After hours of fierce street fighting in Guatemala City—which pitted armed civilians and young military officers against the country’s entrenched army leadership—a junta revolucionaria seized power in the early hours of October 20, 1944. The insurrection overthrew a fourteen-year-old dictatorship and immediately reverberated beyond Guatemala’s borders. Within the next hours, Colonel Osmín Aguirre y Salinas—a former police chief and key figure in El Salvador’s repressive apparatus of the 1930s—launched a military coup in neighboring El Salvador, backed by elites alarmed by the revolutionary contagion coming from Guatemala. Political instability in El Salvador had already been simmering since April, when longtime dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez resigned amid mass protests. A fragile transitional government had followed, opening space for unprecedented democratic aspirations. Elsewhere in the region, pressure was mounting on authoritarian regimes in Honduras and Nicaragua, while in Cuba, democrat Ramón Grau had just taken office. Guatemala’s revolution was both a product of and a catalyst for this shifting regional landscape.Footnote 1
By the end of World War II, the once-solid entente between US-backed dictatorships in the Caribbean Basin—such as those of Hernández Martínez, Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua—and Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy was visibly unraveling. Authoritarian alignments across Central America and the Caribbean had originally emerged as responses to the 1929 financial crisis and to the waves of communist, anarchist, and anti-imperialist mobilizations that swept the region in the 1920s, inspired in part by the Russian and Mexican revolutions. Figures like Colonel Osmín Aguirre, as well as the dictators already listed, were products of that earlier repressive cycle (Grieb Reference Grieb1970; Taracena Reference Taracena1988; Crawley Reference Crawley2007; Leuchtenberg Reference Leuchtenberg2009; Fenner Reference Fenner2014). Guatemala’s revolutionary turn in 1944 disrupted this equilibrium, shifting the regional balance of power and opening new space for alternative political alignments. These transformations were not unique to the region; rather, they formed part of a broader continental and global wave of democratization. Aguirre’s coup aimed to reverse this trend. Political exiles fled to Guatemala City, and rumors circulated of a planned invasion backed by Somoza and the Honduran dictator Tiburcio Carías.
According to current historiography, Guatemala’s revolutionary governments responded to the threat of invasion by forging alliances with sympathetic regimes—first with Grau’s Cuba, and later, after October 1945, with the new Revolutionary Junta in Venezuela. Alongside exiles, dissidents, and military adventurers, these governments would coordinate covert military actions aimed at overthrowing authoritarian regimes in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, finally deciding against democratic Costa Rica. During the years preceding the 1959 Cuban Revolution, scholars argue, the region was shaped by two loosely defined transnational networks: one defending authoritarian rule, the other promoting democratic alternatives. Together, they came to dominate the political landscape of the region at the onset of the Cold War (Gleijeses Reference Gleijeses1989; Ameringer Reference Ameringer1996; Moulton Reference Moulton2015; Wells Reference Wells2023). Yet these dynamics cannot be reduced to covert warfare alone. Violence was not the only response available to regional governments. Diplomatic negotiations, multilateral initiatives, and informal alliances were also central to how political actors navigated the postwar landscape.
This article challenges prevailing interpretations of the early Cold War in Latin America—particularly in the Caribbean Basin—by showing that diplomatic efforts were not only sustained but also deliberately multilateral before giving way to covert military action. These diplomatic efforts were spearheaded by regional governments, including those of Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Cuba, with key support from Southern Cone democracies such as Chile and Uruguay, as well as by a brief and somewhat ambivalent alignment from the US State Department. However, such support was far from unconditional, often shaped by competing geopolitical priorities. By placing Guatemala’s post-1944 governments at the center of this diplomatic struggle, the article seeks to broaden the understanding of both the nature and the limitations of these early regional initiatives. The article traces the strategies deployed by President Arévalo and his inner circle to reshape the regional order. These efforts unfolded before the well-documented “Cold War turn” of 1947, when shifting US global priorities and intensifying polarization with the Soviet Union sharply curtailed Latin America’s ability to rely on a broad repertoire of diplomatic and institutional counterweights. Governments were increasingly pressured to take sides—internally, by distancing themselves from communist allies, and externally, by aligning their foreign policy with the emerging Cold War orthodoxy (Bethell and Roxborough Reference Bethell and Roxborough1988).
By focusing on elite diplomacy and Guatemala’s multilateral initiatives, this article complements recent scholarship on grassroots mobilization and covert warfare during the country’s revolutionary years (Gibbings and Vrana Reference Gibbings and Vrana2020). In doing so, it departs from the trend of privileging bottom-up histories. As recent works by Van Ommen (Reference Van Ommen2023), Sánchez (Reference Sánchez2018), and Jarquín (Reference Jarquín2024) on Sandinista diplomacy have demonstrated, there is still much to uncover about the diplomatic capacities of regional governments—a task that deepens our understanding not only of Central American and Caribbean societies but also of the evolving priorities and competencies of new diplomatic structures emerging from revolutionary processes. In this sense, revolutions enabled a bottom-up substitution of political leadership, which in turn allowed for the recalibration of domestic and foreign policies within the constraints of entrenched geopolitical traditions and alignments. The Guatemalan case underscores how these new diplomatic structures pursued prodemocratic goals through institutional and back channels, articulating a coherent—if ultimately frustrated—project. While navigating the constraints of US pressures and deeply rooted geopolitical hierarchies, these actors nonetheless demonstrated strategic vision, regional agency, and an ability to articulate their own geopolitical priorities.
