preview

What Was The Role Of US Intervention In Guatemala

Satisfactory Essays

The U.S. intervened in Guatemala in 1954 because Jacobo Árbenz became president and began to modernize Guatemala. Árbenz was said to have had close allies who were communists. The U.S. assumed that the funding for these modernization projects were coming from a foreign power, the Soviet Union. Former President Árbenz also began a land reform project in which he bought land from land owners and distributed it to peasants. He attempted to buy the land of the United fruit company, for a little over a million dollars, from the U.S.. The U.S. declined this offer and sent their U.S. Ambassador to speak with Árbenz. The U.S. then organized an operation to overthrow the Árbenz government. The operation, coup d'etat, Code-named Operation PBSUCCESS, “mobilized disaffected exiles and peasants into action”. The U.S. leaders define this as being a “terror campaign” to terrify Árbenz and his troops. …show more content…

operatives used in the Cold War era to define what was happening and what they were doing in Guatemala in the 1950s were communist infiltration, Stalinist communists, communist efforts, communist intervention, terror campaign. Communist infiltration is defined as communist ideals entering the country or government in some way. Stalinist communism is a style of government implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, an extreme case of totalitarianism. Communist efforts are the efforts of the Soviet Union to spread communism. Communist intervention is interference of foreign communist powers. The last term I heard used was terror campaign, this is how the U.S. defined the CIA’s operation to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz’s government in

Get Access