1941: Guatemala

The Constitutional Assembly, on Sept. 12, 1941, approved a third term for President Jorge Ubico without the necessity of an election. According to this latest example of continuismo, President Ubico will now hold office until 1949. In June it was reported that the Liberal Progressive party which put him in power (a euphemistic name in view of the dictatorial nature of the Government) had received a request from the 'workers' front' for permission to put Ubico forward as candidate when his term should expire in 1943.

Like all the Central American republics, Guatemala declared war against the Axis Powers in December. The serious credit consequences of this act, which blocks transactions with the nationals of those powers, have been pointed out in Guatemala's case, and it has been recommended that this problem be raised at the Rio Conference of Foreign Ministers (See BRAZIL). The United States blacklist of business interests sympathetic to the Axis hits Guatemala especially, since the German colony there is very wealthy and Germans own about 50 per cent of the coffee plantations. In order not to affect Guatemala's coffee trade too seriously, special arrangements were made with the State Department to permit the importation of limited amounts of coffee grown on blacklisted fincas. Under the recent coffee quotas (see BRAZIL) Guatemalan planters will be entitled to sell 75 per cent of their annual output in United States markets. With an allotment of 535,000 bags only a small carry-over from the crop year ended Aug. 31 is expected. The Guatemalan Department of Agriculture was instructed by President Ubico, in April, to take steps to increase the production of staple food crops, for fear of the effect war might have on food imports.