The article also contributes to three key historiographical debates. First, it revisits Revolutionary Guatemala’s relationship with the United States beyond the well-studied conflicts over the banana economy, shedding light on episodes of early postwar cooperation and shared multilateral ambitions. Second, it demonstrates that political realignments in the Caribbean Basin had continental resonance, marked by active engagement from South American actors. In doing so, it not only highlights cross-regional collaboration and synchronicities but also situates the Caribbean and Central America as temporal and strategic epicenters of continental politics—anticipating their pivotal role in future Cold War episodes. Third, it foregrounds the failed use of multilateral institutions to pressure authoritarian regimes, revealing early and underexplored attempts at regional democratic interventionism. These efforts prefigured later Cold War milestones, such as the inter-American response to the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 and to Fidel Castro’s isolation of Cuba from the continent in 1962 (Brands 2010; Pettinà Reference Pettinà2018; Friedman and García Reference Friedman and García.2022).
Recently declassified private correspondence from President Arévalo allows for a deeper examination of these dynamics (Taracena and Véliz Reference Taracena and Véliz2024). The article also draws on archives from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the US, and the UK, offering a multilayered view of diplomatic interaction. By analyzing Guatemala’s foreign policy as both autonomous and catalytic, the article helps reframe the origins of the Latin American Cold War as a process of contested alignments rather than fixed blocs. Arévalo’s diplomats and advisers, many of whom were shaped by exile or authoritarian rule, saw in the postwar opening a historic opportunity to institutionalize democracy through new continental mechanisms. Their initiatives, both formal and informal, illustrate a broader attempt to create regional checks and balances, even under the shadow of US hegemony (Long and Friedman Reference Long and Friedman2020). This article, then, contributes to ongoing efforts to decenter the Latin American Cold War—not by denying US influence, but by emphasizing the contested and negotiated nature of the regional order in its formative years.
A tailor-made postwar revolutionary agenda
The international outlook of Guatemala’s revolutionary governments was consistently framed within the postwar Allied discourse of democratic promotion. The 1944–1945 Revolutionary Junta declared itself aligned with the United Nations, “with whose cause it stands in solidarity, and will continue to give all possible cooperation of the country in the common war effort.”Footnote 2 Guillermo Toriello, Arévalo’s first foreign minister, argued that the revolution was firmly rooted in a global democratic ideology. Guatemalan leaders viewed this connection as reciprocal: the country should actively embody and project its push for change abroad.Footnote 3 The Chilean ambassador to Guatemala, Salvador Serrano, echoed this vision, remarking that officials “have conducted their international actions in accordance with the revolutionary euphoria of their success.”Footnote 4 For Arévalo (Reference Arévalo2008, 21–23), Guatemala was called to play an active role “in the organization of peace and in the solution of the intricate problems of the post-war period,” representing el espíritu revolucionario then prevailing in the Western world.
To pursue these ambitions, revolutionary leaders needed a diplomatic team aligned with their political values and strategic vision. Yet by 1944, the country lacked a trained foreign service. The dismantling of Guatemala’s diplomatic apparatus under Jorge Ubico (1931–1944) had left behind no professional bureaucratic infrastructure. This forced the government to “improvise an entire administrative machinery,” as Toriello later recalled.Footnote 5 Tensions quickly emerged. An internal memo from the Revolutionary Junta warned of the risks of “sending disaffected people abroad with the sole purpose of keeping them away.” Corruption, back channels, and internal rivalries within the ministry were reported throughout the regime’s early months.Footnote 6 Leaders were also wary of assigning posts to unqualified individuals who might, as one memo put it, “provoke the limits of ridicule, to the detriment of the international prestige of our country.”Footnote 7 These difficulties—together with a desire for centralized political control—led Arévalo to rely on close allies and former exiles, most of whom were part of a generation shaped by what he described as a “new democratic sensibility.”Footnote 8 Diplomats were to be posted to “strategic places” and treated with “generosity,” because they would “be the first to raise the alarm in case of danger.”Footnote 9
Guatemala’s new core diplomatic corps consisted primarily of well-educated young men, most in their late twenties to early forties. With few exceptions, they lacked prior diplomatic experience. Bold and idealistic, they often mixed political conviction with bureaucratic pragmatism. One emblematic figure was Enrique Muñoz Meany, a Paris-trained lawyer who returned to Ubico’s Guatemala in 1931 and became Arévalo’s main diplomat. Another was Jorge García-Granados, a former exile in Mexico and the United States who was later appointed ambassador to Washington. Other key figures included the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón (posted to the Soviet Union), the intellectual Flavio Herrera (in Brazil and Argentina), the patrician Roberto Arzú (in Mexico, El Salvador, and Argentina), and close personal allies of President Arévalo, such as Francisco Valdés (Costa Rica), Juan José Meza (Cuba), and Adolfo Drago Bracco (Nicaragua). As the Chilean ambassador Serrano stated, Guatemalan diplomatic affairs reflected “many imperfections, very typical of revolutionary euphoria, inexperience and extreme youthfulness.”Footnote 10 Still, these officials launched a vigorous campaign to promote democracy across Latin America. Their shared experiences of war, exile, and repression nurtured commitments to democracy and antiauthoritarianism. These values aligned them with the broader Allied cause and provided them with a globally oriented view of the postwar order. Rather than adhering to a monolithic revolutionary program, their foreign policy efforts reflected the interplay of domestic and international networks and the diverse historical trajectories of those involved. Their common objective, however, was clear: to represent the “revolutionary spirit abroad.” Their efforts were far from naive. While shaped by idealism and improvisation, Guatemala’s new diplomats embraced the contradictions of revolution and diplomacy—mobilizing a foreign policy that was at once principled, strategic, and regionally ambitious. How, then, did these “young men without perspective,” as the Mexican foreign minister Ezequiel Padilla famously called them, carry out their diplomatic endeavors in the postwar years?Footnote 11
El Salvador and the road to Chapultepec
