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And besides, the Communists supported agrarian reform, which was incredibly popular with the poor majority of Guatemalans.īut in the 1950s, many Guatemalans still remembered the shady dealings of their pre-democracy dictators - and the smear campaign against Árbenz had created room for doubt about Árbenz too.

The president was popular, and it was well-known that the Communist Party was small. The Guatemalan military was skeptical, having been filled in on how small Castillo Armas’s rebel group actually was.Īmong the Guatemalan public, Radio Liberación was in the minority when it decried Árbenz, or even Communists. Not that everyone believed all the hype from Radio Liberación’s speeches. Often, these voices from “a secret location within the republic” took on the tone of a friend filling you in on something.īetween the rumor mill about Árbenz’s tilt toward Communism - and the fact that the Árbenz administration had reported in January that Castillo Armas was plotting against him - the Guatemalan press didn’t seem to question whether the broadcasts really were coming from a group of anti-Communist exiles. In between the sermon-like speeches, the DJs, Mario and Pepe, sprinkled in chatter, jokes and personal talk. Each broadcast had music, catch phrases and talking points delivered poetically. Radio Liberación was launched strategically on this day, which was a national holiday that many Guatemalans had off from work.įrom then on, each day Phillips and his crew broadcast from 7 a.m. The Guatemalan press reported excitedly on the new station that began broadcasting on 3420 kHz on May 1, 1954. With an established network and seeds of doubt firmly planted, the plotters were ready to start spreading their own content - what Silverman describes as the next step in a successful info-war campaign: “Get your operation up and running to get your message out.” The location would be a heavily guarded secret - and Nicaragua was deliberately chosen because Árbenz’s military knew that Castillo Armas was hiding across the border in Honduras and might therefore search for the radio station there. Hunt’s descriptions of the Guatemalan crew were exaggerated and racist (Hunt’s son Saint John describes his father as a racist in his own memoir), but the ladies can be heard in many recordings of the broadcasts, including participating in a regular “Women Against Communism” segment hosted by “Silvia and Sandra.” Documents reveal that they were sisters: Sonia and Sara Orellana.įinally, in late April, the crew flew to Nicaragua, with permission from the dictator Anastasio Somoza, to set up a radio transmitter in a shack in the jungle. Howard Hunt’s memoir Undercover, after several weeks of work, the Guatemalan radio operators threatened to strike due to their “forced celibacy.” So Hunt flew out their “girlfriends” (at least one of whom was actually a wife). Only after this would they move on to what Phillips called “the big lie.”Īccording to E. The goal was to start getting Guatemalans talking about Castillo Armas and the fight against Communism. The content would start with exaggerations of the truth, opinions that would be hard to falsify, and accusations that would be difficult to disprove: Castillo Armas was building an army Árbenz was bad for Guatemala Communists were taking over the government etc. Anything that the Árbenz government could point to in order to prove that the station was not inside Guatemala, for example, could foil the plot.

Initially, these broadcasts would need to establish credibility. In his memoir, Phillips recalled the objective as being “to intimidate listeners” who were Árbenz sympathizers and to “influence the mass of neutral types” - what they described as a “soap-opera audience.” Stage 3 in the CIA’s step-by-step plan to overthrow the government of Guatemala.ĭavid Phillips and his radio crew spent March and April in Florida writing and prerecording the initial broadcasts for Radio Liberación.

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