FACTORS IN THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF GUATEMALA.

Any analysis of the natural resources of Guatemala at once suggests an underdeveloped economy. Fertile volcanic soils, extensive hardwood forests, promising mineral deposits and hydroelectric potential may readily be counted as blessings to be turned to good economic account. There are grounds for believing that the revolution of 1944, which brought to power the rough, Latin-American equivalent of a socialist government, may have marked the beginning of a new epoch in the development of Guatemala, although reservations respecting certain innovations. Guatemala possesses the essential prerequisites for a diversified and abundant agriculture in rich soils, a wide variety of climates resulting from the range of altitudes and easily accessible foreign markets. The larger, long-run problem of integrating the population into a single economy calls for a carefully coordinated program, to be undertaken simultaneously with the short-run program, to improve education, health and nutrition as well as methods of production, to find new occupations for the Indian population of the highlands and to prepare its partial resettlement on better lands.