GUATEMALA: This Side of Paradise

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Guatemala's Communist-coddling, capitalist-baiting left-wing regime has shown Guatemalans time & again that an avowedly pro-labor government can be a harsh employer. Since Jacobo Arbenz, hand-picked successor of fuzzy "Spiritual Socialist" Juan José Arévalo, took over as President last March, five groups of government employees have gone out on strike for a fairer deal.

One glaring example of how poorly bureaucratic enterprise in Guatemala does by its workers is the government farm system, which accounts for nearly a third of the country's agricultural production (mostly coffee, bananas and sugar). The top basic wage is 46¢ a day, compared with 74¢ on some private farms and a guaranteed minimum of $1.36 on the plantations of the United Fruit Co., which government spellbinders frequently hold up to the workers as a capitalist ogre. In their ramshackle huts government hands are as ill-housed as any agrarian workers in Guatemala.

Just as the harvest season was getting under way last month, Guatemala's cocky Communist union bosses saw a chance to exploit the situation, though it meant hitting at the government. They called a strike on the government's most valuable farm, 11,000-acre Finca La Concepción, threatened walkouts on other federal farms. Last week, the government finally agreed to pay the demanded 80¢-a-day minimum wage on Concepción and a few other farms. On most of the government's 126 farms, wages will remain the lowest in the country.

While the government was dickering with farm-strike leaders, Guatemala's customs workers walked out for higher wages. President Arbenz ordered them to go back to their jobs or be fired without severance pay or other indemnification. That broke the strike.