Between May and October 1944, the Salvadoran provisional government played a key role in supporting regional opposition movements and offering refuge to exiles. Unsurprisingly, after the Guatemalan insurrection and the countercoup led by Colonel Osmín Aguirre in El Salvador, hundreds of Salvadoran, Honduran, and Nicaraguan exiles sought asylum in Guatemala City, where they “found a warm welcome.”Footnote 12 The growing flow of exiles illustrated how the presence of authoritarian regimes and displaced political actors began to shape the foreign policy of Guatemala’s new revolutionary government from the outset. In response, Aguirre deployed two thousand troops to the Guatemalan border, creating a situation described as “extremely delicate” by Mexico’s Ambassador Romeo Ortega.Footnote 13
This fragile stability collapsed in December, when exiles based in Guatemala attempted—but failed—to launch an invasion of El Salvador.Footnote 14 The Aguirre regime quickly denounced the use of “weapons that cannot but be provided, directly or indirectly, by the Guatemalan government.”Footnote 15 Guatemala’s Revolutionary Junta denied any involvement but alleged that at least five Honduran planes had supported Aguirre’s retaliation.Footnote 16 The Honduran regime of Tiburcio Carías Andino, together with that of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, had been among the first to recognize Aguirre’s rule. Guatemala’s Foreign Minister Enrique Muñoz Meany characterized their behavior as a “mutual aid agreement,” citing reports of meetings between Aguirre, Somoza, and Carías. Widespread reports among diplomats throughout Central America suggested a coordinated plan “to defend themselves” and “to coordinate efforts to overthrow” the Guatemalan government.Footnote 17
Confronted with the threat of hostility from three neighbors but lacking the resources to confront all simultaneously, Guatemalan diplomats decided to focus their efforts on El Salvador. Their cautious stance toward Carías was shaped in part by the political protection the Honduran dictator received from the United Fruit Company (UFCO), which controlled key infrastructure on Guatemala’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts and maintained close ties to the US State Department (Fenner Reference Fenner2014).Footnote 18 Confronting Aguirre directly, the Guatemalan Junta ordered the closure of the Salvadoran border, suspending trade and cutting access to Atlantic shipping routes. By late January, the halt of freight destined for El Salvador was generating internal strains within the Salvadoran regime.Footnote 19
Muñoz Meany had also responded to Aguirre’s October coup by adopting a policy of nonrecognition. His stance revived a long-standing Central American diplomatic tradition aimed at discouraging authoritarian regimes by refusing to legitimize new governments established through military coups (Long and Friedman Reference Long and Friedman2020, 1093). This position found support in Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, the United States, and several South American countries.Footnote 20 At the same time, Guatemalan officials were aware that their own revolutionary government had also emerged from an uprising. In a meeting with the Brazilian ambassador, Carlos Silveira, Muñoz Meany defended his government’s legitimacy as “the most authentic expression of the will of the people,” sufficient, in his view, to justify international recognition. The opposite applied, he argued, in Aguirre’s case—a position shared by all Latin American countries except for authoritarian Honduras and Nicaragua.Footnote 21
The timing of the upcoming Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace—commonly known as the Chapultepec Conference—provided the Guatemalan Junta with a strategic opportunity to rally regional support. Muñoz Meany threatened to boycott the conference if Aguirre’s government were invited and began lobbying the Mexican government of Manuel Ávila Camacho and other key governments to follow suit. This diplomatic pressure sought to signal that military coups would not be tolerated and to discourage future plots by authoritarian neighbors.Footnote 22 Aguirre, in turn, attempted to break his international isolation by organizing elections, although only regime-approved candidates were allowed to run. Guatemalan officials then shifted their strategy, focusing on cultivating a working relationship with the newly elected Salvadoran president Salvador Castañeda, who took office in March 1945. The goal, according to Muñoz Meany, was to ensure that Castañeda would “remain on the sidelines” of any hostile actions.Footnote 23
Castañeda himself acknowledged the importance of international pressure in limiting Aguirre’s power. In private communications with both the US State Department and the Mexican ambassador in San Salvador, he stressed that without sustained external pressure, Aguirre would have blocked his accession.Footnote 24 By early 1945, the Roosevelt administration had opened consultations with sixteen Latin American governments on the matter.Footnote 25 Muñoz Meany insisted that it was “not willing to recognize El Salvador” and would boycott the Mexico City conference if “a government suspicious of totalitarian affiliations” were present.Footnote 26 Despite this, US diplomats pushed for Aguirre’s recognition—a move criticized by other Latin American governments. The Uruguayan government backed the Guatemalan Junta’s stance, and a Chilean diplomat warned that legitimizing Aguirre would mark “a serious loss of prestige for our countries,” especially after recent coup attempts in Cuba, Colombia, and Peru. For many, nonrecognition was seen as “the only way to prevent obscure moves against democratic institutions.”Footnote 27 In this context, the Chilean government—still sensitive to international criticism for its late support of the Allied war effort—was actively working to restore its democratic credentials through Pan-Americanism.Footnote 28
When Muñoz Meany was informed of the US decision to recognize El Salvador, he “seemed quite perturbed” and “very anxious,” according to a US diplomat. He privately condemned what he described as pressure “to start their international life with compromises that they were willing to avoid at any cost, even the cost of being left by themselves and facing the anger of the US.”Footnote 29 Guatemala’s ambassador in Washington, Eugenio Silva Peña—one of the few career diplomats—threatened to withdraw Guatemala’s delegation from the upcoming Mexico conference. The impasse was resolved when US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius visited Guatemala en route to Mexico, accompanied by the Brazilian diplomat Pedro Leão Velloso, following their trip to Moscow. A compromise was reached: Muñoz Meany agreed that El Salvador’s delegates (appointed by President-Elect Castañeda, not by Aguirre) would be invited, but only with observer status. Stettinius was reportedly pleased to have Muñoz Meany accompany him on his plane to Mexico City.Footnote 30 Mexico’s President Ávila Camacho also sided with Guatemala’s Junta and declined to invite the Aguirre regime—a decision consistent with his “decisive attitude against” the Salvadoran dictatorship since the October coup, and a notable departure from the Estrada Doctrine’s noninterventionist tradition (Loeza Reference Loeza2016).Footnote 31 Aguirre’s exclusion marked a diplomatic victory for the young Guatemalan government.
