CRISPÍN CARRASQUILLA WAS THE SON of a railroad employee who had dreamed of being a soldier as long as he’d had the power of reason. His father encouraged this dream, even if his mother would have preferred engineering or medicine. He was born in a village, San Pedro Nécta, in Huehuetenango, close to the Mexican border. He spent much of his childhood moving from place to place. Eventually, they gave his father a stable post at Estación Central in Guatemala City, where Crispín attended a public school better than the grammar schools he’d gone to in the provinces.
He wasn’t very studious, but he was a good athlete. He swam from a young age, almost from boyhood, because he’d been told doing so would help him grow; he’d been afraid his small stature would make it hard for him to get accepted at the Politécnica, because all candidates had to meet a height minimum. This troubled him, because he was still a few tenths of an inch short. The happiest day of his life must have been when he found out the Military Academy had accepted him—he wasn’t one of the top applicants, but he wasn’t at the bottom, either. His first three years as a cadet followed those same lines: he was neither an excellent nor a horrible student, always somewhere in the middle, studying dutifully and making an exemplary effort in military maneuvers and physical education. He was a good kid, artless, maybe a touch dim, easy to make friends with. He got along with everyone, from his fellow students to his superiors, was obedient, obliging, unaffected by the rigors of discipline, preferring to serve rather than follow orders, and his classmates thought highly of him, but without feeling any particular admiration.
His somewhat indefinite personality changed during the war in the last months of Jacobo Árbenz’s government, when one of the sulfates dropped a bomb on the ceremonial courtyard of the Escuela Politécnica. No one was killed, but several were wounded, some even gravely, among them Cristóbal Fomento. Crispín Carrasquilla was walking out of Physics and watched, appalled, as the bomb exploded on one of the rooftops surrounding the courtyard and sent pieces of it flying; a rain of stone and rubble flew in all directions, breaking the surrounding windows and sending him rolling away on the ground. As he got up and made sure he was unharmed, he heard screams of pain from the injured and saw cadets, officers, and service employees run past covered in dust, some of them bloody. After a few minutes the shock and chaos were over and the entire school mobilized to take the casualties—including his friend Urogallo—to the infirmary, which, fortunately, hadn’t suffered much damage.
Until then, Crispín had never cared about politics. He’d heard talk about the October Revolution that had ended General Jorge Ubico Castañeda’s military dictatorship and about the junta overseen by Colonel Ponce Vaides, but he had never paid that much mind—he was just a schoolboy back then. He’d heard about the election of President Juan José Arévalo and his successor, Colonel Jacobo Árbenz, at the time when he was entering the Politécnica. He saw all that as something distant, matters that didn’t concern him. And this was the same attitude the other cadets had. He didn’t take part in any of the arguments that sometimes occurred in his presence when Colonel Castillo Armas first rose up in Guatemala and accused Árbenz’s government of being communists. But his neutrality—or rather, his indifference—to politics vanished when the sulfates started flying over Guatemala City, throwing down leaflets of propaganda or bombs that brought devastation, victims, panic, especially since the day one of them shelled the Military Academy. Gringo pilots attacking Guatemalans, military forts like Matamoros or San José de Buena Vista, even the Politécnica itself—this touched his pride and his idea of what patriotism meant, and it turned him into another person. It was a crime against the country, he thought, and no one who loved Guatemala could accept it and keep even a bit of their dignity, let alone a cadet training to be an officer in the army.
After that, he took part in every discussion of politics at school, sometimes even starting them. Neither the cadets nor the officers had a single position: they were divided over the Árbenz government and its reforms, particularly land reform; but almost to a man, both groups were withering about Castillo Armas, who had broken the unity of the armed forces and attacked his own country with support and financing from the United States.
That his friend and classmate Cristóbal Fomento was one of the wounded in the bombing of the ceremonial courtyard affected him deeply. Cristóbal loved animals and was forever talking about exotic species unknown in Guatemala. One fine day, he showed up with a magazine with photos of something that looked a bit like a rooster and was called urogallo in Spain; the images had so excited him that the cadets had called him that ever since. When Crispín went to see him in the military hospital, where they’d transferred him from the school’s infirmary, he found his friend looking sad as can be. The doctors had been unable to save one of his eyes; that wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was incompatible with a career as a soldier. Urogallo would have to leave the Academy and look for another profession. The two friends’ long talk was painful, and at one point, Crispín saw the tears streaming down Cristóbal’s cheeks when he told him he would devote his life to agriculture, because an uncle of his had offered to take him to work on his coffee estate in Alta Verapaz.
