from the standpoint of cold-eyed realpolitik, perhaps the greatest downside of the Guatemalan coup for the American government was that it produced more and hardier enemies. One of these was a twenty-six-year-old Argentine doctor who had been living in Guatemala City at the time of the coup, and who joined Árbenz in seeking asylum in Mexico. A few months later, the doctor would pen a vivid account of those hectic last days in Guatemala entitled “I Witnessed the Coup Against Arbenz,” in which he proclaimed that the United States had now become the enemy; as he wrote in his prophetic closing:
...more
