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GUATEMALA STILL SUFFERING EFFECTS OF US-LED COUP.

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Forty-nine years after the fact, Guatemala is still suffering the effects of the overthrow of its government in a coup engineered by the US. This is the view of Piero Gleijeses, historian and author of an important book on the period, Shattered Hope. Speaking on the occasion of the release, on May 16, of some 12,285 previously classified documents on the overthrow, Gleijeses said, "The United States intervened in Guatemala without any emotion, with neither the intention of saving nor damaging the Guatemalans. It was to guarantee their interests, just as the Soviet Union did two years later in Hungary. The only difference is that today Hungary is free and Guatemala is [still] suffering the consequences."

Gleijeses was a featured participant at a US State Department conference on the subject, attended by a number of scholars, government officials, and witnesses to the coup. His views and comments generally reflected those of the other participants.

One of the most tangible consequences of the US action, according to historian Oscar Pelaez, is the lack of institutionalization of Guatemala's political parties. Pelaez, a professor at the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) in Guatemala, describes the country as an "unstable democracy." He traced the history of these baseless parties from the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional (MLN) that was formed around coup leader Carlos Castillo Armas, through the Movimiento Accion Solidaridad (MAS), formed around exiled President Jorge Serrano, famed for his failed...

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