21 Facts About Jorge Ubico

Jorge Ubico Castaneda, nicknamed Number Five or Central America's Napoleon, was a Guatemalan dictator.

Jorge Ubico continued his predecessors' policies of giving massive concessions to the United Fruit Company and wealthy landowners, as well as supporting their harsh labor practices.

Jorge Ubico was removed by a pro-democracy uprising in 1944, which led to the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution.

Jorge Ubico was the son of Arturo Ubico Urruela, a lawyer and politician of the Guatemalan Liberal Party.

Jorge Ubico Urruela was a member of the legislature that wrote the Guatemalan Constitution of 1879, and was the president of the Guatemalan Congress during the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera.

Jorge Ubico was privately tutored, and attended some of Guatemala's most prestigious schools, as well as receiving further education in the United States and Europe.

Jorge Ubico rapidly established himself in the army and rose through the ranks, and, after a military campaign against El Salvador, held the rank of colonel at the age of 28.

Jorge Ubico returned to Guatemala City in 1921 to participate in a coup that installed General Jose Orellana into the presidency, after the sitting president Carlos Herrera y Luna refused to ratify the concessions that Estrada Cabrera had made to the United Fruit Company.

In 1926, after the death of President Orellana, Jorge Ubico ran unsuccessfully for president as the candidate of the Political Progressive Party.

Jorge Ubico temporarily retired to his farm until the next election.

Jorge Ubico frequently traveled around the country performing "inspections" in dress uniform followed by a military escort, a mobile radio station, an official biographer, and cabinet members.

Jorge Ubico considered Guatemala to be the closest ally of the United States in Central America.

Jorge Ubico admired Napoleon Bonaparte extravagantly and preferred to have his photograph taken in his general's uniform.

Jorge Ubico dressed ostentatiously and surrounded himself with statues and paintings of Napoleon, regularly commenting on the similarities between their appearances.

In early September 1934, when Jorge Ubico announced a popular referendum to determine whether he should extend his presidential term for another six years, the lawyer Efrain Aguilar Fuentes, the Property Registry director, sternly declined to be in favor of the president.

When Jorge Ubico summoned him to the presidential office to chastise him, Fuentes coldly replied he was aware Police Chief Anzueto Valencia had embezzled up to twenty eight properties and therefore he, Aguilar, was not going to support the president.

Jorge Ubico remained in the National Penitenciary for most of the rest of Ubico's presidency.

Ponce, who had previously retired from military service due to alcoholism, took orders from Jorge Ubico and kept many of the officials who had worked in the Jorge Ubico administration.

Jorge Ubico had fired Arbenz from his teaching post at the Escuela Politecnica, and since then Arbenz had been in El Salvador organizing a band of revolutionary exiles.

Arbenz, Arana, and a lawyer named Jorge Ubico Toriello established a junta which held democratic elections before the end of the year, and were won by a professor named Juan Jose Arevalo.

Jorge Ubico went into exile to New Orleans in the United States and died of lung cancer on 14 June 1946.