Juan José Arévalo assumed the presidency in March 1945. In his memoirs, he described the tensions inherited from the Caribbean Basin as having to “navigate in an environment where breezes, winds or hurricanes that we have not generated reign” (Arévalo Reference Arévalo2008, 37). He preserved much of the junta’s foreign policy framework. Muñoz Meany later stated that he had discussed “extensively” with Arévalo “about many topics” of diplomacy and that they shared core priorities.Footnote 32 Given President Castañeda’s early political fragility, Arévalo moved swiftly to stabilize relations. In April, he dispatched an emissary to ease tensions. The US ambassador in San Salvador described the ensuing two-hour private meeting as “optimistic.”Footnote 33 Days later, Arévalo’s government formally recognized Castañeda’s government. A bilateral meeting between Arévalo and Castañeda followed in May 1945, during which Arévalo pledged “all forms of support against any attempt to disturb” the new regime.Footnote 34
This rapprochement revived long-standing Central Americanist ideals. The 1945 Guatemalan Constitution granted Central Americans full national status and encouraged migration. Arévalo also proposed Salvadoran jurist Juan Gustavo Guerrero—the first president of the new International Court of Justice—as head of a future federation.Footnote 35 A special commission was formed to advance the proposal. However, in a confidential report, Guatemala’s commissioner Ernesto Viteri Bertrand lamented that Salvadoran delegates arrived “without specific instructions” and worked “very slowly.” He attributed this inertia to “the political situation in El Salvador,” where officials feared a revolution like that in Guatemala.Footnote 36 Mexico’s Ambassador Romero similarly noted that El Salvador “does not offer a great basis for stability.”Footnote 37 By 1947, the union initiative had stalled.
To gain closer insight into Salvadoran politics, Arévalo appointed his friend Roberto Arzú Cobos—an elite lawyer married to Salvadoran Haydeé Trujillo Noltenius—as ambassador. With strong ties to local elites, Arzú reported on meetings with Castañeda and even offered to help unite leftist groups and exiles in support of the regime. His successor, Ángel Rivera, went further by promoting student and labor mobilizations.Footnote 38 Yet both men remained skeptical. They noted that Castañeda distrusted “democratic elements” and opposed Guatemala’s asylum policy for Salvadoran leftists.Footnote 39 Meanwhile, the bilateral relationship triggered tensions in El Salvador. Arévalo enjoyed vocal support from young military officers there, while Castañeda faced resistance from his own army high command and business elites, who pressured him to sever ties with Guatemala.Footnote 40 As one Guatemalan ambassador bluntly summarized, “little was gained from [Castañeda’s] government, with his unfulfilled promises.”Footnote 41
Despite these efforts, Arévalo was unable to keep Castañeda aligned. By 1947, Guatemalan reports from San Salvador suggested that Castañeda believed Arévalo had become diplomatically isolated by a new alliance between Carías, Somoza, and Costa Rica’s President Teodoro Picado.Footnote 42 In 1948, Arévalo was informed that Castañeda had welcomed proposals from Carías and Somoza for a regional federation under Salvadoran leadership.Footnote 43 However, Castañeda was deposed by a military coup in December 1948.Footnote 44
Arévalo had closely monitored Castañeda’s weakening position. Embassy reports indicated that Castañeda planned to cancel the 1949 elections and remain in power.Footnote 45 Argentine and Brazilian diplomats reported for months that Arévalo was actively undermining the Salvadoran president and supporting one of the candidates. The Argentine ambassador even claimed that Arévalo, backed by Moscow, was plotting a coup.Footnote 46 After the coup occurred, Arévalo promptly recognized the new government. Rumors about Arévalo’s involvement intensified—but he had had no contact with the rebels. His only gesture was to send a plane with returning Salvadoran exiles, many of them trade unionists with communist affiliations. The new government returned both the plane and its passengers.Footnote 47 The new Revolutionary Governing Council of El Salvador discontinued Central Americanist initiatives, although it maintained a cool but functional relationship with Arévalo for the remainder of his term. No further threats emerged from Guatemala’s southeastern border.
The Larreta Doctrine and multilateralism
In its early efforts to counter threats from its southeastern border, Guatemala’s young revolutionary regime appealed to continental governments to form a “front against the threat of totalitarian aggression.”Footnote 48 As a small country, its outreach to other nations for support was expected. Yet the turn to inter-American cooperation was not purely pragmatic—it also stemmed from a distinctive vision of the role of multilateral institutions in the postwar order. A Foreign Ministry report, likely drafted by Guillermo Toriello, asserted that, “in contrast to the classic principle of the absolute sovereignty of states, the concept of interdependence is gaining extraordinary strength.” The revolutionary government, it continued, believed that this concept should guide efforts to defend the continent’s democratic structures.Footnote 49 Ambassador Silva Peña added that “democracy was built through good neighbor alliances.”Footnote 50
Guatemala’s Junta sought to turn its bilateral conflict with Aguirre’s government into a continental stance against military coups and authoritarianism. The postwar period offered renewed momentum for the principle of nonrecognition, strengthened by a broad Pan-American consensus during wartime conferences. As Axis regimes crumbled, a unified stance against Latin American dictatorships seemed increasingly viable.
