Luis Arturo González López (21 December 1900 –11 November 1965) was a Guatemalan attorney and politician who served as the acting President of Guatemala from 27 July 1957 to 24 October 1957. He became president after the assassination of Carlos Castillo Armas,under whom he was designated as first in the presidential line of succession by Congress. [1]
Born in the town of Zacapa,González López studied law,and served as a judge in several cities. [2] He was a member of the Supreme Court for seven years from 1945 to 1951,before being removed:reports stated that he was removed due to pressure from the communist parties. [2] He was appointed Vice-President to Carlos Castillo Armas in 1957. [2] On 26 July 1957,Castillo Armas was assassinated by a member of the presidential guard in the presidential palace in Guatemala City. [3] [4] González López held the position of "First Presidential Designate",and was sworn in as interim president in Congress on 27 July by means of decree 1191,a document which conditioned him to call elections. [5] [1]
Supporters of Castillo Armas were considering forming a military junta and seizing power,but were dissuaded by Edwin J. Sparks. the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. The U.S. government preferred to preserve a facade of democracy,rather than have Guatemala revert to a blatant dictatorship. [6] Elections were held in October 1957,complicated by pressure from the U.S. government,the government of Dominica,and the army. [6]
The centrist Miguel Ortiz Passarelli won a plurality in these elections,but supporters of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes,who had also been a candidate in the election,rioted. [7] [3] The Guatemalan government declared martial law for a period of 30 days. On 24 October,a group of 80 military officers marched into the Presidential palace and replaced González López with a three-person junta led by army Colonel Óscar Mendoza Azurdia. [7] New elections were held in January 1958. Ydígoras Fuentes comfortably won this election and seized power for himself soon after. [3]
Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th president of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1950,before he became the second democratically elected President of Guatemala,from 1951 to 1954. He was a major figure in the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution,which represented some of the few years of representative democracy in Guatemalan history. The landmark program of agrarian reform Árbenz enacted as president was very influential across Latin America.
The president of Guatemala,officially titled President of the Republic of Guatemala,is the head of state and head of government of Guatemala,elected to a single four-year term. The position of President was created in 1839.
Carlos Castillo Armas was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala,serving from 1954 to 1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National Liberation Movement (MLN) party,his authoritarian government was closely allied with the United States.
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and marked the end of the Guatemalan Revolution. The coup installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas,the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala. The coup was largely the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess.
Carlos Enrique Díaz de León was the provisional President of Guatemala from 27 June to 29 June 1954. He was replaced by a military junta led by Elfego Monzón. Carlos Enrique Díaz was previously Chief of the Guatemalan Armed Forces under President Jacobo Árbenz.
JoséMiguel Ramón Ydígoras Fuentes was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 32nd president of Guatemala from 1958 to March 1963. He was also the main challenger to Jacobo Árbenz during the 1950 presidential election. Ydígoras previously served as the governor of the province of San Marcos.
Guillermo Flores Avendaño was a Guatemalan military officer who served as president of Guatemala from October 1957 to March 1958. In March 1957,he was designated as second in the presidential line of succession by Congress. He assumed the role of provisional president in October of that same year after the results of the 1957 general elections were annulled after a coup on allegations of electoral fraud.
Elfego Hernán Monzón Aguirre was a Guatemalan army officer who was President of Guatemala and leader of a military junta from 29 June 1954 to 8 July 1954,during the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.
Operation PBFortune,also known as Operation Fortune,was a covert United States operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The operation was authorized by U.S. President Harry Truman and planned by the Central Intelligence Agency. The United Fruit Company had lobbied intensively for the overthrow because land reform initiated by Árbenz threatened its economic interests. The US also feared that the government of Árbenz was being influenced by communists.
Revolutionary Movement 13th November was a leftist movement in Guatemala. MR-13 was founded in 1960 by a group of dissident officers. It grew partly out of the popular protests against the government of President Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes following his election in 1958. It was led by Luis Augusto Turcios Lima,Marco Antonio Yon Sosa and Luis Trejo Esquivel. Alejandro de León,co-founder of the group,was captured and shot by the judicial police in 1961. In 1963,MR-13 joined the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR).
Manuel Colom Argueta was mayor of Guatemala City and an important progressive leader of the opposition in Guatemala.
Rogelia Cruz Martínez was a Guatemalan beauty pageant titleholder and left-wing political activist. After she won the 1959 Miss Guatemala,she joined the Guatemalan Party of Labour and became romantically involved with its leader,Leonardo Castillo Johnson. She was ultimately kidnapped and murdered for her association with the party and Johnson.
The National Liberation Movement was a Guatemalan political party formed in 1954 by Carlos Castillo Armas. The party served as political platform for the military junta.
Operation PBHistory was a covert operation carried out in Guatemala by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It followed Operation PBSuccess,which led to the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in June 1954 and ended the Guatemalan Revolution. PBHistory attempted to use documents left behind by Árbenz's government and by organizations related to the communist Guatemalan Party of Labor to demonstrate that the Guatemalan government had been under the influence of the Soviet Union,and to use those documents to obtain further intelligence that would be useful to US intelligence agencies. It was an effort to justify the overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government in response to the negative international reactions to PBSuccess. The CIA also hoped to improve its intelligence resources about communist parties in Latin America,a subject on which it had little information.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a history of interference in the government of Guatemala over the course of several decades. Guatemala is bordered by the North Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Honduras. The four bordering countries are Mexico,El Salvador,Honduras and Belize. Due to the proximity of Guatemala to the United States,the fear of the Soviet Union creating a beachhead in Guatemala created panic in the United States government during the Cold War. In an interview,Howard Hunt,CIA Chief,Mexico,stated that "We were faced here with the obvious intervention of a foreign power,because these home grown parties,are not really home grown,they are being funded...or advised by a foreign power,i.e. the Soviet Union." The CIA undertook Operation PBSuccess to overthrow the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Carlos Castillo Armas replaced him as a military dictator. Guatemala was subsequently ruled by a series of military dictatorships for decades.
Constituent Assembly elections were held alongside a plebiscite on the presidency of Carlos Castillo Armas in Guatemala on 10 October 1954. A reported 99.92% of voters voted in favour of Armas' presidency,whilst the National Anti-Communist Front won 57 of the 65 seats in the Assembly.
Hugh Ian McGarvie-Munn. He was a captain in the Seaforth Highlanders,artist,naval architect and also served as a Guatemalan diplomat. His father was born in Scotland and was chief consultant engineer to the Viceroy of India.
The period in the history of Guatemala between the coups against Jorge Ubico in 1944 and Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 is known locally as the Revolution. It has also been called the Ten Years of Spring,highlighting the peak years of representative democracy in Guatemala from 1944 until the end of the civil war in 1996. It saw the implementation of social,political,and especially agrarian reforms that were influential across Latin America.
The Anti-Communist Unification Party was a political party in Guatemala.
A Military Government Junta briefly ruled Guatemala from 24 to 26 October 1957. Its members were:
Notes