Rethinking Periodization and Representation in Guatemala’s Democratic Experiment

In light of recent revelations of the United States Public Health Services’ syphilis experiments in Guatemala in the late 1940s and evidence that Kaqchikel-Mayas place more emphasis on the 1944 massacre in Patzicía that marked the transition from dictatorial to democratic rule than the 1954 CIA engineered military coup that ousted the democratic government, the Ten Years of Spring may have been anything but for marginalized Guatemalans. The preceding regime of General Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) was totalitarian and ruthless with those suspected of dissension. Yet even as strong-armed rule restricted liberties, many people on the margins of power appreciated the clarity with which the rules of the game were articulated and enforced. With its promise of participation and liberty, democracy on the other hand introduced capricious and unpredictable governance. 

            At the same time such findings encourage a rethinking of the periodization of 1944-1954 as a dramatic break with past politics and subsequent military rule, archival evidence from rural towns in Sacatepéquez, a department adjacent to Guatemala City, suggest life for many rural residents may not have changed considerably in the transition from dictatorial to democratic rule. Community members pressed into municipal service were still appealing to the governor for exemptions and local authorities continued to enforce vagrancy laws to ensure everyone contributed to the labor force. Altered but not eliminated, forced labor continued to mark the lives of rural Guatemalans under President Juan José Arevalo (1945-1951). Largely led by middle class activists, students, and urban workers, the Revolution facilitated important gains for those constituents, but the lived reality was far less improved for the rural (and urban) poor and other marginalized groups. This paper rethinks the centrality, importance, and periodization of the Ten Years of Spring in Guatemalan history from the perspective of rural residents.