Although the primary focus of the Chapultepec Conference was security and economic development, questions of recognition and democracy gradually gained prominence, especially through the Argentine case.Footnote 51 Argentina, under the dictator Edelmiro Farrell, was excluded from the conference after strong opposition from the Roosevelt administration for its wartime neutrality (Trask Reference Trask1984; Schwartzberg Reference Schwartzberg2003; Cerrano Reference Cerrano2019).Footnote 52 The Argentine precedent provided the Guatemalan Junta with a diplomatic opening. Foreign Minister Muñoz Meany equated neighboring dictatorships with totalitarian regimes and reframed them as potential security threats. Guatemala’s diplomats skillfully adopted the prevailing narrative about Argentina to further their agenda, receiving praise from the State Department for their efforts.Footnote 53
As the conference approached, Guatemalan diplomats positioned themselves as potential allies of the State Department. In a meeting with the US ambassador in Guatemala City, Muñoz Meany stated that their delegation aimed “to cooperate in every possible way with the United States delegation.”Footnote 54 At the conference, his delegation presented four proposals: two on economic issues, one on cultural exchange, and one on security, focused on condemning authoritarian regimes.Footnote 55 In the opening address, delegate Toriello argued that “fundamental human rights and freedoms [should be] moved from the domestic to the international sphere,” urging the American republics to “strengthen the democratic spirit in the hemisphere” and denounce “international fascism.”Footnote 56 Guatemalan diplomacy warned that authoritarian governments could not be expected to “cooperate sincerely and effectively in the common war effort.” Argentina, they argued, exemplified this threat. The delegation thus proposed “refraining from recognition and relations” with regimes born of coups against democratic governments.Footnote 57 Diplomatic isolation would deter authoritarian actors.
The Guatemalan Junta was not alone. Uruguay, Argentina’s eastern neighbor, went further, proposing “collective intervention against a state that breaches peace” and calling for “common political conduct and uniform legal action.”Footnote 58 The Mexican delegation offered a more cautious interpretation. While echoing the Guatemalan delegation’s call for action, they insisted that “the protocol on nonintervention does not preclude collective intervention in the general interests,” as long as it did not violate national sovereignty. They proposed multilateral consultations to determine whether new governments should be granted international recognition.Footnote 59 Ultimately, none of the proposals gained sufficient support at Chapultepec. Both Guatemala’s and Uruguay’s drafts were referred to the Juridical Commission. Toriello later reiterated the Guatemalan Junta’s position at the San Francisco Conference.Footnote 60
Following the creation of the United Nations, President Arévalo intensified efforts to secure US and Latin American backing for multilateral approaches to curbing authoritarianism. Relations with Washington remained tense, partly due to labor unrest in UFCO operations. Still, Arévalo saw allies in figures like Robert Newbegin and Spruille Braden at the State Department—both known for their opposition to Colonel Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina (Schwartzberg Reference Schwartzberg2003, 119).Footnote 61 Seeing a convergence of interests, Arévalo appointed Jorge García-Granados as ambassador to Washington in June 1945. Around the same time, Braden was confirmed as assistant secretary for American Republic affairs.
In an October 1945 letter, Arévalo called Braden’s appointment “a magnificent opportunity to bring into play concepts and initiatives related to our accidental Caribbean policy.” García-Granados was instructed to emphasize that democracy was “a collective good of America” and, echoing Roosevelt, a guiding principle for the postwar period. Guatemala’s goal was to persuade Braden to identify “an effective way to quell the remaining totalitarian governments in the Americas,” referring explicitly to Trujillo, Carías, and Somoza.Footnote 62 A month later, García-Granados reported that Braden was “enthusiastic” and that they were approaching “a means of solving the problem of our dictatorial neighbors.”Footnote 63 This dialogue included discussions of both multilateral interventions and US arms embargoes against authoritarian regimes.Footnote 64
The relationship with Braden and his team became crucial for Revolutionary Guatemala, according to diplomatic sources. However, historiography has tended to overlook this influence, privileging the narrative of Arévalo’s conflicts with UFCO (Schlesinger and Kinzer 1992; Marshall Reference Marshall2023). While Braden did advocate resolving labor unrest in ways favorable to US companies—despite Arévalo’s insistence that those firms should “modernize their ways of dealing with workers and their commitments to the treasury”Footnote 65 —less attention has been paid to his and Robert Newbegin’s attempts to halt conspiracies in Washington by Honduran and Nicaraguan agents aiming to topple Arévalo with support from UFCO and Pan American Airways.Footnote 66 Similarly, the policy of arms embargoes and diplomatic isolation toward those regimes, as well as efforts to reform corporate contracts to align with Guatemalan law, have received limited scholarly consideration (Véliz Estrada Reference Véliz Estrada2025).Footnote 67
Braden also played a significant role in shaping a continental strategy against authoritarian practices, complementing the Guatemalan Junta’s early proposals. While Arévalo instructed García-Granados to develop these themes, Braden and Secretary of State James Byrnes were discussing similar ideas with Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Eduardo Rodríguez Larreta. In October 1945, Rodríguez Larreta submitted a draft proposal addressing the challenge posed by authoritarian regimes and human rights violations—later known as the Larreta Doctrine. The proposal called for a multilateral, collective mechanism to act without infringing upon the principle of nonintervention, a core tenet of Latin American diplomacy. The United States promised to “immediately and vigorously support him in all of the American capitals.”Footnote 68 The proposal was published in November 1945.
