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.
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.
Juan José Arévalo Bermejo was a Guatemalan statesman and professor of philosophy who became Guatemala's first democratically elected president in 1945. He was elected following a popular uprising against the United States-backed dictator Jorge Ubico that began the Guatemalan Revolution. He remained in office until 1951, surviving 25 coup attempts. He did not contest the election of 1951, instead choosing to hand over power to Jacobo Árbenz. As president, he enacted several social reform policies, including an increase in the minimum wage and a series of literacy programs. He also oversaw the drafting of a new constitution in 1945. He is the father of the current President of Guatemala Bernardo Arévalo.
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.
Julio César Méndez Montenegro was a Guatemalan academic who served as the 34th president of Guatemala from July 1966 to July 1970. Mendez was elected on a platform promising democratic reforms and the curtailment of military power. The only civilian to occupy Guatemala's presidency during the long period of military rule between 1954 and 1986. Mendez had assumed the presidency under a pact in July 1966 that gave the armed forces carte blanche with respect to internal security matters and an effective veto over governmental policy. Nevertheless, his election and swearing in was considered a major turning point for the long military-led Guatemala. He was the first cousin of César Montenegro Paniagua whose kidnapping, torture and murder during the Julio César Méndez presidency is rumored to have been undertaken with presidential sanction.
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.
The People's Party of Panama was a communist party in Panama. It was founded on 4 April 1930 as the Communist Party of Panama, after Panamanian communists broke away from the Labour Party. Early leaders of the PCP included Eliseo Echévez and Cristóbal Segundo. The PCP joined the Communist International and reached its apogee of popularity during and right after World War II. In 1943 the PCP changed its name to the People's Party of Panama.
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.
The Guatemalan Civil War was a civil war in Guatemala fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups. The government forces have been condemned for committing genocide against the Maya population of Guatemala during the civil war and for widespread human rights violations against civilians. The context of the struggle was based on longstanding issues of unfair land distribution. Wealthy Guatemalans, mainly European-descended, and foreign companies such as the American United Fruit Company had dominated control over much of the land, and paid almost zero taxes in return – leading to conflicts with the rural indigenous poor who worked the land under miserable terms.
The Romanian anti-communist resistance movement was active from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime, which in turn regarded the fighters as "bandits". It was not until the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu in late 1989 that details about what was called "anti-communist armed resistance" were made public. It was only then that the public learned about the several small armed groups, which sometimes termed themselves "hajduks", that had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, where some hid for ten years from authorities. The last fighter was eliminated in the mountains of Banat in 1962. The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movements in the former Eastern Bloc.
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.
The Party of the Guatemalan Revolution was formed in June 1952 during the Guatemalan Revolution to unite the non-Communist parties which were supporting the administration of Jacobo Árbenz. These included the Popular Liberation Front, the National Renovation Party, the Revolutionary Action Party, and the Socialist Party. The Communist Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT) was opposed to the formation of the PRG, fearing that it would undermine their influence in the government. The PAR and the PRN later withdrew. Although the PRG continued in existence until the overthrow of the President Árbenz, it had failed to achieve its original purpose of opposing Communist efforts to gain a predominant voice in the Árbenz government. It was disbanded after the coup d'état of 1954.
The Revolutionary Action Party was a leftist political party in Guatemala during the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution. Formed in 1945, the party went through a series of mergers and fractures before dissolving in 1954 after the United States-backed coup d'état.
The Anti-Communist University Students Committee, (CEUA) was a rightist, anti-communist organization in Guatemala, which was founded in late 1953, during the last year of the Guatemalan Revolution. Its founders and leaders were Mario Sandoval Alarcon, Lionel Sisniega Otero, Mario Lopez Villatoro, and Eduardo Taracena de la Cerda. Lionel Sisniega Otero was a broadcaster for the clandestine radio station that the liberation movement operated before Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán's resignation, together with Mario Lopez Villatoro and Jose Toron Barrios, who were both killed by the guerrillas in the 1960s. They fought against the government of Arbenz. Headed by a young activist, the group counted 50 members in the capital and a nationwide network of sympathetic students ready to risk arrest. After the coup in 1954 CEUA supported the government of Carlos Castillo Armas.
The Independent Anti-Communist Party of the West was a Guatemalan right-wing party founded in 1953. Led by Inez Nuño, it was the leading anti-Communist party in the Western part of Guatemala. PIACO fought against the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. After the coup in 1954, it supported the government of Carlos Castillo Armas, and subsequently collaborated with Ydígoras Fuentes.
The National Integrity Party is a former political party in Guatemala. It was a "personalistic Arbenzista party" founded in Quezaltenango in 1949 with the goal of countering the opposition Independent Anti-Communist Party of the West, which was active in the same region. In 1952 the party merged with the other non-Communist parties supporting the Árbenz presidency to form the Party of the Guatemalan Revolution.
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.
