried out reprisals singling out Indian peasants, those who wore Indian dress, and those with Indian features.

In the town of Izalco groups of 50, including women and children, were shot by firing squads on the outskirts of town. These reprisals would last for about a month after the insurrection. It is estimated that between 8,000 and 30,000 Salvadoran Indians were killed in the aftermath of the insurrection.

In addition to the loss of life suffered by the indigenous community, La Matanza would have other longterm effects. The massacre influenced many Indians to abandon traditional Indian dress, language, and other identifiable cultural traits in many communities in western El Salvador, although recent research has suggested that Indian identity was not completely destroyed.

For the Salvadoran elites the revolt would combine their strong fears of Indian rebellion and communist revolution. When the violence of La Matanza subsided, a combination of racism and anticommunism became the leading ideology of the elite. This ideology served to block social change and to justify repression. Politically, El Salvador would have a series of military juntas until the El Salvador civil war in the 1980s.

Manuel Estrada Cabrera

Manuel José Estrada Cabrera was president of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920 and established a tradition of Guatemalan strongmen that was to be revived by Jorge Ubico and later presidents. Estrada Cabrera is also credited with running the longest one-man dictatorship in Central American history.

Born on November 21, 1857, in Quezaltenango in the southwest of Guatemala, the nation's secondlargest city, Estrada Cabrera was educated in Roman Catholic schools, training as a lawyer. After many years practicing in Quezaltenango and then in Guatemala City, he became a judge of the Guatemalan supreme court before entering politics.

Elected to congress, he became minister of public instruction, minister of justice, and then minister of the interior during the presidency of José María Reina Barrios. On February 8, 1898, the president was assassinated, and Estrada Cabrera, who was in Costa Rica, returned to Guatemala City. He was the second in line to the presidency.

Estrada Cabrera was said to have burst in on the cabinet meeting where the politicians were discussing the succession. Charging in unannounced, he walked around the cabinet ministers and then drew a revolver from his pocket. Placing it on the table, he then announced: "Gentlemen, you are looking at the new president of Guatemala."

Estrada Cabrera was sworn in as the provisional president, elected soon afterward, and officially inaugurated on October 2, 1898. During his first term in office he respected the constitution, which forbade presidents' serving more than one term.

Before this first term was over Estrada Cabrera changed the constitution to allow himself to be reelected in 1904, again in 1910, and on a third occasion in 1916, remaining president until April 15, 1920. Political commentators do not credit him with any personal popularity or any plan of action or change except anything that might keep him in office.

During his time as president of the country, Estrada Cabrera certainly gave Guatemala internal peace, and this was welcomed by the landowners and the Guatemalan middle class, although the latter gradually tired of his rule.

There had been a financial crisis just before he came to power, and he managed to steer the country through it. He also encouraged investment by the United Fruit Company, which during his presidency started to take over the economic life of the country. Minor Keith of the United Fruit Company was also granted the rights to establish a railway across Guatemala in 1906.

When it was completed, the company took ownership not only of the railway but also of 170,000 acres of agricultural land. The actions of the United Fruit Company led to increased control of the Guatemalan economy by U.S. business interests, in contrast to the situation faced by U.S. companies in Nicaragua, where the reformist president, José Santos Zelaya, was trying to replace U.S. businesses with European ones.

In 1910 the Chicago Tribune sent Frederic Palmer to visit Guatemala and other parts of Central America. He found that the president was living not in the presidential palace but in a nearby building that was easier to secure.

In a meeting with the president, the journalist was told that the Guatemalan army numbered 15,000 to 16,000, but that in a time of war 60,000 could be fielded, which meant that Guatemala had one of the largest, relative to its population, standing armies in the world.

Certainly Estrada Cabrera used the army and, more importantly, his secret police, controlled by Justo Rufino Barrios, to ensure he had no opposition, removing any liberal moves that had been introduced just before he came to power. He also used the presidency to loot the treasury and make himself a large fortune.

Estrada Cabrera was also responsible for building a few schools; improving sanitation, especially in Guatemala City, the nation's capital; and raising the level of agricultural production. However, he kept the Indians in a terrible state, marginalizing them politically and economically. One of Estrada Cabrera's eccentricities was to establish a cult to Minerva in Guatemala, with Greek-style "Temples of Minerva" built in many cities throughout Guatemala.

