The CIA In Guatemala Summary

The book The CIA in Guatemala gives a very interesting insight of what was going on between the United States and Guatemala during the time of the cold war. It gives facts and explanations of what was going on at the time and how the CIA and United States we really involved in the Guatemalan affairs. During this time there was a lot of information left out of the public and no one, truly knew what was going except for a select few. Richard Immerman goes into depth of the facts and reality of what went on, beginning to end. We will discuss the topics given in this assignment and how they are told through the book. First off, during the cold war, many feared the spread of communism. The Soviet Union and China were big countries and had a lot of influence over others. The United States became very fearful during the cold war of its
With all of this in their minds, Dulles used this information and applied it to the situation in Guatemala, believing the Soviet intervention was pushing the limits of the Monroe doctrine and could readily precipitate a nuclear war. In the book, it directly references a declassified National Security Council document which provides explicit evidence of Truman’s concern over reconciling a desire to be latin America’s good neighbor with a commitment to preventing and stopping the spread of Communism. The document states “ In Latin America, we seek first and foremost an orderly political and economic development which will make the Latin American nations resistant to the internal growth of communism and the Soviet political welfare . . . Secondly, we seek hemisphere solidarity in support of our world policy and the cooperation of the Latin American nations in safeguarding the hemisphere through individual and collective defense measures against external aggression and internal subversion” ( Immerman,