After the day the bomb fell in the ceremonial courtyard, all the cadets, not just Crispín, had begun to talk a lot about politics. Surprisingly, Crispín’s personality changed. He became a leader, someone his classmates listened to in the stables, on the fields, or at night, after lights-out, when they would exchange ideas lying on their bunk beds in the dark. He would inveigh heatedly against those traitors to the Fatherland who had obeyed the Yankees and risen up against their own army to overthrow President Árbenz, as if Guatemala were a colony and not an independent country. His ideas were naturally confused, more emotional than rational, and they mingled love (for the land of his birth, for his comrades, and for his army, all of which, for him, were shrouded in sanctity) and hatred, even rage against anyone willing to let political interests compel them to attack their own country, like the leaders of the Army of Liberation, which was largely made up of mercenaries, many of them foreigners, who were bombing Guatemala City with planes piloted by Yankees and had sent a sulfate to drop a bomb on the Military Academy.
When the cadets were informed, at the beginning of July 1954, that all were to go to La Aurora airport to receive Castillo Armas, who was returning from El Salvador with the Yankee ambassador John E. Peurifoy and the military chiefs the Liberationists had signed a peace treaty with, naming a junta that would run the country with Castillo Armas as a member, Crispín Carrasquilla and his companions declared a boycott.
That same day, the director of the Military Academy, Colonel Eufemio Mendoza, summoned him to a meeting.
“I should have sent you off to the brig instead of calling you to my office,” the colonel said, grimacing, in a voice that blended rage and bewilderment. “Have you lost your mind, Carrasquilla? A boycott at a military institution? Don’t you realize that’s the same thing as sedition? You could be expelled from the academy and imprisoned for nonsense like this!”
Colonel Eufemio Mendoza wasn’t a bad person. He exercised frequently and had an athlete’s build. He was always scratching his mustache. He, too, was livid over the bombing at the academy and understood that the cadets were scandalized by it. But the army wouldn’t exist without discipline and a respect for hierarchy. The principal reminded cadet Carrasquilla, who listened to him at attention, unblinking, that in the army, orders were orders, you obeyed them and didn’t hesitate or complain; otherwise the institution wouldn’t function and then it couldn’t fulfill its mission, the defense of the nation’s sovereignty, in other words, of the Fatherland.
It was a long sermon, and toward the end, the colonel softened a bit, saying he understood the cadets were hurt and enraged. That was only human. But in the army, if a superior gives a soldier a command, he follows it, whether he likes it or not. And the order from above was clear as day: the cadets were to go to La Aurora airport in formation to greet the military leaders, Castillo Armas, and the Liberationists who had signed the peace accord in San Salvador.
“I don’t care for it either,” Colonel Mendoza confessed suddenly, lowering his voice to a whisper and looking knowingly at the cadet. “But I’ll be there, in front of the school’s committee, carrying out the orders I received. And you’ll be there, too, in formation, in your parade uniform with your rifle clean and well oiled, unless you can’t figure out a way to forget this idiotic idea of proposing the cadets boycott the commands of their superiors.”
Eventually, Crispín apologized, admitting Colonel Mendoza was right. He had acted irresponsibly, and would admit as much in front of his classmates that very afternoon.
The cadets accompanied numerous military battalions and the police to La Aurora airport to welcome Castillo Armas and his retinue. There, in the enormous crowd saluting him—who were celebrating, more than the agreement between the army and the Liberationists, the end of the war, of insecurity, of uncertainty and fear—few sensed that a grave incident was on the verge of taking place between the cadets of the Military Academy and the platoon of militiamen and Liberationist soldiers, who were likewise standing on the tarmac to salute the men coming off the plane. The majority of those in that huge sea of people didn’t even notice what happened. Nor did the journalists from the newspapers and radio stations, who were enthralled now with Castillo Armas, say a word about the events, which only became known through the testimony of the participants.
It was one of the first Liberationist contingents to reach the capital. They had lined up alongside the company of cadets from the Military Academy in their dirty, torn uniforms, which they wore carelessly—a herd of undisciplined grifters with ragtag armaments, rifles, shotguns, revolvers, and automatics, looking shabby in their hats and peaked caps and patches. Despite all this, they thought they could crack jokes at the expense of the cadets, impeccable in their freshly washed and ironed uniforms, who stood rigid in ordered rows listening to the jokes and insults of that gang of thugs in which true-born Guatemalans mingled with others from Central America who saw all this as nothing more than a payday. And now they were there, daring to mock and offend the future officers of the Guatemalan army.
