Guatemala 1954: How the U.S. and the CIA Overthrew a Country to Save an American Fruit Company

In 1954, the United States government and the CIA overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president — not because he threatened American security, but because he threatened an American fruit company's profits. President Jacobo Árbenz tried to redistribute unused land back to starving peasants. The United Fruit Company, which controlled 42% of Guatemala's land and left 85% of it idle, called it communism. The Secretary of State and the CIA Director — both former lawyers and board members of that same company — agreed. What followed was Operation PBSuccess: a covert campaign of psychological warfare, fake radio broadcasts, bought priests, bribed officers, and a ragtag rebel army of 480 men that toppled a democracy in nine days. The coup reversed every reform, returned the land to the corporation, and set off a 36-year civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people. This is the full story of how bananas, Cold War paranoia, and corporate greed destroyed a nation.

Sources and further reading:

"Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala" — Stephen Schlesinger & Stephen Kinzer
"Operation PBSUCCESS" — CIA Historical Review Program (declassified)
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Guatemala (Office of the Historian)
"Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States" — Piero Gleijeses
Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) — Guatemala: Memory of Silence (UN Truth Commission Report)

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