Talk:Jacobo Árbenz/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Coemgenus (talk · contribs) 21:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll review this one over the next few days. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Checklist

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Comments

Images

All appropriately licenced.

Stability

No edit wars, all good.

Sources

All look to be of encyclopedic quality. I can't read the Spanish sources, but I actually read Gleijeses and Smith years ago and found them to be good and reliable.

Lede

"...using the military to brutally suppress agrarian laborers..." Couple tweaks here. It's unclear what activity is being suppressed. Were workers demonstrating or demanding fair elections or some other right that the government was denying them? I'd also drop "brutally," which is fairly subjective (even if likely accurate) and substitute something more objective like "violently" or something.

Fair point. What was actually happening here was Ubico using the army to make people perform forced labor, especially dissidents, a process which the sources have referred to as repression. The repression -> suppression is probably my mistake. He also used unpaid labor (essentially slavery, except it wasn't for life) to build public infrastructure, and allowed the security forces great leeway in shooting people suspected of breaking labor laws (which required them to perform said forced labor). You're right that "violent" is better than "brutal". How about "...where he witnessed the violent repression of agrarian laborers..."

That would be fine.

"...an experience that profoundly radicalized him." Again, the adverb is a bit POV. "Radicalized" by itself still expresses a fairly profound change, doesn't it?

True: removed "profoundly".

"...rebelled against Ubico's repressive policies." It might be more direct to say they rebelled against Ubico.

Actually this is more complicated. Ubico was ousted in June by a popular protest: Arbenz and the others rebelled against Ubico's successor Ponce Vaides continuing Ubico's policies rather than holding elections as promised. The phrasing might still be sub optimal, perhaps you have some suggestions?

That may be the best we can do, in that case. Maybe leave it as is.

Just as a stylistic matter, "poverty-stricken agricultural laborers" sounds like a roundabout way of saying "poor farm workers". I've found that the more common words get the point across better, but certainly reasonable minds may differ.

In general I would agree with you. Here's my issue in this particular context: I avoid "poor" because it is also frequently used as an expression of sympathy: and I avoided "farm" because actually these were plantations, often very large, which are not referred to as farms by the sources and not the same as most folks' idea of what constitutes a farm.

OK, it's up to you.

"Árbenz went into a painful exile..." "Painful" seems out of place here, and the next sentence gets the point across anyway just by telling how his life turned out.

Point taken: removed "painful."

Military career and marriage

A lot of the sentences here start with "In 19xx, ..." Some variety would improve the prose.

Tweaked a couple of uses

October revolution

"Árbenz was the one to insist that civilians also be included in the coup" might be better as "Árbenz insisted that civilians also be included in the coup"

Yes, done.

Land reform

"The value of the land itself was the value that the owners had declared in their tax returns in 1952." Oh, that's clever. But did any of the landowners complain that the valuation was unjust?

Yes indeed, there were howls of protest. However, Gleijeses also says that the owners routinely grossly undervalued their property. I was trying to avoid excessive detail, and I saw these two pieces of information, which are in a sense "anti-" and "pro-" Decree 900, as sort of counteracting each other: so I left them both out.

Right, that's what's clever about using tax valuation. The government knew the owners would have undervalued it for tax purposes and just used their own words against them. If you want to leave it as it is, that's fine.

"In 1953, the reform was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but the democratically elected Congress later impeached four judges associated with the ruling." How had the Supreme Court been chosen? Were they holdovers of the old regime? And is it necessary to say "democratically elected" when describing the Congress since you already stated earlier that the elections were free and fair?

I've removed the "democratically elected," since you were right about it being redundant. The issue is actually rather muddy, though: there isn't information that I know of about how the supreme court was constituted: but I do know that a) the decisions were split decisions, and b) what was found to be unconstitutional was some obscure provision related to a lack of judicial review, and the law was suspended pending an investigation that a lower court had ordered...all which is rather too complicated for Arbenz bio, methinks.

Relationship with the United Fruit Company

"Árbenz chose to support a strike" would be better as "Árbenz supported a strike". That brings the focus of the sentence onto the important part, the support, rather than the decision.

yes, done.

Political motives

"Several figures in his administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother and CIA director Allen Dulles had close ties to the United Fruit Company." Needs a citation.

It's actually the same citation as that at the end of the next sentence, but I've duplicated it just in case.

Operation PBSUCCESS

In the section above, you write "The United States had refused to sell arms to the Guatemalan government after 1944; in 1951 it began to block weapons purchases by Guatemala from other countries." In this section, you seem to contradict that: "The US stopped selling arms to Guatemala in 1951, and soon after blocked arms purchases from Canada, Germany, and Rhodesia." Whichever one is correct should stay and delete the other--no need to say it twice.

Huh, totally missed this before, somehow. This is down to a discrepency in the sources, and in general Immerman is to be relied upon over the more popular volume: so I've removed the first instance.

"18 June 1954" this is a different format than you've used in the article up until now. There are other such dates in this section, as well.

Applied a script fix.

Beginning of exile

"Perhaps the fate of the ousted president would have been different if his country of origin had allowed him in exile: it would also have been the first major political asylum in Latin America character in Switzerland." Not sure what you mean here. Isn't Guatemala his country of origin? Either way, the sentences are speculative and don't add much to the article.
"However, Árbenz and his family were instead the victims of a CIA-orchestrated and intense defamation campaign that lasted from 1954 to 1960, after the Cuban revolution had triumphed in 1959." When did it begin, 1954 or 1959?
Honestly, everything from "Perhaps the fate..." to the end of the paragraph has a markedly different tone than the rest of the article. Less precise and less NPOV.

I do believe a lot of that text is a holdover from before when I rewrote this article. Mea culpa, I have removed the stuff not supported by Garcia Ferreira.

That's all I have. I'll place this on hold so you'll have time to tend to these. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Coemgenus I've addressed all your points, I do believe: I've implemented all of them except three, which I've responded to above. Regards, Vanamonde (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Vanamonde93 that all looks fine, so I'm happy to promote. Thanks for your hard work on this fine article about a controversial figure. --Coemgenus (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for a thorough and helpful review. Vanamonde (talk) 03:24, 25 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]