Propaganda

by Edward L. Bernays

in 1953 Bernays helped put across the myth that Guatemala was at risk of communist subversion—a serviceable legend that the propagandist actually believed, as he makes clear in his memoirs.16 Bernays was then employed by the United Fruit Company, at whose behest the Eisenhower administration used the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. Thus was Guatemala forced to start its gruesome modern history as a quasifascist oligarchy. From that point on, the bananas and pineapples would continue to be safely picked by inexpensive native labor under careful watch, with all the profits flowing north. The possibility of some other, less explosive, noncolonial arrangement was clearly not to be imagined by Bernays, just as United Fruit could not imagine it; and so it never could become a public issue here.