Shortly before the Uruguayan initiative was made public, Chile’s President Gabriel González Videla visited Guatemala. In conversation, Arévalo emphasized that while the nonintervention principle remained important, it “should not be transformed into a right to violate other principles with impunity, violating freedom and other essential rights.”Footnote 69 In its official endorsement of the Larreta Doctrine, Foreign Minister Toriello argued that the disappearance of “all governments of a totalitarian type” depended on “unrestricted support” for multilateral solutions.Footnote 70 Throughout December 1945, García-Granados actively lobbied Latin American ambassadors in Washington to back the initiative. In a letter to Arévalo, he noted that the Mexican ambassador offered conditional support—“as long as we did not appear to be dragged along” by US interests. Venezuela’s new Revolutionary Junta, meanwhile, “strongly supported” Uruguay’s proposals.Footnote 71
Still, enthusiasm for the Larreta Doctrine was far from universal. Argentina’s government predictably voiced “fundamental discrepancy.”Footnote 72 Castañeda’s El Salvador also rejected the proposal, defending nonintervention as “indispensable and of vital importance to the respect for the sovereignty of our countries.”Footnote 73 The Costa Rican government accepted the principle but withheld support pending concrete plans.Footnote 74 Countries like Paraguay, Nicaragua, and Ecuador adopted ambiguous positions—open to discussion but avoiding firm commitments.
A significant bloc rejected the initiative outright. Honduras’s Carías Andino called for democracy “without impairing the sovereignty and political independence of the nations,” and Trujillo claimed any form of intervention would “destroy continental solidarity.” Even Mexico distanced itself, stating the doctrine would constitute “meddling” in internal affairs. Despite their broader support for US proposals, Brazilian diplomats confided to British counterparts that the United States would inevitably become “the intervening nation number one,” a fear also shared by Havana.Footnote 75
Ultimately, the lobbying efforts by Uruguay, Guatemala, and the State Department proved insufficient. In mid-1946, the Larreta proposal was defeated 13–8 and excluded from the agenda of the forthcoming Rio Conference (Long and Friedman Reference Long and Friedman2020, 1097). The nonintervention principle—central to inter-American diplomacy since the early twentieth century—remained an insurmountable obstacle. These reactions reveal the limits of presumed alliances within the hemisphere. While governments like those of Mexico and Cuba were often portrayed as fellow travelers in democratic or reformist causes, their responses to the Larreta Doctrine exposed diverging priorities. National sovereignty, noninterventionism, and geopolitical caution frequently took precedence over collective democratic enforcement. Far from forming a cohesive bloc committed to confronting authoritarian regimes, these states calibrated their positions according to domestic concerns and long-standing foreign policy principles. This underscores the contradictory strategies that defined regional diplomacy in the early Cold War.
By then, Arévalo’s diplomacy was turning toward a new diplomatic front: isolating Francoist Spain. Since the revolution, the Guatemalan Junta had severed ties with Franco and maintained a broadly anticlerical posture.Footnote 76 Arévalo renewed cooperation with Uruguay and Mexico—both of which opposed Franco, and the latter of which hosted the Spanish Republican government-in-exile—to put the issue on the Rio Conference’s agenda. The campaign gained traction after the UN General Assembly voted at the end of 1946 to urge members to recall their ambassadors from Madrid. Guatemala’s delegate, José Luis Sáenz, welcomed the decision as a “collective repudiation” of Franco’s regime.Footnote 77 Demonstrations followed in San José, Havana, and Santiago—along with more unexpected protests in authoritarian Honduras. Other governments, such as El Salvador, distanced themselves from Franco to avoid alignment with his few supporters: Trujillo and Argentina’s Juan Perón.Footnote 78 Yet despite growing discontent, Arévalo’s broader effort to trigger multilateral action against Latin American dictatorships would have to wait until the Bogotá Conference of early 1948. By then, the Cold War had already begun to reshape the global and regional political terrain.
The twilight of diplomatic interventions
Arévalo’s diplomatic failure to generate effective multilateral resistance against authoritarian regimes coincided with a resurgence of attacks from its primary regional adversaries—Carías, Somoza, and Trujillo. Bilateral efforts yielded similarly limited results. In Nicaragua, Arévalo appointed a military attaché as ambassador, but Colonel Francisco Andrade’s open support for opposition movements led to his expulsion after only six months.Footnote 79 While continental debates around the Larreta Doctrine and Braden’s policy of regional isolation may have pressured Somoza into temporarily suspending a state of siege and calling off his reelection, the move was largely symbolic (Gould Reference Gould, Bethell and Roxborough1992).Footnote 80 Instead, he endorsed puppet candidate Leonardo Argüello as his successor. Foreign Minister Eugenio Silva Peña dismissed Argüello’s election as a “bold mockery.”Footnote 81 Although Argüello sought a degree of independence once in office, he was ousted within weeks. Somoza’s swift reassertion of control was met with widespread condemnation.
