Guatemala 1953

For the social and economic reform of the Republic of Guatemala, President Árbenz Guzmán advocated the labour union organization of the working class, and land reform for the landless-peasant majority of the population. In 1951, to equitably redistribute the prime arable lands of the country, the President worked to compose, implement, and establish a realistic agrarian-reform program that would remedy the historically inequitable distribution of farmland, which dated from the Spanish conquest of Guatemala, the Colonial period, and the 20th-century military dictatorships.
In 1945, the Guatemalan bourgeoisie — approximately 2.2 per cent of the national population — owned 70 per cent of the arable land of Guatemala, yet economically exploited only 12 per cent of that land, whilst 58 per cent of that farmland remained idle, untilled, and unproductive; whilst the remaining 97.8 per cent of the Guatemalan population were landless labourers.^[9] In 1952, the Árbenz Government promulgated Decree 900, the agrarian-reform redistribution of farmland; the landless-peasant majority welcomed the progressive changes to the Guatemalan Old Order of the dictatorships of General Manuel José Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) and General Jorge Ubico (1931–44).
In March 1953, the Árbenz Government expropriated idle United Fruit Company farmlands, for which the company was paid US$600,000 — as determined by the UFC’s public tax-declaration of the financial value of the idle farmland. In October 1953 and in February 1954, the Árbenz Government further expropriated 60,702 hectares (150,000 acres) of unused UFC farmland; to that date, the total area of the farmlands expropriated from the UFC was approximately 161,874 hectares (400,000 acres). Consequently, the United Fruit Company complained to and sought financial redress through the US Government; and, in 1954, the US State Department demanded that the Árbenz Government pay US$15,854,849 to the UFC, for the true value of its farmland in the Pacific Ocean coast of Guatemala. In turn, the Árbenz Government rejected that demand, as a violation of the national sovereignty of the Republic of Guatemala claiming the demand was usurious.

As the land expropriations occurred throughout 1953, the United Fruit Company asked the Eisenhower Administration to compel the Árbenz Government to rescind the Decree 900 laws. To involve the politically reticent President Eisenhower, the UFC employed the public relations-and-advertising expert Edward L. Bernays to create, organise, and direct a psychologically inflammatory, anti–communist campaign of disinformation, by print and radio, film and television, against the liberal Árbenz Government of Guatemala. The public-opinion pressure generated by the UFC disinformation campaign compelled President Eisenhower to become involved in the private-business vs. national-government quarrel of the United Fruit Company and the Árbenz Government, lest his government appear to be “soft on Communism” in Guatemala — a serious personal imputation and great political accusation of which the American public took serious note, especially during the Red Scares of the McCarthy Era (1947–57) of US national politics. Consequently, the US State Department reduced economic aid to and commercial trade with Guatemala, which much harmed the Guatemalan national economy, because 85 per cent of its exports were sold to the US, and 85 per cent of its imports were bought from the US. Such economic sabotage of Guatemala was done in secret, because economic warfareviolated the Latin American non-intervention agreement to which the United States was a signatory party; public knowledge that the US was violating the non-intervention agreement would prompt other Latin American countries to aid Guatemala in surviving such economic warfare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat