THE TIMELINE OF THE GUATEMALAN COUP OF 1954 IMPULSED BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT



Carlos Castillo Armas, the CIA-backed leader of Operation PBSuccess, driving into Guatemala City. Source: National Archives


First of all, it is important to clarify that the coup d'état that rocked Guatemala in 1954 was the result of the covert operation called PBSUCCESS (CIA Cryptonym). As Mainwaring & Schenoni (2018)  rightly points out. this operation was organized by the U.S.CIA to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically elected President of Guatemala, for opposing the interests of the United Fruit Company and for allowing members of Guatemala's communist party - the Guatemalan Labor Party - to influence the most important decisions of his government. 

The Árbenz government presented a series of reforms that U.S. espionage considered communist and attributed to Soviet influence. They then spread the fear that Guatemala was going to become what CIA Director Allen Dulles called "a Soviet beachhead in America " (enemy position for invasion). These accusations were used by the CIA and the Eisenhower administration during the anti-communist era of McCarthyism. President Árbenz mainly enacted an agrarian reform that harmed the US multinational United Fruit Company, the interests of the Guatemalan oligarchy and mobilized pressure groups in the US.

The operation, which lasted only from late 1953 to 1954, was planned to arm, train and take over the country a "Liberation Army" of approximately 400 rebels under the command of exiled Guatemalan army officer Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas coordinating it with a complex diplomatic, economic and propagandist ruse that was largely experimental. The invasion was preceded since 1951 by a plan, baptized PBFORTUNE, to finance and supply arms and supplies to the forces opposing the president. Behind the invasion was Operation PBHISTORY with the objective of gathering government documents to incriminate Árbenz as a communist puppet.

For a more comprehensive understanding of this historical process, we offer you an embedding of a page that compiles the most relevant events of the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, as well as the causes that led to this event. Please click here: TIMELINE OF THE GUATEMALAN COUP


REFERENCES
Schenoni, L. L., & Mainwaring, S. (2019). US hegemony and regime change in Latin America. Democratization, 26(2), 269-287. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2018.1516754

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