Nation-building in the land of eternal counter-insurgency: Guatemala and the contradictions of the alliance for progress

This article will examine the consequences of US-sponsored development assistance programmes in Guatemala during the 1960s, the so-called Alliance for Progress decade. Recently declassified and unclassified State Department records reveal that the US Agency for International Development (usaid) mission in Guatemala helped organise numerous co-operatives, community leadership programmes and modernisation projects that empowered disenfranchised …