Public Opinion Series

Father of Spin by Larry Tye, 1998, Excerpts

Upon Bernays’ death in 1995, the Library of Congress made public fifty-three boxes of his papers concerning United Fruit. Those documents paint in vivid detail his behind-the-scenes maneuvering and show how, in 1954, he helped to topple Guatemala’s left-leaning regime.  The papers also offer insights into the foreign policies of U.S. corporations and the U.S. diplomatic corps during the turbulent 1950s. And they make clear how the United States viewed its Latin neighbors as ripe for economic exploitation and political manipulation – and how the propaganda war Bernays waged in Guatemala set the pattern for future U.S.-led campaigns in Cuba and Vietnam.

By 1885, eleven ships were sailing under the banner of the new Boston Fruit Company, bringing to the United States 10 million bunches of bananas a year. United Fruit was formed in 1899, with assets that included more than 210,000 acres of land across the Caribbean and Central America, 112 miles of railroad, and so much political clout that Honduras, Costa Rica, and other countries in the region became known as banana republics. That term reflected North Americans’ disdain for Latin Americas, whom they regarded as politically and socially backward and economically ripe for the picking.

The United Fruit Company had a kingpin worthy of its swashbuckling history: Samuel Zemurray, better known as Sam the Banana Man. Big and blunt, this Jewish immigrant from Russia used a blend of cleverness and cunning to buy up a bankrupt steamship company, to plot the overthrow of the Honduran government, to acquire millions of dollars’ worth of United Fruit stock, and  to insert himself as head of the Boston-based firm. By 1949 Zemurray had built United Fruit into one of America’s biggest companies, with $54 million in earnings and an empire of railroads and ships, and control of more than half of the U.S. market in imported bananas.

In the early 1940s, he hired Bernays as his public relations counsel. Bernays realized that if United Fruit wanted to cement its position in the North American economy, it had to teach North Americans about their neighbors to the south. The mission wasn’t just to sell bananas, he told Zemurray, but to sell an entire region of the hemisphere.

Guatemala

Guatemala was a hot spot and had been since 1944, when a mass uprising ended the fourteen-year rule of military strongman General Jorge Ubico Casteneda. Juan Jose Arevalo, a professor living in exile in Argentina, returned home and was swept into office in 1945 with more than 85 percent of the vote. Arevalo faced overwhelming obstacles from 70 percent illiteracy to more than 70 percent of the land being held by just 2 percent of the population. But he began to make changes, introducing a democratic political system, overseeing construction of new schools and hospitals, establishing a limited social security network, and giving workers the right to organize and strike.

The Arevalo reign raised a red flag for United Fruit. Workers went on strike at its banana plantation and seaport, forcing it for the first time to make concessions in a labor contract, and the fruit company was targeted as Guatemala’s most glaring symbol of hated Yankee imperialism.

In March 1951 Arevalo was succeeded by his defense minister, Jacob Arbenz Guzman. Arbenz picked up the pace of change, enacting a modest income tax, upgrading roads and pots, and, most significantly, implementing a plan to redistribute uncultivated lands of large plantations. Between 1952 and 1954 the Arbenz government confiscated and turned over to 100,000 poor families 1.5 million acres – including some 210,000 acres of United Fruit Company holdings.

Guatemala Overthrow Campaign

Bernays warned that Guatemala was ripe for revolution and that the Communists were gaining increasing influence over Guatemala’s leaders. And he counseled the company to scream so loud that the United States would step in to check this threat so near its border. Bernays broached the topic of psychological warfare. He presented to United Fruit boss Samuel Zemurray his plan for “psychological activities aimed at developing a better climate of public opinions.”

Articles began appearing in the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, Newsweek, the New Leader, and other publications, all discussing the growing influence of Guatemala’s Communists. Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, was a relative of Bernay’s wife, Doris. A surprising number of respected reporters seemed not to know or care the fact that Bernays worked for a firm with huge economic interests at stake. What mattered was that his releases were filled with facts they could quickly transform into stories.

In January 1952, he took a group of journalists on a two-week tour of the region. With him were the publishers of Newsweek, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Nashville Banner, and the New Orleans Item, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, and the Christian Science Monitor. The results of his trips to the Tropics were beyond dispute: more and more stories were sounding an alarm about Guatemala.

Events in Guatemala were firing up. The Eisenhower administration, which assumed office in 1953, stepped up the pressure on Arbenz. The fruit company had powerful friends in the Eisenhower administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose law firm had represented United Fruit.

The Guatemalan president responded by hardening his stance, and month by month, the situation edged toward confrontation. The final showdown began on June 18, 1954, when Carlos Castillo Armas, an army officer living in exile, crossed the border from Honduras with two hundred men recruited and trained by the CIA – a band Bernays referred to as an “army of liberation.” This “invasion,” supported by a CIA air attack, quickly achieved its goal, and on June 27 a military junta took control of Guatemala. Armas was named president a week later.

United Fruit was the most important force in toppling Arbenz and Bernays was the fruit company’s most effective propagandist. Propaganda was the key ingredient in undermining the Guatemalans. “A hostile and ill-informed American press helped to create an emotional public opinion. This, in turn, worked on Congress and, ultimately, on the State Department.”