The Guatemalan Congress urged an immediate break in diplomatic relations, and Arévalo complied. Ambassador Jorge García-Granados described the episode to the State Department as a “deep wound to the most deeply rooted principle of the Revolution.”Footnote 82 Across Latin America, governments called for Somoza’s exclusion from future inter-American meetings. A Chilean diplomat warned that recognition of Somoza’s regime would embolden future coups: “America’s embryonic dictators know that sooner or later they will be recognized, so why not strike?”Footnote 83 In response, Somoza intensified his anticommunist messaging, aligning it with growing repression in the United States.Footnote 84
The Dominican Republic followed a similar path. From the outset, Arévalo showed no interest in engaging with Trujillo’s government. A Foreign Ministry memo on the possible appointment of an ambassador to Santo Domingo recommended doing so “only by strict reciprocity; we need to justify representation.”Footnote 85 The US maintained a similar distance—Braden withheld ambassadorial appointments for more than a year. The Venezuelan government, after its own democratic turn in 1945, also refrained from recognizing Trujillo. According to the Chilean ambassador in Santo Domingo, only Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and the UK maintained close relations with the regime. Unfazed, Trujillo pressed on with his reelection campaign.Footnote 86 In line with Carías and Somoza, he amplified anticommunist rhetoric. The Chilean envoy called him the “champion of red anticommunism” in a country where “the problem does not exist at all.” Trujillo claimed 85 percent of the vote in an “electoral masquerade,” securing full control of both legislative chambers.Footnote 87
Arévalo’s government reaction was immediate. In June 1947, Arévalo publicly urged other Latin American governments not to recognize what he called Trujillo’s “electoral farce,” arguing that “democracy is not only in danger in Europe or defended only on battlegrounds.” Silva Peña echoed the sentiment, framing it as a “test time for continental democracy.”Footnote 88 According to archival records, the decision to withhold recognition had been encouraged by Venezuela’s President Rómulo Betancourt.Footnote 89
Arévalo chose to replace Silva Peña with Enrique Muñoz Meany. Brazilian diplomats labeled Muñoz an “extremist” close to “communist elements.”Footnote 90 Domestic opposition attacked his anti-Franco stances as evidence of anti-clericalism and ideological radicalism. Mexican diplomats commented on his “lack of formality,” while US officials described him as “outspoken and hostile,” and “unwise.”Footnote 91 British diplomats went further, calling him “emotional, excitable and unrestrained,” even alleging he was “quite crazy” and working “under orders from Moscow”—claims that French officials dismissed.Footnote 92
Arévalo remained unfazed. His decision to appoint Muñoz Meany marked a turning point in Guatemala’s regional strategy. The administration had begun seriously considering military interventions against neighboring regimes—an option that Silva Peña would likely have resisted. This shift had been under consideration for some time. Arévalo and his advisers interpreted the increasingly aggressive anticommunist rhetoric of the Truman Doctrine, combined with the consolidation of regimes like Somoza’s and Trujillo’s, as signs that US foreign policy was turning away from democratic advocacy. Truman’s doctrine, announced in early 1947, aimed to contain Soviet influence by supporting democratic governments threatened by internal or external authoritarianism (Schwartzberg Reference Schwartzberg2003). In Guatemala, these developments were interpreted as evidence of increasing ideological rigidity in US politics. By late 1946, Ambassador Jorge García-Granados was already reporting from Washington that anti-communist sentiment was becoming pervasive and that the recent Republican electoral victory signaled a broader policy shift.Footnote 93 At the same time, Foreign Minister Silva Peña had expressed his own concern that the principles of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy were rapidly losing ground.Footnote 94
New Secretary of State George Marshall’s early pressure on Arévalo’s closest advisers raised significant concerns.Footnote 95 Assistant Secretary Spruille Braden resigned in July 1947, following disagreements with Marshall over arms policy and the delay of the Rio Conference. Shortly thereafter, the departure of US Ambassador Edwin Kyle—who had supported Arévalo during key episodes—was attributed by García-Granados to “certain influences,” a likely reference to UFCO pressure. Around the same time, Washington imposed an arms embargo on Guatemala.Footnote 96 Regional strongmen openly celebrated Braden’s resignation. In Santo Domingo, “the press did not cease its attacks on him,” and the Honduran foreign minister “showed his great satisfaction at Braden’s exit and the threat he represented.” Secretary Marshall, in turn, offered reassurances to Trujillo, promising to “take every measure to prevent outrages against him.”Footnote 97 For many in Guatemala, the democratic opening of the postwar period appeared to be closing.
Braden’s departure, according to diplomats in Brazil and Argentina, “had an unfavorable impact on official circles” in Guatemala, where he had come to be seen as “a guarantee for American democracies.”Footnote 98 In this context, Arévalo publicly criticized the Truman Doctrine, warning that arming the hemisphere in the name of collective security could instead entrench authoritarian regimes. Silva Peña similarly feared a “breakdown of peace within the continent and the consolidation of dictatorships.”Footnote 99 Foreign Minister Muñoz Meany was more direct: In a private letter, he argued that global polarization between the United States and the Soviet Union would limit Guatemala’s room for maneuver and require it to adopt a neutral posture to defend its core interests. He openly mocked President Truman’s invocations of freedom and democracy, interpreting them as a rhetorical cover for US geopolitical aims.Footnote 100
The shift in Arévalo’s diplomatic rhetoric prompted concern among previously sympathetic governments. The Mexican ambassador invited Arévalo and his Chilean counterpart on a joint trip to discuss the situation. He warned Arévalo that President Miguel Alemán’s government was increasingly anticommunist, and he suggested that he adopt a “dignified” yet more “practical” foreign policy. According to the Chilean envoy, Arévalo rejected the advice.Footnote 101 Instead, his strategy combined domestic anticommunist gestures with renewed revolutionary activism abroad. Having initiated contact with Rómulo Betancourt as early as 1945, Arévalo had quietly supported the idea of a military alliance to overthrow regional dictators.Footnote 102 By mid-1946, plans were underway in cooperation with Cuba, Venezuela, and Caribbean exiles to challenge Trujillo’s regime.Footnote 103 Arévalo’s role remained limited but gradually increased—mediating arms transfers and offering logistic support. These preparations intensified in the wake of the Nicaraguan coup and the Dominican electoral crisis of 1947, contributing to the military activities at Cayo Confites in 1947 and, later, to Costa Rica’s 1948 civil war (see Gleijeses Reference Gleijeses1989; Ameringer Reference Ameringer1996; Vásquez Reference Vásquez2014; Véliz Reference Véliz Estrada2023).Footnote 104
Despite diminishing support within inter-American institutions, Arévalo persisted in promoting his vision. At the Bogotá Conference in early 1948, while Guatemalan arms and personnel aided the Costa Rican opposition, Muñoz Meany reiterated the regime’s commitment to a democratic continental order. Their proposals now relied less on institutional mechanisms than on discourse. Muñoz Meany denounced the intensifying anticommunism of neighboring governments, warning that it enabled “unscrupulous regimes to unleash barbaric persecutions of their political adversaries.” He urged that democratic practice itself was the best safeguard for regional security.Footnote 105 In contrast, the US delegation introduced a motion that refrained from assessing the legitimacy of any government. Guatemala’s delegation abstained, explaining that doing otherwise “would entail the recognition of certain de facto governments that illegally perpetuate dictatorial oligarchies in power.”Footnote 106 The abstention had little impact. The Guatemalan initiative failed to gain traction, marking the last major effort to use multilateral diplomacy to confront regional authoritarianism.
