611.14/6–650
Mr. Edward W. Clark of the Office of Middle American Affairs to the Chargé in Guatemala (Wells)
official informal
Dear Milton: I enclose for your information a copy of a memorandum of conversation dated May 311 which took place between the Mexican Ambassador to the Organization of American States and Mr. Miller. You will note that in section 3 of the memorandum of conversation, Ambassador Quintanilla urged Mr. Miller to give Guatemala special treatment on his trip to Central America in order to make Guatemala “feel that it is a part of the American family of nations”. You will note also that Mr. Miller did not think much of this idea and told Ambassador Quintanilla as much.
Your despatch2 based on John Fishburn’s memorandum3 has disappeared somewhere in the labyrinth of ARA bureaucracy since I sent it forward with the comment that I concurred wholeheartedly. Neither Fishburn nor anyone else has even mentioned the existence of the despatch and I suppose it will end up by being filed without comment. I personally was very pleased with the despatch and thought Kenny Steins picked Fishburn’s memorandum to pieces in a very telling manner. All of us here in MID think Fishburn is way off the beam in his thinking on this matter and have so told him. We had a go around with him on the basis of the memorandum from Mr. Miller to Mr. Webb on the Guatemalan situation, a copy of which I sent you recently. All in all he is a difficult man to deal with.
You will be interested to know that on the basis of the memorandum to Mr. Webb, Ed Miller discussed our policy position on Guatemala at last week’s meeting of Assistant Secretaries. Ambassador Jessup presided and also in attendance were Mr. Dulles,4 George Butler representing the Policy Planning Staff and all the other Assistant Secretaries. The situation relating to our relations with Guatemala was discussed thoroughly and full approval was given at this meeting to the policy which we are presently following. As I understand it, this constitutes policy approval at the highest level in the Department, not counting the Secretary himself. We now feel, therefore, that we in truth have complete Department backing for what we are presently attempting to do vis-à-vis Guatemala.
Colonel Lopez Morales, Guatemalan representative on the Inter-American Defense Board, invited me to luncheon last Friday and told [Page 904] me he was going to Guatemala the following day to endeavor to influence President Arévalo and Arbenz to do something to put our relations back on the right track. He had in mind, I believe, urging them to apologize for what they had done to Ambassador Patterson and asking the United States to “normalize” relations by sending a new Ambassador. Although he was obviously feeling me out to find out how the Department felt, I gave him no encouragement. I told him simply that in my judgment the initiative for “normalizing” our relations again lay with Guatemala and we were hopeful that the Guatemalan Government would recognize those elements who were responsible for what had happened for what they really are. I don’t know how much influence Lopez Morales has with Arbenz or Arévalo but he told me that Arbenz was once his pupil in the Military School. I told Lopez Morales, incidentally, to give you my best regards if he should see you.
Ambassador Goubaud, it seems, is also greatly interested in “normalizing” our relations. He asked me at a party the other night how things were going and if something couldn’t be done soon to “normalize” things. I told Ambassador Goubaud, as I had told Colonel Lopez Morales that same afternoon, that in my judgment “normalization depended on what transpired in the future in Guatemala.
We found your despatch5 covering your talk with the Cuban Minister very interesting. I took occasion to point out to Mr. Miller in a memorandum that I thought the Guatemalans were just as interested as, if not more than, the Cuban Minister in when we were going to send a new Ambassador to Guatemala. Mr. Miller and all the rest of us agree that we should be in no hurry to send an Ambassador and that we should instead allow the Guatemalans to stew in their own juice for a while.
Of course the Fortuny resignation from PAR6 has been the most significant development of all and we are following your reporting on this matter with the greatest of interest.
Forgive my verbosity. There were, however, these few things which I wanted to pass on to you.
Sincerely,
- Not printed.↩
- No. 607 of May 17, p. 889.↩
- Dated April 19, p. 880.↩
- John Foster Dulles, Consultant to the Secretary of State.↩
- No. 638, May 24, 1950, not printed.↩
- On May 20 a number of political leaders who had previously maintained dual membership in the PAR and the PCG (Partido Comunista de Guatemala) had resigned from the former organization.↩