José María Orellana

Coup d'état against Carlos Herrera

On 5 December 1921, General Orellana - sponsored by the United Fruit Company - lead a coup d'état against president Carlos Herrera who had resisted approval of the concessions granted to the United Fruit Company and its subsidiaries by his predecessor, Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Orellana had the help of several army officers, among them general Jorge Ubico.

Presidency

On 5 December 1921, Orellana was appointed as Interim President, and eventually became Constitutional President after winning the elections the following year. During his term in office, he ratified concessions that the government of Estrada Cabrera had made to the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and that Herrera had refused to ratify. He also encouraged the creation of a tripartite republic formed by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but this was unsuccessful. In 1923, in celebration of the birth centennial of liberal writer and ideologist Dr. Lorenzo Montúfar y Rivera, the government erected a monument to his memory in Avenida Reforma.

Economy

Gum raw material extraction in the northern department of Petén was sold to Percy W. Shufeldt, who carried out the operation without paying taxes; unlike his predecessor—Carlos Herrera—Orellana gave favorable contracts such as the Shufeldt one to foreign companies. Another examples was the Electric Company, which had been expropriated from German shareholders after World War I, and was sold to the American Bond and Share Company on 4 May 1922.

Orellana promoted the construction of hundreds of kilometers of railways and was pressured by the International Railways of Central America to enforce the Méndez-Williamson railroad contract, signed in 1908 by then president Manuel Estrada Cabrera. When Estrada Cabrera was ousted, IRCA had intended to enact this agreement but the acting president Carlos Herrera refused to implement the contract; after Herrera was overthrown, Orellana ratified the contract on 10 March 1922.

The Guatemalan Congress issued the following laws during his term in office:

• Ratified the Central American Union Covenant held in San Jose, Costa Rica.
• Approved the contract for light, heat and electric power services, held in Guatemala City between government representatives and the Central America Power Company.
• Hydrocarbons law
• Ratified executive Decree 798, by which Archbishop Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón remained in exile.
• Approved the contract between the government and Emilio Capoulliez, proxy for Washington Serruys, for the installation of an electric tram.
• Approved the contract between the Ministry of Development and the All America Cables Incorporated company to build a public telegram office in Guatemala City
• Approved the contract with AEG from Berlin, Germany, to continue and complete the Los Altos Railway and the Santa María power plant.
• Approved oil exploration contracts with US companies.
• Work Act
• Endorsed and encourage a national soap industry development.

The United Fruit Company

1. Dockworkers strike: In mid-1924, Puerto Barrios workers -key to banana transport- demanded an 8-hour day and increased wages. When UFCO refused to accept, workers went on strike, with the support from all workers in the farms of the frutera. UFCO asked the Guatemalan government for help, and Orellana quickly sent troops to restore order in Puerto Barrios; the collision was brutal and resulted in numerous workers injured or dead. The strike lasted 27 days, but repression tactics finished it: 22 leaders were jailed and then expelled from the country.
2. Railroad strike: In late 1924, the employees of International Railways of Central America (IRCA) demanded the reduction of working hours, higher wages and respect to their labor union. Railway Society. Again, the frutera flatly refused to accept these demands and ordered Orellana's government to violently repress the strike of five thousand workers.

Education

Following the fall of the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, Guatemala had a literacy rate of only 7 percent, educational coverage was very limited, and the proportion of untrained teachers was very high. As a result, educational reform became a priority, particularly among the indigenous population, which was widely perceived as illiterate. The educational project was based on the principle of desanalfabetización ("de-illiterization"), that is, the elimination of illiteracy. The term emphasized not merely teaching reading and writing but the eradication of illiteracy itself. Alongside this objective, the government sought to raise educational standards and strengthen civic instruction.

