Fishing Season

Guatemala's long-drawn-out presidential campaign: got rolling in high gear this week, and there were clear indications that the country': top politicians were sensitive and sore over repeated charges of Communist influence in Guatemalan government affairs. Ex-Defense Minister Jacobo Arbenz, 34, who is running with the support of the country's Red-dominated labor unions, made a hot reply to the charge before 6,000 mango-sucking countrymen in the town of Escuintla.

"It is the reactionary motto of the moment to attack democratic progress," shouted Arbenz. "I denounce this maneuver." From his seat on the platform atop a half-built schoolhouse, Victor Gutierrez, No. 2 Communist-liner in Guatemala's labor leadership, led the applause. Gutierrez also gave a speech of his own, salted with such Red code words as "imperialist," "reactionary" and "monopoly."

Some Guatemalans fear--others hope--that such men as Gutierrez will be in the driver's seat if Arbenz wins the presidential elections to be held in November or December. In 1944, when dictator-ridden Guatemala was ripe for revolution, Arbenz, then working from El Salvador, helped mastermind the uprising. When "Spiritual Socialist" Juan Jose Arevalo assumed the presidency, Arbenz took over the job of defense minister. Last summer a crisis arose when Arbenz' revolutionary comrade, Colonel Francisco Arana, chief of the armed forces, began acting too big for his job. At a cabinet meeting one day, President Arevalo stared at Arana across the table and said: "There are two presidents here, and one of them has a machine gun." Arevalo presumably meant Arana, but a few weeks later Arana died in a gory ambush at Lake Amatitlan.

After that, Arbenz seemed to be the undisputed heir of the revolution. In February, Guatemala's Reds nominated him for President on the Revolutionary Action ticket. Opportunist Arbenz, who has acquired $500,000 worth of real estate in the last five years, and often downs highballs with some of Guatemala's richest capitalists, readily accepted the backing of the Communist-line labor political-action committee. But this week the other big government party, Frente Popular Libertador, snubbed Arbenz and picked middle-of-the-road Dr. Victor Manuel Giordani, Arevalo's Minister of Health, as its presidential candidate.

Arevalo, who has stubbornly clung to the popular front idea of government, made no immediate move in support of either candidate. The campaign maneuvering of the next few months could well settle the election as completely as a U.S. primary vote decides an election in such a one-party state as Mississippi. For the moment, the situation seemed made to order for Guatemala's Reds to fish for power.

In Washington last week, Wisconsin's Senator Alexander Wiley called for the withdrawal of Guatemala's Ambassador to the U.S. because of "Communist outrages" against the U.S. in Guatemala. Most flagrant example cited by the Senator: Guatemala's demand for the recall of U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Patterson Jr. (TIME, April 17), largely because of his urgent and outspoken opposition to Communist influences in the country.

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