The lieutenants standing at the head of the companies of cadets kept them from responding to the Liberationists’ insults and provocations, but not for long. When the doors of the airplane that had just come from San Salvador opened, and Ambassador John Emil Peurifoy appeared with Castillo Armas behind him, the multitude rushed forward and broke the barriers to get close to the new arrivals. There was disorder, a melee, and several of the cadets and even a few of the officers took advantage of the chaos to confront the Liberationists, punching, kicking, and headbutting the men who had scorned them and called them followers of Árbenz. Crispín joined them, though before this he had never been prone to violence against anyone. With his new personality, as soon as disorder broke out, he was there shouting insults on the front lines, raising the butt of his rifle to strike whatever mercenary was nearest to hand.
All this aggravated the tension and animosity between the Military Academy and the Liberationists. The same day, the students from the Politécnica had been given leave to spend the night with their families, and there was another violent incident with a group of cadets in the Cinema Capitol on Sixth Avenue in Zone 1. As they were leaving the theater, they bumped into a half dozen invaders who had been waiting there to harass them. In the resulting fracas, two senior cadets were wounded and had to go to a public clinic for treatment. Crispín wasn’t there, but he heard the details of what had occurred; it was the only thing anyone at the Military Academy was talking about. And so the idea began to spread among the cadets—several pushed for it at the same time—of settling accounts with the Liberationists concentrated around Roosevelt Hospital, which was still under construction. People were talking about it in low tones, and not especially clearly—was this supposed to be a military operation, or a clash between guerrilla groups?—when another, still more violent episode fired the spirits of the cadets and, this time, of several of the officers, too.
It happened in the brothel in the Gerona neighborhood overseen by Miss Miriam Ritcher, the gringa who tried to pass herself off as French (actually she’d been born in Havana) and sported a shimmering blond dye job. Three cadets were there having a drink at the bar when a group of Liberationists approached them; insults flew, bottles and glasses were shattered, and when the cadets held their ground, the Liberationists sent for reinforcements from their base at Roosevelt Hospital. Things seemed to have calmed down when six more Liberationists burst into the brothel armed with machine guns. Pointing their weapons, they submitted the three cadets to endless humiliations. They stripped them naked, made them dance and sing and cavort like pansies and spit and pissed on them while they did.
The final straw was August 2, 1954, the so-called Victory Parade. It had been conceived as a military affair, with the Guatemalan army’s soldiers marching alongside the Liberationist brigades in a show of unity for the two forces. But in his speech, President Castillo Armas reserved his words of homage for the anticommunist forces, and awarded medals and other recognitions to the winning side alone. The better part of the public even went so far as to hiss and catcall at the cadets in the midst of the parade.
That night, the cadets from the Military Academy, with the backing of several young officers, attacked Roosevelt Hospital. By general agreement, the senior cadets, who were on the verge of graduating, would not participate, to keep from endangering their careers. But two of them insisted on taking part in the expedition, and the others did, too. They locked the principal, Colonel Eufemio Mendoza, and the rest of their superiors who had chosen to sit out the attack in the operations room with their agreement; then the cadets and the officers who had volunteered to go with them loaded their weapons, put on their helmets, and climbed into the buses that would take them to Roosevelt Hospital, where a reconnaissance group had been casing the area and spying on the Liberationists’ activities. Crispín Carrasquilla by now was an undisputed leader of the group, and that night he directed their movements, after a fashion. Even the small clique of officers listened to his opinions, arguing about them but generally acquiescing. He had been the one to propose they ask all the new cadets individually whether they were willing to participate in the attack. All of them said they were.
Combat began at 4:30 a.m. The attackers had the advantage of surprise: the Liberationists didn’t expect them and were stunned when fire from the rifles, bazookas, and cannons started to pummel them on that dark, rainy morning. Crispín was at the front, on the right flank of a column attacking Roosevelt Hospital in a pincer movement. Immediately, men began to fall, dead and wounded, all around him, and his comrades struggled to hear the orders he was shouting over the gunfire, cries, and groans. Amid the exhaustion, elation, and deafening explosions, he felt he was now doing what he had always dreamed of. He didn’t even realize when, as he led the charge against the front door of Roosevelt Hospital, two bullets pierced his torso.
Stupefied at first by the cadets’ attack, the Liberationists soon responded in kind. For much of the morning, while the sun rose in the sky, the rain ceased, and the dawn shone over that remote corner of Guatemala City, the shooting would die down, then resume with greater ferocity, and families in the neighborhood would run from their homes, carrying their children and suitcases and bundles filled with the essentials, horrified that something like this could happen at the very moment when they thought peace had finally arrived in the country.
