Arabella Árbenz

Arabella Árbenz Vilanova
Born	Arabella Árbenz Vilanova (1940-01-15)January 15, 1940 San Salvador,  El Salvador
Died	October 5, 1965(1965-10-05) (aged 25) Bogotá, Colombia
Cause of death	suicide
Occupation	fashion model, actress
Religion	Christianity
Parent(s)	Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán María Cristina Vilanova Castro

Arabella Árbenz Vilanova (January 15, 1940 in San Salvador, El Salvador – October 5, 1965 in Bogotá, Colombia) was a Guatemalan fashion model and actress, and the daughter of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzman. After being sent to Canada to study in a boarding school, she joined her family in exile after her father was ousted from power in June 1954. She suffered along with her family the difficult conditions of their exile, until she decided to remain in Paris to become a fashion model. After an intense love life and drug abuse, she killed herself in front of her last lover, Mexican bullfighter Jaime Bravo, in Colombia.

Biography

Árbenz Vilanova was born in San Salvador, daughter of Captain Jacobo Árbenz and María Cristina Vilanova. Her father was active politically and was involved in the ousting of president general Jorge Ubico in 1944; he then became the Guatemalan Minister of Defense in 1945, an office that he would hold until he became Guatemalan President in 1951.

When her father became president, Árbenz Vilanova, being a beautiful girl, became the typical spoiled child of a public figure . The well known Guatemalan journalist Jorge Palmieri -who later would become her lover- described her as follows:^[1]

President Árbenz asked me one day to take his three children to his mother's house, Octavia Guzmán de Árbenz. Of course, being a youngster, I replied that I would be readily available to do so. But it took me longer than expected to get to the car, which was parked in front of the Official Residency and where the three children we already inside. Arabella kept sounding the claxon and when I got there, she said: If you are not going to take us to our Grandma's immediately, I am going to tell Daddy to get us a new chauffeur right away! I took offense and replied angrily: "Look, you (expletive) spoiled little brat, I am not a chauffeur! But being the presidential family, I drove them to their grandmother's house.

That very afternoon, I was called to the presidential office and when I arrived there, Arbenz told me seriously: Little Arabella complained to me that you insulted her this morning!. I frankly replied: I called her (expletive) little brat because she spoke to me as if I were her chauffeur. Árbenz was not used to smile, but that time he smiled and said: You are right, boy! Little Arabella is a (expletive) little brat, but do not forget that she is the beloved daughter of the President of the Republic and do not call her that ever again.

— Jorge Palmieri^[1]

Family humiliation and exile

After resigning due to the coup organized by the United Fruit Company and the Department of State of the United States, the Árbenz Vilanova family remained for 73 days at the Mexican embassy in Guatemala, which was crowded with almost 300 exiles.^[2] When they were finally allowed to leave the country, Jacobo Arbenz was publicly humiliated at the airport because the liberationist authorities made the former president strip before the cameras claiming that he was carrying jewelry he had bought for his wife María Cristina Vilanova at Tiffany's in New York City, using funds from the presidency; no jewelry was found but the interrogation lasted for an hour^[3] The Arbenz family then initiated a long pilgrimage in exile that would take them first to México, then to Canada, where they went to pick Arabella, and then to Switzerland, via the Netherlands.^[4] Jacobo Arbenz completed the forms required by the Swiss government, but the Swiss authorities asked him for the renunciation of his Guatemalan nationality, to prevent the ousted president drove from Switzerland his resistance. The ousted president did not accept this requirement, as he felt that such gesture would have marked the end of his political career. Furthermore, he could not benefit from political asylum, because Switzerland had not yet ratified the 1951 Agreement of the newly created United Nations Refugees Convention, which was designed to protect people fleeing from communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the fate of the ousted president would have been different if his country of origin would have allowed him in exile: it would also have been the first major political asylum in Latin America character in Switzerland.^[5] However, Árbenz and his family were instead the victims of a CIA-orchestrated and intense defamation campaign that lasted from 1954 to 1960, and only receded when the Cuban revolution triumphed in 1959,^[6] and that included a close friend of Árbenz, who turned out to be a double agent working for the CIA: Carlos Manuel Pellecer.^[7]

