The Tattooed Soldier Sparknotes

It is no secret that the United States has a history of economic and political interventions in countries around the world, especially in Latin America. By comparing the lives of the characters in Tobar’s novel, The Tattooed Soldier, to events that occurred in Latin American history, this paper will focus specifically on how U.S. imperialism, political and economic interventions in the central American countries of Guatemala and El Salvador forced many to flee and immigrate to the United states. Where the newly immigrated Central Americans faced lives of hardships and poverty compared to other Latin communities such as the Cubans who had an easier migration due to their acquisition of the refuge status.

On March 15, 1951 Colonel Jacobo Árbenz

was elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz began his government with several innovative projects. Arbenz was the first Guatemalan President to consider an income tax, something that faced a strong opposition at the Congress. Despite, such noble improvements and economic programs, his biggest dream was to push for land reform in Guatemala. He saw Guatemala's unequal land distribution in a predominantly rural society as the main obstacle to economic development. The country needed a new reform which puts an end to poverty and to the semi-feudal practices, giving the land to thousands of peasants, raising their purchasing power and creating a great internal market favorable to the development of domestic industry. However this was a problem for the U.S. that had already invested and continued to invest in the United Fruit Lands. They handled the two most important exports, coffee and bananas. United Fruit main shareholder, Samuel Zemurray endorsed an anti-Arbenz campaign in the American media and the U.S. Congress in order to show President Arbenz as a Communist threat in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. was worried that Arbenz, who was a communist would give their U.S. investment a bad reputation so they decided to over throw the democratic president of Guatemala.
In the meantime the Eisenhower's administration increasingly criticized Arbenz policies while the American media continued to show Guatemala as the center of Soviet expansion in the Americas.

Even after the strong pressure by US Secretary of State, the Organization of American States resolves to condemn what they believed was communist infiltration in the Americas. Under the control of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, he received a strong financial and logistic support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to prepare his Army in Honduran territory to attack Guatemala. The CIA's involvement had been approved by Eisenhower as a way to stop what they considered a spread of Communism in the Americas. In June, 1954 the troops of Carlos Castillo crossed the Honduran-Guatemalan border and began their attack against Arbenz government. By this time not only was Arbenz internationally isolated but he had also lost much support from his own army and peasant population. Most of the Guatemalans felt they were in a very weak position compared to the invading army, after they heard from an ally radio that reported a larger invading army and the bomber that dropped some bombs around Guatemala City. The demoralized population simply resigned to be defeated by Castillo. Arbenz himself was hard hit when the invasion began. When he realized that any kind of resistance would only bring more deaths and very little success for his movement he decided to do what was best and decided to announce

his resignation over the radio. This was known as the Coup of 1954.
Unfortunately, the new Guatemalan president, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, was not a good man. As president, he robbed poor Guatemalans of their rights to vote and their land. In 1960, the poor had reached their limit and fighters rose up in rebellion. This was the beginning of the Guatemalan civil war between the people of Guatemala and their Government. This war lasting 36 years and causing thousands upon thousands of Guatemalan refugees and migrants so seek a home somewhere else. For most of them this new place was the United States.
Antonio Bernal, the main character in Tobar’s novel The Tattooed Soldier, is a Guatemalan immigrant who fled from Guatemala after the death of his wife and son who were murdered by a government branch death squad in the mist of the Guatemalan civil war.

Many Guatemalan immigrants who arrived north to the United States, like Antonio, were fleeing from the danger and persecution of the Guatemalan civil war. Although they hoped to rebuild their lives and possibly better them. The reality was that they would continue to face hardships such as poverty, unequal rights, and discrimination. For example take this excerpt from one of our course readings, “The Reagan and Bush admissions, obsessed with stopping Communism in the region, refused to assist the thousands streaming across the Mexican border to escape that terror” (pg. 131). Even though a very large majority of Guatemalan immigrants that came to the U.S. were a result of the civil war that was caused by the by the United States, our government refused to assist. Antonio is forced out on the street because he does not make enough money as a dish washer to pay his rent. Although this occurs in the novel, it was a harsh reality for many Central American immigrants. With the refusal of assistance from the government, Guatemalan immigrants had to take jobs in coffee shops, dishwashers, field workers, and manual laborers. For example,“Good neighborhoods were defined as white, and whiteness was defined as good, stable, employed, and