In 1906 rebels supported by other governments in Central America threatened to push him from office. However, Estrada Cabrera managed to get help from neighboring dictator Porfirio Díaz of Mexico. The Mexicans later became worried by Estrada Cabrera's power, and after the Mexican Revolution he was to face bitter political opponents on Guatemala's northern borders, although internal strife in Mexico prevented them from intervening in Guatemala.

In April 1920 an armed revolt overthrew Estrada Cabrera, and the former dictator was thrown into jail. On April 15 the congress declared Estrada Cabrera to be medically unfit to hold office. He was replaced by Carlos Herrera and then by José María Orellana. This change ushered in a period of liberal political laws and a new reform government, which recognized opposition parties.

Estrada Cabrera had hoped for U.S. intervention to save him, but the U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson, decided not to intervene. In fact, the conspirators who overthrew Estrada Cabrera moved only when they had information that Wilson would not act. Manuel Estrada Cabrera died on September 24, 1924, in jail in Guatemala City.

José Batlle y Ordonez

José Batlle y Ordonez was the president of Uruguay from 1903 to 1907 and again from 1911 to 1915 and remains one of the great politicians in the history of Uruguay. He was a passionate believer in panAmericanism and introduced many social reforms that made Uruguay one of the most liberal countries in the world.

José Batlle (pronounced "Bajé") was born on May 21, 1856, the son of Lorenzo Batlle y Grau, who was one of the major figures in the Uruguayan Colorado Party. Lorenzo was minister of war during the siege of Uruguay's capital, Montevideo. In 1868, when José, Jr., was 12, his father became president of Uruguay, a post he held until 1872.

José spent four years studying at Montevideo University and then traveled around Europe, returning to Montevideo in 1881. He followed his father into the Colorado Party and on June 16, 1886, founded the newspaper El Día, which became the party's paper.

In the following year José Batlle became political chief of the department of Minas, an area near Montevideo, and in 1890 he reorganized the Colorados. His wife, Matilde, was also from an important Colorado family. Her father was Manuel Pacheco y Obes, who had fought in the defense of Montevideo with José's father.

From February 15 to March 1, 1899, José Batlle was acting president of Uruguay, and he made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1900. Following his narrow victory in elections four years later, on March 1, 1903, he succeeded Juan Lindolfo Cuestas. Many people knew José Batlle as the son of a former president and a man of great intellect.

However, when he was elected he had no public platform to implement. This was in spite of his being one of the most prominent journalists in Montevideo. When he was elected, Aparicio Saravia, the leader of the rival party, the Blancos, launched a rebellion that lasted for 18 months.

When the Colorados defeated the Blancos at the Battle of Masoller on September 1, 1904, it marked the end of fighting as a way of sorting out political problems in the country. Saravia was mortally wounded in the fighting, and his forces were annihilated.

Batlle promoted discussion on social reform and gave Uruguay much of its heritage of democracy and the system of the welfare state, almost alone in Latin America. In 1905 he ended the payment of income tax by low-level civil servants, encouraging people to join the government service. In the following year by presidential decree, he established secondary schools in every city in Uruguay.

His third major reform, in 1907, was to allow women to divorce their husbands if they were being cruelly treated, while men could only divorce on grounds of adultery. That bill spent two years in the Uruguayan congress before it was finally made law. Other social reforms included the removal from public oaths of references to God and other Christian beliefs and the removal of crucifixes from hospitals.

When his term of office ended on March 1, 1907, Batlle went to Switzerland, where he became an admirer of the plural presidency. He was also hugely influenced by the social reforms in Europe during this period, and when he returned to Uruguay he was determined to establish a complete welfare state. His first move was to shore up the financial side of his government, and in 1912 he established the Banco de Seguros, the state insurance bank, and took over the state mortgage bank.

In 1913 Batlle wanted to introduce a collegiate head of the executive branch of government on the Swiss model. This caused a massive split in the Colorados, which lasted until 1966 and was blocked by dissident Colorados and the Blancos until Batlle threatened in 1919 to run for a third term. This forced his enemies to decide to back the project as a way of reducing any future power he would have.