At midday, the cadets received a shipment of mortars from the military base at La Aurora. But not long afterward, they heard the roar of motors and saw a North American sulfate sweeping in overhead, newly arrived from Nicaragua to come to the Liberationists’ aid. Later they would learn the pilot had been the madman Jerry Fred DeLarm. He did little harm to the cadets, as his fuel soon ran out, and he was forced to land at La Aurora airport. There he was detained by a military garrison, which refused to let him go, claiming they were awaiting instructions from their superiors. By the time he took to the air again, the hostilities had ended thanks to the mediation of Archbishop Rossell y Arellano and Ambassador Peurifoy. Both of them were declared enemies of President Árbenz, and both had applauded Castillo Armas’s insurrection from the beginning, and so the cadets, and especially Crispín, had doubts as to their good faith. But the officers ordered them to accept the men’s intercession. The archbishop—a very thin, almost skeletal man, spreading benedictions all around him, with his very long fingers and his eyes full of contrition and serenity—promised he would be absolutely neutral. His only mission was to stop the blood from flowing and to guarantee a resolution that would do honor to both parties. He would—he swore on his blessed mother’s name, she was in heaven looking down on them right now—reach a verdict with neither winners nor losers.
While they were discussing the truce, Deputy Lieutenant Ramiro Llanos approached Crispín, who saw the alarm in the officer’s eyes. Llanos offered to take the boy to the field hospital they’d set up in a nearby bakery.
“The field hospital? Why?” Crispín asked. He hadn’t yet realized he was soaked in blood. Not once in the hours of shooting had he felt any pain, and only now did he notice the wounds in his chest and left shoulder.
Deputy Lieutenant Llanos took him by the arms—Crispín could sense he was about to faint—and called over two more cadets. They must have been in their first year, because their caps sat loosely over their heads, and their faces were coated in dust and sweat. They helped carry Crispín off. He realized he was no longer holding his rifles, and that everything had begun to look hazy. His mother’s and father’s faces appeared, there they were, looking at him with affection, admiration, and grief; he would have liked to tell them something nice, something loving, but he didn’t have the strength to speak. When they entered the bakery they had emptied to give the soldiers first aid, Crispín could no longer see. But he still heard the rumor of voices, mingled hopelessly now and fading inexorably into the distance.
Crispín neither witnessed nor heard word of the negotiations in which Guatemala’s wily archbishop, Monsignor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, arranged to have a unit of cadets sent to the National Palace. President Castillo Armas received them in person. The cadets told the president that they could no longer tolerate humiliations of the kind the Liberationists had perpetrated in the foregoing days. They demanded that the mercenaries, whom they had defeated in the battle, admit defeat and leave Roosevelt Hospital with their hands up, turning their weapons over to the authorities. Scowling, Castillo Armas gave in to their demands. Crispín didn’t watch as the Liberationists emerged from the half-built hospital with their hands raised in the air, and didn’t see them turn over the rifles, shotguns, mortars, and pistols to the cadets.
Three conditions were agreed to and were immediately violated: the defeated, upon giving up their weapons, would return to their home villages or countries; the rebel cadets would suffer no reprisals for their actions that day, which would not appear on their service record, and would return to the Military Academy and finish their studies in normal conditions; and finally, the officers and enlisted men who had supported them would continue to serve in the army without prejudice, and their participation would likewise be expunged from their records.
Since he died that afternoon before they could transfer him to a hospital, Crispín Carrasquilla never learned that this accord, upon signing, became so much useless paper, just as he and the other cadets had feared. His side had won on the ground, but the Liberationists were the real victors in the conflict, which would hardly appear in the press or the history books, as if it were an event without any importance. The Military Academy was immediately closed for several months, for reorganization. The officers and enlisted men who had supported the rebels were expelled from the army and stripped of their pensions. Of the cadets, only six whose relatives had a degree of influence in Castillo Armas’s government were allowed to continue their studies, in military schools in allied countries like Somoza’s Nicaragua and Pérez Jiménez’s Venezuela. The others were dismissed from the institution and refused readmission when the Politécnica reopened under a new principal with an entirely new staff of officers.
Not long afterward, President Castillo Armas awarded the country’s highest honor to Archbishop Rossell y Arellano in a ceremony held at the cathedral, calling him—in a speech written by Efraín Nájera Farfán—an illustrious patriot, a hero, and a saint.
Crispín Carrasquilla’s parents tried in vain to recover their son’s body. The military leaders informed them he had been buried with other victims from that revolutionary ploy in a common grave, the location of which would be kept secret to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage for communists in the future.