employable. (Pg. 273 Martha R. Mahoney). Because these jobs payed low wages, immigrants had to live in crowded run down tenement style apartments. Longoria, another character from The Tattooed Soldier, describes the living conditions (in which he lives in) best when he says, “He saw them in the hallways and stairways, theses janitors, garment workers, and housekeepers, scrambling off to work every morning. They were on a sad minimum-wage quest” (Tobar Pg. 20) as well as, “I could hear the whole neighborhood every day and night. There was never any peace in the crowded mess known as the West-Lake Arms” (Tobar Pg. 43). For many immigrants, their lives were not bettered at all, but after migrating to the U.S. many Central Americans decided to stay in the United States because they did not have many conditions of security due to the ongoing guerilla warfare and high crime rates.
In El Salvador civil war was breaking out. One of the most influential figures during the Civil War in El Salvador was Archbishop Monsignor Oscar Romero who was assassinated on March 24, 1980 while conducting mass. In addition, the day before his assassination, Romero had delivered a sermon in which he encouraged the soldiers in the army not to obey orders to torture or murder. In one of his speeches he expressed what he felt for the injustices that were occurring in El Salvador. His assassination led to a full scale civil war. Many people started becoming more politically active and the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) which was composed of four left wing guerillas and the Salvadoran Communist Party was formed after his assassination. People saw that the only way to combat the military was by using violence. It was later discovered that the ones responsible for his death were the Salvadoran military which were being trained by the U.S. The United States saw the spread of communism as a threat to the nation and invested heavily in El Salvador’s Civil War. The Soviet Union and many other communist countries including Cuba aided the left wing coalition known as FMLN. This led the U.S. to start investing heavily in the civil war. During President’s Carter’s administration, the U.S. invested $7 billion in a ten year aid found. During January of 1980, the U.S. military sent 19 soldiers to El Salvador to train others soldiers in order to combat FMLN.
Over the course of the Salvadoran civil war the United States sent more than $4.5 billion in aid to El Salvador, trained many Salvadoran soldiers on U.S. soil in counter-insurgency tactics and torture techniques, stopping the spread of communism and spreading democracy. All at the expense of ignoring human rights abuse, which is exemplified by the United States presence in the civil war in El Salvador. Like Guatemala U.S. intervention did more bad than it did good. For example, “Seventy percent of the record $3.7 billion the United States pumped into El Salvador from 1981 to 1989 went for weapons and war assistance. As the number of weapons in the country escalated, so did the numbers of Salvadorans fleeing the devastation those weapons caused” (Gonzalez pg. 135). Although the U.S. tried to help the Nation of El Salvador, it did anything but that. Thousands fled from El Salvador to escape the civil war that lasted years. Like the Guatemalan immigrants, Salvadoran immigrants were also denied assistance by the U.S. government leaving them to fend for themselves and live the unfortunate life of an immigrant.
Cuba was one of the very few Latin countries whose immigrants had it the easiest in terms of acceptance. The population of Cuban immigrants in the United States more than doubled between 1950 and 1960, rising from 71,000 to 163,000. Since the mid-1960s, most Cubans who land on U.S. soil have been admitted to the United States through special refuge acts of U.S. law instead of the traditional immigration pathways through which nationals of all other countries are required to seek admission (Guatemalans and Salvadorans). In 1980, maritime departures from Cuba surged dramatically during the Mariel boatlift: 125,000 Cubans (and 25,000 Haitians) arrived in South Florida. Subsequently, boat migration again rose from a few hundred in 1989 to a few thousand in 1993. The U.S. used the images of Cuban refugee children in their anti-Castro campaign hoping to use the images of disoriented refugee children in the arms of their refugee parents as a way to pull on America’s heart strings and gain support for their campaign. To their luck it worked and Americans began to side with the support the liberation of Cuba and the anti-Castro campaign. For example, Most American sympathized and supported the immigration moment because they felt they were helping stop the spread of communism” (Garcia Pg. 160). Although in a sense this is true, American support would have also been beneficial to both Central American countries mentioned above. Cuban’s were given asylum because they qualified as refuges. A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster is a refugee. Cubans were escaping communist persecution, but so were Central American immigrants. Seen here “Our government condemned Salvadorans and Guatemalans who managed to sneak across the border to a precarious and illegal existence at the margins of Anglo society” (Gonzalez pg. 130). Although the U.S. did not officially label Central American immigrants as refugees, many of them migrated to the U.S. to escape persecution and war caused by U.S. intervention. Take these excerpts from one of our class readings, “In Guatemala City, unlicensed vans full of heavily armed men pull to a stop and in broad daylight kidnap another death squad victim. Mutilated bodies are dropped from helicopters on crowded stadiums to keep the population terrified...those who dare ask about ‘disappeared’ loved ones have their tongues cut out” (Gonzalez pg. 137) this was a sad reality that even Antonio (the main character in the novel) had to face. Another example, “The terror in my country (Guatemala) created a psychological disaster. So many were tortured to death that if the army took you into custody and you survived, those in your circle would suspect you as a traitor” (Gonzalez pg. 143). Guatemalans had to constantly live with a sense of extreme fear of death at any moment. If that is not someone who should be considered a refugee, then I don’t know who else can qualify as a refugee. The U.S. refused to give Central Americans the title of refugees because that meant they had to admit and pay for the damages that were caused by their interventions.
Due to American imperialism and economic and political interventions in Guatemala and Central America, the U.S. caused essentially anti-communist civil wars in both El Salvador and Guatemala leading to large amount of fatalities from both countries. Although the U.S. was the cause of such terror for both countries, it refused to grant them the title of refugees. This caused these new immigrants from Central America to live a life of poverty, discrimination, and unequal treatment that are reflected by Tobar’s novel, The Tattooed Soldier.