Given the large number of untrained teachers, the government organized several competitions to select the most promising teacher-training graduates and award them scholarships to continue their studies abroad. The intention was that they would return as professionally trained educators capable of training future teachers. The most significant outcome of this policy was the education of Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, who traveled to Argentina on one of these scholarships and later implemented many of the most important educational reforms in Guatemala during his presidency from 1945 to 1951.

Orellana facilitated the inauguration of the Society of Geography and History of Guatemala by granting it legal recognition. General Lázaro Chacón donated a lot located at 3a. avenida, 8–35, zona 1, where the society has remained ever since.

Popular University

Based on the principles of eliminating illiteracy, raising educational standards, and strengthening civic instruction that had been advanced during the government of Carlos Herrera y Luna, the Popular University was established in 1922, from which the educational project was strengthened and expanded. The original idea came from the Colombian poet Porfirio Barba Jacob. The institution was founded on 20 August 1922 by a group of intellectuals belonging to the so-called Generation of 1920, including Epaminondas Quintana, David Vela, Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Carlos Fletes Sáenz.

The founding objectives of the Popular University focused on three central aspects of the educational problem:

1. Teaching literacy.
2. Providing general knowledge to social groups that, owing to circumstance, had been unable to acquire it.
3. Disseminating basic concepts of hygiene, civic education, and morality among the population in order to improve the physical and spiritual conditions of the masses.

Student criticism and closure of the National University

In 1921, the traditions of publishing the student newspaper No Nos Tientes and holding the Desfile Bufo (the satirical parade of the Huelga de Dolores organized by students of the National University) were revived. At the beginning of Orellana's administration, the publication of No Nos Tientes and the parade were tolerated. Owing to their active participation in the overthrow of Estrada Cabrera as members of the Unionist Party movement, the government of Carlos Herrera had authorized them to use the former Manuel Cabral girls' school free of charge for meetings.

The activities were organized by students from the three academic faculties that existed at the time—Law, Medicine, and Pharmacy—whose leaders included David Vela, Epaminondas Quintana, Alfonso Orantes, José Luis Balcárcel, Joaquín Barnoya, Clemente Marroquín Rojas, and Miguel Ángel Asturias, among others.

However, following continued student protests against what they viewed as the government's submissive policies toward foreign interests, Orellana closed the National University. It would not reopen until September 1929, during the administration of Lázaro Chacón.

Cultural references

• Rafael Arevalo Martinez talks about Orellana in numerous occasions in his biography of Estrada Cabrera ¡Ecce Pericles!.
• Orellana is also mentioned, though not by name, in the Guatemalan novels El Señor Presidente, Viernes de Dolores and Viento Fuerte of Nobel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias. In Viernes de Dolores, Asturias calls Orellana by his nickname: Rapadurero.
• Given that during his rule the Quetzal was instituted as the Guatemalan currency, his image appears on the one quetzal bills, which are colloquially called "chemas".
• His cousin, general Manuel María Contreras Orellana later would lead a coup against interim president Baudilio Palma in December 1930.

Death

On 25 May 1926, El Imparcial – a private newspaper – had published a news flash: Martial law enacted which referred to executive decree 916, in which President Orellana had suspended the individual guarantees contained in the Constitution; the main reason for such decision was that "insidious and unpatriotic activities of certain elements" tended "to disrupt the peace and development of the country", which, at once, made it impossible to solve the national economic problem. Although El Imparcial was not circulating regularly in the previous days -due to a government boycott-, after 26 May it ceased publication indefinitely. Thereafter, only the official news outlets, such as Diario de Centro América and El Guatemalteco, could circulate, carrying irrelevant information. The story took a sudden turn on Sunday 26 September when, at 0:15 pm, Orellana died during a vacation trip to Antigua Guatemala; he was in a room at Hotel Manchén. "A violent angina attack ended the life of our illustrious president," explained Diario de Centro America in a special edition that day. These strange circumstances led to the suspicion that he was poisoned. General Lázaro Chacón assumed as interim President and immediately lifted Martial Law and allowed private newspaper to be published again.