Guatemala

* Guatemala gets your headline (June 2) but you are writing from a narrow view of perhaps 2% of the population who own perhaps 95% of the country. To refer to Guatemala as being a democracy is total disinformation. Perhaps we can add in the “fine print” that our CIA covert activities overthrew the last and perhaps only democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954 in order to turn control of the country back to the United Fruit Co. and other multinational corporations.

In addition to encouraging nearly four decades of thousands of murders, disappearances and torture, U.S. taxpayers overtly fund a corrupt cruel military government for the oligarchy.

I did not gain my information from any mainstream media. Speak to the Guatemalans in Los Angeles who fled their country in fear of their lives after critical opposition to a government that opposed basic necessities to 98%.

MARY ANN FLANAGAN

San Dimas

* We got past the nightmares of Nicaragua and El Salvador, and now we are confronted with horror of Guatemala (editorial, “Sudden Regression in Guatemala,” May 28). At least 40,000 civilians have been killed in this land of eternal tyranny where only 13% of the people live above the poverty level. It’s a land ruled by the military backed by the oligarchy and U.S. transnational interests. Ousted President Jorge Serrano was merely a toady to these interests. President Clinton threatens to withhold economic aid. He won’t. That would threaten U.S. transnational corporations, and that might mean Guatemala would be lost as an economic colony.

DON RADEMACHER

Los Angeles