Arabella Árbenz
| Arabella Árbenz | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Arabella Árbenz Vilanova January 15, 1940 San Salvador, El Salvador |
| Died | October 5, 1965 (aged 25) Bogotá, Colombia |
| Cause of death | suicide |
| Occupation | fashion model, actress |
| Parent(s) |
Jacobo Árbenz Maria Cristina Villanova de Árbenz |
Arabella Árbenz Vilanova (January 15, 1940 – October 5, 1965) was a Guatemalan fashion model and actress, and the daughter of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. 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.
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.
As the beautiful daughter of a president, Árbenz Vilanova, grew up in entitled surroundings. The well known Guatemalan journalist -who later would become her lover- described her as follows:
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 this 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 a (expletive) little brat because she spoke to me as if I were her chauffeur. Árbenz was not used to smiling, but this 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.
After resigning due to the coup organized by the United Fruit Company and the United States Department of State, the Árbenz family remained for 73 days at the Mexican embassy in Guatemala, which was crowded with almost 300 exiles. 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 at Tiffany's in New York City, using funds from the presidency; no jewelry was found during the hour-long interrogation. The Arbenz family embarked into exile, going first to México, then to Canada, where they went to pick up Arabella who was attending school there, and then on to Switzerland via the Netherlands. In Switzerland, the Swiss authorities requested that Arbenz renounce his Guatemalan nationality, so as to prevent him from conducting resistance activities. The ousted president refused this request, as he felt that such a gesture would have marked the end of his political career. Furthermore, Arbenz could not seek 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. Árbenz and his family were instead the victims of a CIA-orchestrated defamation campaign that lasted from 1954 to 1960, which only abated when the Cuban revolution triumphed in 1959, and that included a close friend of Árbenz, who turned out to be a double agent working for the CIA: Carlos Manuel Pellecer.
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