In 1914 Batlle instituted social security for people who were unemployed. He also legislated for employers in bakeries and textile factories to provide chairs for women employees. In the following year he finally pushed through a law that had taken four years of debates. This established the eight-hour workday. At the same time the government took over the telephone services and power generation facilities.

The two were merged to form the Usinas Eléctricas y los Teléfonos del Estado (the State Telephone and Electrical Facilities). Many secondary schools were created around the country, and everybody was guaranteed a free high school education. The university was enlarged and also allowed to admit women.

Many of these reforms were paid for by the increasingly wealthy beef industry, which expanded dramatically. It was to provide much of the meat required by the British war effort during World War I. José Batlle stood down as president on March 1, 1915, and went into retirement. He died on October 20, 1929.

Gilberto de Melo Freyre

Gilberto de Melo Freyre was the author of many books that traced the cultural heritage of Brazilians from Indians, Portuguese, and African slaves. He was born on March 15, 1900, at Apipucos, near Recife, and after being educated at home attended the American Baptist School, the Colégio Americano Gilreath de Pernambuco.

From a wealthy plantation family, he traveled to the United States to complete his education, attending Baylor University at Waco, Texas, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts.

He then went to Columbia University, where he graduated with a master of arts in Latin American history in 1923. At Columbia he was greatly influenced by lecturers Franz Boas, J. H. Hayes, and Edwin R. A. Seligman. Freyre then journeyed to Europe, visiting anthropology museums in Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal.

Returning to Brazil, Freyre, who started teaching sociology, organized in 1926 the first northeastern regionalist congress to be held in Recife, which saw the publication of his "Regionalist Manifesto." His political activity in Brazil meant that after 1930 and the collapse of the Third Republic, Freyre had to leave Brazil.

He left in October, going to Bahia and then to Portugal via Portuguese Africa, which he felt was a historic opportunity to experience the Portuguese diaspora. In Lisbon Freyre studied at the National Library, and in February 1931 he was offered a position in the United States working as a visiting professor at Stanford University.

This allowed him to spend time researching the nature of slavery in the United States. Freyre returned to Brazil a few years later and helped found sociology departments at the University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of São Paulo.

In 1934 he was to organize the first Congress of Afro-Brazilian Studies, which was held at Recife and achieved notoriety in political circles because of its emphasis on establishing the causes of Afro-Brazilian poverty as environmental.

Freyre spent most of his life studying the socioeconomic development of the area around Recife—the northeastern part of Brazil. He documented the many links between that part of Latin America and the Portuguese colonies in Africa, particularly Portuguese Guinea (modern-day Guinea-Bissau), São Tomé and Príncipe, and Angola.

His studies of Portuguese colonialism made him believe that since the Portuguese had, before they found Brazil, extensive colonial experiences in Africa, they were better equipped to deal with the problems in the Americas than the Spanish were. This, in turn, Freyre argued, led to a more successful multiracial and multicultural society.

The author of many books, his best known was Casa-grande e senzala (The big house and the slave quarters, published in 1933), which was translated into English as The Masters and the Slaves.

It was a detailed sociological thesis that described the relationships between the Portuguese colonial masters and their African slaves. It also includes plans of the Noruega Plantation in Recife, which was used as the basis for a section of the book.

He compares and contrasts at length the Brazilian plantation society with that in the southern United States, noting that the planters in both areas were keen on "the rocking chair, good cooking, women, horses and gambling."

Although early detractors called Freyre a communist and a pornographer, he was socially conservative and had worked as secretary to his cousin, Estácio de Albuquerque Coimbra, who was governor of Pernambuco from 1926 to 1927 and from 1929 to 1930.

In 1946, with the reintroduction of democracy to Brazil, Freyre was elected to the national constituent assembly and was a member of the chamber of deputies from 1946 until 1950. In 1949 Freyre represented Brazil at the United Nations General Assembly with the rank of ambassador.

He welcomed the rightwing military government of Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco in 1964. He rapidly became closely identified as a supporter of the government, and his sociological work was increasingly criticized for its highlighting of "benign" aspects of Brazilian slavery.

In 1968 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Münster, in Germany. Repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize, he was never invited to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He died on July 18, 1987, at Recife.

Crisis and Achievement