| Guatemala prior to the US-sponsored coup that radicalized che guevara and solidified in his mind the conviction that socialism couldn't work democratically when capitalist imperialists had no respect for democracy. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56590 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Guatemala.2C_.C3.8... : Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. To accomplish this, President Árbenz had enacted a major land reform program, where all uncultivated portions of large land holdings were to be expropriated and redistributed to landless peasants. The biggest land owner, and one most affected by the reforms, was the United Fruit Company, from which the Árbenz government had already taken more than 225,000 acres (91,000 ha) of uncultivated land.[47] ... The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. In speaking about the coup Guevara stated: "The last Latin American revolutionary democracy – that of Jacobo Arbenz – failed as a result of the cold premeditated aggression carried out by the United States. Its visible head was the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a man who, through a rare coincidence, was also a stockholder and attorney for the United Fruit Company."[54] Guevara's conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions was thus strengthened.[57] Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."[58] " just some context for the old refrain of "communism always leads to us capitalists whining about democracy." for you folks i dare you to read the next 40 years of Guatemala's peaceful capitalist history! |
But you know what? There's this country called Guatemala, that for 10 years was kind of doing OK, and was a liberal capitalist society. But let's call it communist for the sake of the argument. They tried confiscating (not buying out, but straight out taking away) property from a very powerful player, after which the capitalist imperialist player started arming and training 500 men and telling fibs about the president on the radio. The 500 men failed militarily, but the army decided to surrender anyway. All of that cannot of course be evidence of a deeply embedded social instability and political apathy, but clearly shows that democracy doesn't work. We weren't talking about democracy at all, but there you go. So, yeah, if you disregard all of the above, we super-duper promise that Guatemala could have become a communist utopia. This "could've" of course invalidates all the deaths and misery communism inflicted upon the world in the extremely short period of time it existed, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it isn't related to the endemic abuse of power and corruption that seems to follow it all the time, and totally works. We promise. Especially when it allows western people, who have never stood in a 3 km long line for toilet paper and have never gone hungry in the 20th century to feel morally superior by accepting 1st-world-guilt, yet being able to absolve oneself from any moral responsibility by shifting the blame to a cabal of disembodied corporations.
/s