Background
Manuel Estrada Cabrera was born in Quetzaltenango on 18 November 1857.
government official politician president
Manuel Estrada Cabrera was born in Quetzaltenango on 18 November 1857.
He was then reelected four times in electoral exercises that were flimsy façades for his personal autocracy.
When El Salvador assisted Guatemalan rebels in 1906, Estrada Cabrera declared war. The United States and Mexico negotiated an armistice and then sponsored a treaty signed by all Central American states in which they agreed to stop intervening in each other’s affairs.
By 1920 discontent had reached nearly every sector of Guatemalan society. With the murder of an antigovemment legislator in the halls of Congress, national outrage was such that Estrada Cabrera tried to appease the opposition by allowing return of all political exiles. However, Congress declared him insane and forced his resignation. He died in exile.
After his “election” to the presidency in 1898, he amended the Constitution to eliminate the single-term presidential limitation.
As Justo Rufino Barrios had done earlier, Estrada attempted to promote prosperity through extensive public works. Roads, bridges, and ports were built. A new elite of coffee producers and outside companies emerged under Barrios and Estrada Cabrera, and displaced the old landed oligarchy.
Estrada Cabrera created a large, permanent bureaucracy through which the government penetrated rural areas that had never been integrated into the political system. At the same time, personalities replaced ideas as political activity was limited to jockeying for power by the military or to internecine struggles among various Liberal factions.
Estrada continued the anticlericalism inaugurated by Barrios, confiscating church lands and banning a number of religious activities. Some services previously provided by the church were assumed by the governmental bureaucracy.
When labor unions began to organize, strikes and labor demonstrations were harshly suppressed by the armed forces. Most industrial establishments were small shops that successfully resisted unionization.
Estrada Cabrera made exceedingly generous concessions to outside planters, merchants, and financiers. German coffee growers and North American and British transportation and commercial interests became extremely influential. In 1904 Estrada granted the United Fruit Company a 99-year concession to own and operate the country’s principal rail line, and it soon controlled all the railroads in Guatemala. He also granted United Fruit large portions of prime banana land, enabling the company to become the dominating entity in the economy.
