Operation PBSUCCESS
| 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état | ||||||||
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
 Guatemalan Government
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Military of Guatemala
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| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
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Jacobo Árbenz Carlos Enrique Díaz |
Carlos Castillo Armas Dwight D. Eisenhower Allen Dulles |
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Guatemalan exile rebels Supported by:
United States
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–54. Code-named Operation PBSUCCESS, it installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.
The Guatemalan Revolution began in 1944, when a popular uprising toppled the authoritarian Jorge Ubico and brought Juan José Arévalo to power via Guatemala's first democratic election. The new president introduced a minimum wage and near-universal suffrage, aiming to turn Guatemala into a liberal democracy. Arévalo was succeeded by Árbenz in 1951, who instituted popular land reforms which granted property to landless peasants. The Guatemalan Revolution was disliked by Washington D.C., which was predisposed by the Cold War to see it as communist. This perception grew after Árbenz took power and legalized the communist party. The United Fruit Company (UFC), whose highly profitable business had been affected by the end to exploitative labor practices in Guatemala, also disliked the Revolution, and engaged in an influential lobbying campaign to persuade the U.S. to overthrow the Guatemalan government. U.S. President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFORTUNE to topple Árbenz in 1952; although the operation was quickly aborted, it was a precursor to PBSUCCESS.
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Wikipedia