By late 1948, the Guatemalan regime found itself increasingly isolated. A series of military coups—in Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela—swept away the country’s remaining allies. Pressured by Washington, Prío Socarrás in Cuba distanced himself, followed shortly by Mexico and Chile. Meanwhile, the new Salvadoran Junta refused to engage with Arévalo, and Costa Rica shifted toward regional conciliation.Footnote 107 Still, Muñoz Meany defended Guatemala’s diplomatic course. In an interview with the Brazilian ambassador, he reiterated the importance of a “policy of dignity” and attributed recent coups to the tepid resolutions of the Bogotá Conference.Footnote 108 In July 1949, the assassination of Colonel Francisco Arana triggered a serious domestic crisis, ending the diplomatic interventionist phase of the revolution. Facing mounting pressure from Washington, Arévalo dismissed Muñoz Meany and named Ismael González Arévalo—a more moderate, US-friendly figure—as foreign minister.Footnote 109 From that point forward, Arévalo and his diplomatic staff abandoned their calls for multilateral action.
Arévalo turned inward, focusing on the 1950 election. His goal was to ensure the succession of his minister of defense, Colonel Jacobo Árbenz, and preserve the core of the revolutionary process. Árbenz assumed office in early 1951 with a nationalist domestic program supported by the newly legalized Communist Party. He made little effort to repair Guatemala’s deteriorating international standing. The result was a deepening of the country’s isolation. Three years later, the revolution was toppled by a regional alliance led by the United States and the very dictators the revolutionary Guatemalan governments had failed to contain. It marked the end of a democratic interlude and the beginning of a Cold War cycle dominated by paranoia and repression.
Conclusions
This article has demonstrated that Guatemala’s revolutionary governments did not rely solely on armed conspiracies or rhetorical appeals to continental solidarity. Rather, they launched a sustained and multipronged diplomatic initiative that sought to reconfigure inter-American relations through formal channels, informal alliances, and regional pressure. By situating revolutionary Guatemala’s foreign policy within broader postwar realignments, the article shows that early Cold War dynamics in Latin America were shaped not only by superpower rivalry but also by inter-Latin American negotiations and competing regional visions. These diplomatic efforts reflected a coherent strategic agenda pursued with institutional creativity and regional ambition. Guatemala’s diplomacy combined timing, conviction, and calculated risk-taking.
Why did revolutionary Guatemala ultimately fail in its prodemocratic agenda? Several factors converged. There were strategic miscalculations, such as the dismissal of experienced diplomats and the rejection of pragmatic counsel from allies like Mexico and Chile. The tone of Guatemalan diplomacy—rhetorical and confrontational—was often perceived as inflexible. As Muñoz Meany once wrote to Arévalo, “Dreamers and quixotes are men of much more sense,” a sentiment that captured the government’s resolve to uphold Rooseveltian ideals even as the geopolitical climate shifted. The simultaneous pursuit of multilateral diplomacy and clandestine military action reflected both determination and inconsistency.
But structural constraints proved equally decisive. As US priorities turned toward Europe and Korea, Latin America’s diplomatic salience declined. Anticommunism replaced democracy as the key criterion for international legitimacy. Authoritarian regimes adapted swiftly to this shift, leveraging noninterventionist discourse and military cooperation to consolidate support. Even within the presumed democratic bloc, solidarity faltered: Mexico and Cuba distanced themselves from regional sanction proposals; Chile and Cuba hesitated to condemn Franco’s Spain. These fractures reveal that inter-American unity was always tentative and that Cold War alignments were far more contingent and fluid than often acknowledged.
In this sense, the article contributes to ongoing efforts to decenter the Cold War in Latin America—not by downplaying US influence, but by emphasizing the contested, negotiated, and regionally driven nature of early hemispheric diplomacy. While US decisions undeniably sought to shape the boundaries of political possibility, they did not fully determine the agenda or the direction of regional realignments. Guatemala’s case illustrates that Latin American governments—especially those emerging from revolutionary change—sought to assert their own geopolitical priorities, form autonomous alliances, and project normative visions that often diverged from Washington’s evolving stance. By foregrounding these actors’ strategies before the escalation of covert warfare, the article reframes the origins of Latin America’s Cold War as a process forged not just in response to external pressures but through competing regional logics, ambitions, and limitations.
Acknowledgments
I thank Arturo Taracena and Roberto García Ferreira for their guidance in revising this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team of LARR for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to Stefan Rinke at Freie Universität Berlin, to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, and to the Coordinación Latinoamericana Ca’ Foscari (CLAC) for their support in the research and writing of this article.
Open access
