On June 27, 1954, the CIA's $2.7 million Operation Sherwood culminated in the resignation of Guatemala's President Arbenz. Arbenz was elected in 1950 to continue, as the CIA put it, "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" Among other social reforms, Arbenz nationalized the American-based United Fruit Company. Both Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother CIA director Allen Dulles were heavily invested in UF. With Dwight Eisenhower's approval and the help of Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza, the CIA succeeded in replacing Arbenz with Guatemalan military general Castillo Armas. This was the beginning of more than four decades of tyrannical military rulers in Guatemala, all closely tied to the United States government. In all, more than 200,000 Guatemalans have been killed or have "disappeared." Forensic scientists are still discovering mass graves.
"A Coup: Made In America". Written by Alan Mendelsohn and Nadine Pequeneza, aired on Canadian television's series "Turning Points of History" in 2001- "A Coup: Made In America" (Barna-Alper) is a documentary made about the CIA's involvement in the downfall of Jacobo Arbenz's government in Guatemala in 1954. The intervention of the CIA in Guatemala led to the 36 year civil war from 60-96.
Esta serie de videoclips muestra la intervencion de la CIA en Guatemala para derrocar al gobierno democratico de Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. La intervencion de EE. UU en Guatemala dio lugar al Golpe de Estado de 1954 y el comienzo de la guerra civil de Guatemala desde 1960-1996, cuando "se firma la paz".
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Tutankhamuns Tomb. Video hosted on Youtube. At the end of May, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified 1,400 pages of reports on the 1954 coup it engineered in Guatemala to remove president Jacobo Arbenz from office. Arbenz became a target of U.S. imperialism for threatening to carry out modest land reforms against the interests of produce giant, United Fruit Company. In 1952, U.S. president Harry Truman gave the secret police approval to begin shipping guns and money to opposition forces and training mercenaries. The released documents show that CIA cops trained assassins to kill 58 people put on a "disposal list." They include a 22-page how-to manual on murder. Secret intelligence officials claim none of the missions were carried out. The list of CIA targets were also subjected to "nerve war," which included death threats, phone calls "preferably between 2 and 5 A.M.," frame-ups, and other forms of intimidation. Less than 1 percent of the CIA files on the Guatemala coup were included in the declassification, with many details blacked out. A dictatorship led by General Jorge Ubico was overthrown in 1944 by a group of dissident military officers, students, and professionals. Juan Jose Arevalo, a civilian, was popularly elected in democratic elections, became president in 1945 and began an extensive program of liberal social reforms. These reforms were continued by his successor, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz, who took office in 1951 and also legalized the communist Guatemalan Labor Party. The Labor Party began to control labor unions, peasant organizations, and the governing political party. American firms in Guatemala such as the United Fruit Company became increasingly discontent with the Guatemalan government, especially after the Arbenz government passed a law expropriating large estates, a law which greatly affected the United Fruit Company's plantations. The United States itself also began to fear the increasingly communist nature of the Arbenz government and coupled with pressure from the United Fruit Company and other firms, the CIA supported a coup that invaded Guatemala from Honduras and quickly took control of the government, installing military dictator Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. The coup and the resulting regime began an almost 50-year period of military dictators, fraudulent elections, and civil wars that claimed 200,000 lives, many of them civilians.
While it is a commonly accepted fact that the CIA was instrumental in the planning and the execution of the coup, it is unclear as to exactly how much involvement the CIA had in the coup. The operation, dubbed Operation PBSUCCESS, broadcast propaganda from Honduras on "Liberation Radio," distributed arms, and helped Armas plan and stage his coup. Some have also speculated that the CIA was also responsible for the military's failure to stop the advancing troops. Recently declassified documents from the CIA's archives have shed some light on the matter. They show that the Arevalo and Arbenz governments had long been a source of discontent for the US, with one memoranda referring to Arbenz's reforms as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" There was an earlier attempt to overthrow the Guatemalan government under the Truman administration in 1952, which of course was not successful. There was also a list made that compiled the leaders and individuals that were to be assassinated or neutralized.
The legacy of the coup has been the source of considerable debate in both Guatemala and America. For many people in both countries, the coup epitomizes the CIA's and America's tactic of overthrowing unfriendly, if democratic regimes, in favor of regimes that were friendly, if dictatorial. There also those (both Americans and Guatemalans) who are unapologetic about the coup, believing that communism was a serious threat and that the policies of Arbenz was bringing Guatemala closer to the communist fold. While Guatemala did not pose a direct strategic threat to the United States, there were concerns that it would establish a communist beachhead in America's own backyard (one has to remember that the Arbenz government predated that of Castro's Cuba by about four years).
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala. Arbenz's government put forth a number of new policies that the U.S. intelligence community deemed Communist in nature and, suspecting Soviet influence, fueled a fear of Guatemala becoming what Allen Dulles described as a "Soviet beachhead in the western hemisphere". Dulles' concern reverberated within the CIA and the Eisenhower administration, in the context of the anti-Communist fears of the McCarthyist era. Arbenz instigated sweeping land reform acts that antagonized the U.S.-based multinational company United Fruit Company, which had large stakes in the old order of Guatemala and lobbied various levels of U.S. to take action against Arbenz. The operation, which lasted from late 1953 to 1954, planned to arm and train an ad-hoc "Liberation Army" of about 400 fighters under the command of a then-exiled Guatemalan army officer, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, and to use them in conjunction with a complex and largely experimental diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaign. The operation was preceded by a plan, never fully implemented, as early as 1951, to supply anti-Arbenz forces with weapons, supplies, and funding, Operation PBFORTUNE. Afterwards there was an operation, Operation PBHISTORY, whose objective was to gather and analyze documents from the Arbenz government that would incriminate Arbenz as a Communist puppet.The operation name, PBSUCCESS, is a cryptonym, otherwise known as a codename. Each CIA cryptonym contains a two character prefix called a digraph, which designates a geographical or functional area. In this case, PB stands for "Presidential Board" and with the words that followed, SUCCESS and FORTUNE, simply being indicative of the general optimism and confidence amongst its planners at the CIA at the time. This varied from the normal CIA practice of choosing arbitrary or deliberately misleading words to complete a cryptonym.
Under the regime of General Jorge Ubico, and Ubico's predecessor Manuel José Estrada Cabrera, Guatemala was widely opened up to foreign investment, with special favors being made from Ubico to the United Fruit Company (UFC) in particular. The UFC responded by pouring investment capital into the country, buying controlling shares of the railroad, electric utility, and telegraph, while also winning control over the majority of the country's best land and de facto control over its only Atlantic port facilities. As a result, the Guatemalan government was often subservient to the UFC's interests. In the "October Revolution" of 1944 General Jorge Ubico was overthrown. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo was elected. A new constitution allowed for the possibility of expropriating land. This, as well as Arévalo philosophy of "spiritual socialism", alarmed Guatemala's landed elite who began to accuse Arévalo of supporting Communism. In 1947 he signed a labor protection law that implicitly targeted the UFC. The American Embassy in Guatemala sent alarming messages that Arévalo was allowing Communists to organize and had reputedly provided known Communists with support. Arévalo supported the Caribbean Legion, a group of ostensibly reformist Latin Americans who plotted to overthrow dictatorships in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. A 1949 CIA analysis described it as a "destabilizing force." Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who as an army Captain had played an important role in the "October Revolution" of 1944, won 65% of the vote in the 1950 election. In the U.S. McCarthyism caused intense anti-Communist suspicions.
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