Decree 900

Decree 900 (Spanish: Decreto 900), also called the Agrarian Reform Law, was a Guatemalan land reform law passed on June 17, 1952, during the Guatemalan Revolution. The law was introduced by President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán and passed by the Guatemalan Congress. It redistributed unused lands of sizes greater than 224 acres (0.902 km²) to local peasants, compensating landowners with government bonds. Land from at most 1,700 estates was redistributed to about 500,000 families—one sixth of the country's population. The goal of the legislation was to move Guatemala's economy from feudalism into capitalism. Although in force for only eighteen months, the law had a major effect on the Guatemalan land reform movement.

Indigenous groups, deprived of land since the Spanish conquest, were major beneficiaries of the decree. In addition to raising agricultural output by increasing the cultivation of land, the reform is credited with helping many Guatemalans find dignity and autonomy. Decree 900 did create some conflicts in practice, but these were not major, and the law is described as one of the most potentially successful land reforms in history. However, redistribution angered major landowners—including the United Fruit Company—and the United States, which construed Guatemala's land reform as a communist threat. Decree 900 was thus a direct impetus for the 1954 coup d'état which deposed Árbenz and instigated decades of Civil War.

When Árbenz was elected in 1951, Guatemala had a high GDP but extremely unequal distribution of land: 2% of the population controlled 72% of the arable land. Only 12% of this land was under cultivation. Much of the population without land was poor, and had associated health problems. Indigenous people had been treated as subordinate for hundreds of years, and had become increasingly impoverished and dependent on wages from plantation work. Indigenous people were also required to serve as migrant laborers through legal coercion, as Guatemala's coffee industry expanded rapidly from the 1870s through the 1930s.

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