Today in Labor History November 22, 1891: Dr. Edward L. Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria. Bernays, a nephew of Freud, is considered by many to be father of public relations. He is credited with getting millions of women to start smoking with his “Torches of Freedom” cigarette ad campaign that equated smoking with feminism, and with women’s liberation and independence. He also worked to legitimize the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemalan, becoming the primary supplier of information for the international newswires, like Associated Press, United Press International, and the International News Service. He described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct and wrote books on how to harness this to maximize profits. In the 1930s, his critics compared him to Goebbels and Hitler, and Goebbels did, indeed, read and utilize Bernays’s books to inform his propaganda campaigns. Bernays was even offered a job by the Nazis, which he reportedly turned down. He also supposedly turned down propaganda job offers from the the Spanish fascist dictator, Francisco, Franco and the brutal Somoza family, in Nicaragua.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #edwardbernays #freud #unitedfruit #cia #guatemala #publicrelations #advertising #smoking #cigarettes #arbenz #hitler #nazis #fascism

Today in Labor History November 22, 1891: Dr. Edward L. Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria. Bernays, a nephew of Freud, is considered by many to be father of public relations. He is also credited with getting millions of women to start smoking with his cigarette ads, and helping legitimizing the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of the Guatemalan government. He described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct and wrote books on how to harness this to maximize profits.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #edwardbernays #freud #unitedfruit #cia #guatemala #publicrelations #advertising #smoking #cigarettes #arbenz

Today in Labor History October 19, 1944: A coup was launched against dictator Juan Federico Ponce Vaides, beginning the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which led to the rise of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, and the only years that representative democracy existed in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the civil war in 1996. Arbenz won the presidency in 1950, promising to transform the nation from a feudal economy into a modern, capitalist state. He led the implementation of social, political and agrarian reforms that were influential across Latin America. However, the reform that most angered the wealthy elite, and the leaders of United Fruit, were his agrarian reform policies, including the immediate transfer of all uncultivated land from large landowners to their poverty-stricken laborers.

United Fruit was the largest corporation operating in Guatemala. They controlled vast territories and transportation networks throughout Central America, Colombia, and the West Indies, and maintained a virtual monopoly in the so-called banana republics of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. At the bequest of United Fruit, CIA-director Allan Dulles, who was also a board member of United Fruit, orchestrated a coup that overthrew Arbenz in 1954, leading to decades of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala, as well as the torture and murder of thousands of Communists, Socialists, labor leaders, clergy and activists. In the 1980s, United Fruit officially became Chiquita. Their violence and corruption were described in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, O. Henry, and Pablo Neruda.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #guatemala #genocide #indigenous #communism #socialism #arbenz #torture #cia #Revolution #Pynchon #garciamarquez #pabloneruda #poetry #books #ficiton #historicalfiction #novels #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History October 19, 1944: A coup was launched against dictator Juan Federico Ponce Vaides, beginning the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which led to the rise of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz and the only years that representative democracy existed in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the civil war in 1996. Arbenz led the implementation of social, political and agrarian reforms that were influential across Latin America. The CIA orchestrated a coup that overthrew him in 1954, leading to decades of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala, as well as the torture and murder of thousands of Communists, Socialists, labor leaders, clergy and activists.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #guatemala #genocide #indigenous #communism #socialism #arbenz #torture #cia #Revolution

#ProgressiveWave: #Voters chose Arévalo pledging to fight #corruption that has eroded the country’s #institutions and entrenched massive levels of #inequality and #poverty as the most #progressive #Guatemalan leader since Jacobo #Árbenz, who was ousted in a U.S.-sponsored #coup in 1954.

#Jan6: The question now is whether Arévalo will be permitted to take office.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/anti-corruption-advocate-bernardo-arevalo-wins-presidency-in-guatemala/