The charge of cowardice had haunted Arbenz from the moment he surrendered his office. A young Argentinian doctor named Che Guevara—who had come to Guatemala to help the bold Arbenz experiment in progressive democracy—was among those who implored the besieged president to arm the people, when Arbenz’s army officers began to melt around him under pressure from the CIA. But the Guatemalan leader was no Che or Fidel—he had lacked the cold-blooded courage to plunge his country into civil war.
