Office of the Historian

130. Memorandum of conversation, November 28, between President Kennedy and Ambassador Alejos1

November 28, 1962, 12:13 p.m.
[Facsimile Page 1]

SUBJECT

  • Ambassador Alejos’ Call on President Kennedy

PARTICIPANTS

  • The President
  • Edwin M. Martin, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
  • Ambassador Alejos, Guatemala

Ambassador Alejos started out by expressing his Government’s and the Guatemalan peoples’ warm congratulations and admiration for the President’s handling of the Cuban incident.

He then commented in general terms about the recent attack by Guatemalan Air Force personnel on the Government in Guatemala City. While he explained the primary motivation as being fear of Arevalo as President and concern on the part of conservative elements about recently enacted agrarian reform and income tax laws, he also stressed that a professional student organizer had recently returned to Guatemala from Cuba with large sums of money and was passing out checks in great profusion. It was not quite clear how the two things meshed together in this particular action.

He then said that President Ydigoras had long been deeply concerned about the Castro threat and felt that there could not be peace in the Caribbean until the Castro regime had been removed from power. The President and his advisors had drawn up a plan to this end in April, had been studying it since that time, but had decided a month or so ago that it was worth passing on to President Kennedy for such use as it may be to him.

[Facsimile Page 2]

President Kennedy read the plan quickly and noted that it was based primarily on training and arming Cuban refugees. The President expressed his appreciation for the suggestions and said they would be studied but that it seemed doubtful that one could get enough Cuban refugees to do the job. He referred to the special arrangements we have made for a Cuban brigade but indicated that relatively few Cubans had volunteered to serve. The President concluded the conversation by asking the Ambassador to convey his appreciation to President [Typeset Page 320] Ydigoras for the proposals made and said a reply would be forthcoming soon.

  1. Unrest in Guatemala and concern over Castro threat. Confidential. 2 pp. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Guatemala, September–December 1962.↩