The presidency of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz faces crushing pressure from a U.S.-sponsored plot to replace his administration with one more favorable to U.S. interests. On June 27, Arbenz's controversial resignation marks the end of Guatemala's "Ten Years of Spring."
The period began with the "October Revolution" in 1944, when the 14-year dictator, Lieutenant General Jorge Ubico was ousted from his presidency; the protests by students and workers against his harsh repression of the labor movement had finally reached a critical mass and triggered a reformist military coup on the night of October 20. In the aftermath, Guatemala saw its first legitimately elected leader. Juan Jose Arevalo, take power. Arevalo proceeded to put an end to Ubico's repression by Secret Police and to revoke the unfair labor laws that bound the rural peasantry to the land essentially as indentured servants. As the conservatives fretted over his "socialist tendencies" Arevalo permitted the labor movement to flourish, including the right to form unions and the right to strike.
The Revolution's turning point came with the election of Jacobo Arbenz. After the country's first smooth transition from one elected leader to another, Arbenz set out to break the control U.S. monopolies held over the Guatemalan economy. The main object of his offensive was the United Fruit Company. The fruit-grower held 550,000 acres of Guatemalan land, only 15% of which was actively being cultivated. When Arbenz passed a law distributing all idle land, even privately owned, among the rural peasants, United Fruit had a lot more at stake than the monetary compensation they were offered. And Arbenz was clearly testing the will of the United States.
The United Fruit company had strong ties to the Eisenhower administration, including a major shareholder in the U.N. Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge. They took advantage of the anti-Communist fervor of the time, and convinced the administration that Guatemala was a critical test to keep Communism out of the western hemisphere. The CIA took the extraordinary step of commandeering a Guatemalan radio channel and broadcasting reports intended to convince the Guatemalan people that their own government had betrayed them and were in fact Communists. The reports escalated to the point of inventing military skirmishes and exaggerating the numbers of "Liberation Army" troops prepared to march on the capital and save Guatemala.; in fact, the CIA was training a ragged assemblage of mercenary troops just over the Honduran border. CIA planes conducted air raids, bombing strategic targets and whipping he people into a fearful frenzy.
When Arbenz's own small airforce would not take to the skies to combat the attack, he admitted defeat and chose to resign. His successor, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, was flown back to Guatemala from abroad on the private jet of U.S. Ambassador Peurifoy, and Arbenz was allowed to leave to exile. With no real power-base at home, Armas reverted to use of cruel force to wield control of the fervid social unrest, disbanding labor unions and peasant leagues, and killing or arresting thousands of opponents to his rule. The social progress made during the preceding ten years was essentially erased.
The events of 1954 and the alternating interference and indifference set the stage for the decades to follow: the guerrilla movements of the 60's, the civil wars of the 70's and the mass killings of the 80's marked the painful and tumultuous recent history of Guatemala.