Reform Reformed

As soon as Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas gained power, he suspended the sweeping land-reform program under which the old regime expropriated a fifth (1,600,000 acres) of Guatemala's arable land and handed it over to 83,275 landless peasants. Last week the new President laid down a stopgap program of his own for dealing with the most explosive of Guatemala's problems. Drawn up by Jorge Skinner Klee, 32, a lawyer who took postgraduate work (in anthropology) at Northwestern, the President's decree appears to accept land reform in Guatemala as a necessity, and undertakes to consolidate it while redressing some of its more glaring injustices.

Under terms of the new program, further land expropriation will cease until a new Congress enacts a new law, but peasants may get outright title to the plots awarded them under the old law. A new Directorate General of Agrarian Affairs (D.G.A.A.) will clear out "invaders" who squatted on tracts in violation of the old law.

The Castillo Armas decree left unanswered one big question: Will the United Fruit Co. get back some or all of the 400,000 acres it lost by expropriation under the deposed government? At the moment, the company is being careful to avoid any moves which might embarrass the new government. The company's claim of $15 million as compensation for the lands expropriated by the old regime is still pending, but United Fruit is considered likely now to treat that as just one item in an overall settlement which it hopes to negotiate with the Castillo Armas regime.

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