Seeking shelter

After gotten rejected in Switzerland, the Árbenz moved to Paris, France and then to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak officials were uncomfortable with his stay, unsure if he would demand the government to repay him for the poor quality of former arms from the Second World War that they had sold him in 1954. After only three months, he moved, this time to Moscow, which was a relief from the harsh treatment he got in Czechoslovakia.^[8] He tried several times to return to Latin America, and was finally allowed to move to Uruguay in 1957<^[9] (Arbenz joined the Communist Party in that year),^[10] living in Montevideo from 1957 to 1960. Uruguay had lived with intensity and optimism throughout the Guatemalan revolutionary process, and attended helplessly at the end of the Arbenz government. For this and for being a hospitable country, it received and hold for a while the two former presidents of the so-called Guatemalan Democratic Spring. Arévalo arrived at Montevideo on several occasions before, establishing himself there between 1958 and early the following year, when he accepted a university position in Venezuela; he enjoyed some freedom and could express himself through newspaper articles.^[11] On the other hand, Arbenz and his family, who arrived in mid-1957, had a very different experience: his friendship with the communists, especially with José Manuel Fortuny, and forced passage through Czechoslovakia, the USSR and China, aroused suspicions.^[12] When the National Party took power in Uruguay in late 1958, the situation worsened for Arbenz, who eventually went to Cuba.

In 1960, after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro asked Árbenz to come to Cuba, a suggestion that Árbenz Guzmán readily agreed to.

Independent life

When the Arbenz family arrived in Moscow, Soviet Union they sent Arabella to a boarding school, where she led a rebellion of Latin American students against the rigidness of the institution. She was severely chastised by her parents, who were ashamed of her rebellious behavior.^[1] Arbenz Vilanova was an intelligent and beautiful woman who fluently spoke Spanish, English, Italian, French and Russian, and with a strong and difficult personality; she decided not to accompany her father to live in exile in Cuba at the invitation of Fidel Castro and preferred to stay in Paris studying acting and working as a model. Her life in exile had been hard and bitter: she saw how her father descended into alcoholism, how her mother cheated on her father during the latter's alcoholic stupor, and even suffered physical abuse from a so-called friend of her father. She began using LSD and marijuana and had intense relationships with both men and women. After leaving Paris for Mexico, she had torrid romances with Guatemalan journalist Jorge Palmieri and with the future owner of Televisa, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, who helped her begin her acting career;^[1] she would go on to appear in an experimental film called Un alma pura (A pure soul).^[13]

Death

Shortly after, her LSD abuse began affecting her behavior and Azcarraga disowned her, getting the government to expel her from Mexico in October 1965. Arabella met the Mexican bullfighter Jaime Bravo Arciga, who at that time was at his best moment as a bullfighting figure and was to start a tour of South America; Arabella took advantage of this and fled with him to Colombia. While in Bogotá on October 5, 1965, Arabella tried to convince Bravo Arciga not to continue working as bullfighter, fearing for his life: after an afternoon where Bravo Arciga had been gored he went to a luxurious gentlemen's club in the Colombian capital. Arabella phoned the place pleading to talk to Bravo Arciga, but he ignored her, as he was totally inebriated and in a foul mood after the incident with the bull. She finally came to the place, went to the darkest corner and shot herself. Bravo Arciga was notified of the tragedy and his entourage took care of her body.^[14]

Arabella's death was a huge blow to both the bullfighter and Jacobo Arbenz: both would die within five years of her death.^[1]

Bravo Arciga contacted Jorge Palmieri via telephone to Mexico, and asked him to take charge of the funeral. Palmieri, who had strong influence in the Mexican government at the time, got to be allowed to bury Arabella in the Pantheon of the National Association of Actors of Mexico, since she had worked in an experimental film a few months earlier. Palmieri also pulled strings to allow Arbenz, his wife and his children James and Leonora to go to Mexico to be present at the funeral.^[1]

Settlement with the Guatemalan Government

In 2011, with a written agreement, the Guatemalan State recognized its international responsibility for "failing to comply with its obligation to guarantee, respect, and protect the human rights of the victims to a fair trial, to property, to equal protection before the law, and to judicial protection, which are protected in the American Convention on Human Rights and which were violated against former President Juan Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, his wife, María Cristina Vilanova, and his children, Juan Jacobo, María Leonora, and Arabella, all surnamed Arbenz Villanova."^[15]

References

Bibliography

External links

• Arabella Arbenz at the Internet Movie Database

Notes