Destroying Democracy
In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala, violently reversing the progressive policies of the civilian governments. This coup was undertaken at the behest of the United Fruit Company, and it ushered in a thirty-six-year civil war that claimed the lives of approximately 200,000 civilians.

During the first sixty years of their existence, the U.S.-owned banana companies learned to use local governments as instruments of their will. From 1898 to 1920, President Manuel Estrada Cabrera invited the United Fruit Company to build Guatemala’s infrastructure: railroads, telegraph lines, and ports. General Jorge Ubico, in office from 1933 to 1944, continued to be subservient toward the company and to repress civil society.

By 1944, the balance of power began to shift in Guatemala. The initial sparks were kindled by a restive middle class. Schoolteachers went on strike, and the Ubico government responded with repression. The desire for democratic rule only spread. In July 1944, political parties were forming in Guatemala for the first free election in fifteen years. In Tiquisate on the Pacific Coast, workers for the United Fruit Company went on strike. After fifteen days, the company agreed to a 15 percent wage hike.i Ubico jailed the strike leaders. The dictatorship faced internal problems as well. A couple of junior army officers, including Jacobo Arbenz, led a rebellion at Fort Matamoros. In the ensuing battle, a total of around 1,800 loyalists and rebels died. General Ubico’s handpicked successor resigned, and Arbenz called for elections.ii

“It is to be doubted that the Guatemalan Army could ever rise, put on shoes and rush to the defense of the hemisphere or anything else without substantial U.S. support.”

— L. D. MALLORY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO GUATEMALA, AUGUST 11, 1958
In 1945, a young university professor named Juan José Arévalo assumed the presidency in Guatemala. With the ratification of a new constitution that same year, a labor law was enacted. But the landowning elite had long used the state to further their own interests above all else. The Arévalo regime found itself under constant attack, beating back one attempted coup after another. In 1947, the Ministry of Labor was established. For the first time, the state would oversee the conduct of planters. The UFCo refused to obey the new labor laws.

In 1948, Arévalo’s government arbitrated a strike on the United Fruit Company’s plantations. The company aggressively ramped up its campaign of anticommunism. The ruthlessness of the planter elite allied with the company was matched only by the increasing militancy of the newly formed labor unions. A rural laborer recalled, “I entered the union because, as a campesino worker, one needs the support of the Constitution of the Republic. We know we’re just workers, and that without that we’re worth nothing.”iii In 1950, Arévalo’s presidential term came to a close.

President Jacobo Arbenz took office in 1951. His chief concern was not that the United Fruit Company owned so much land in Guatemala, but that three-quarters of it lay fallow. The company immediately tested Arbenz by laying off 3,746 workers in its Pacific division and more than 3,000 in its Atlantic division.iv In Arbenz, agricultural workers found an ally.

After eight arduous years of workers organizing in the countryside, on June 17, 1952, Arbenz issued decree 900 to distribute land to the peasantry. This decree enabled the government to expropriate uncultivated land on any farm larger than 223 acres. The United Fruit Company had abandoned farms because of Panama disease. The government redistributed 100,000 acres, compensating former landholders based on the amount they had stated their land was worth when they filed their taxes. The UFCo had been cheating on its taxes by grossly underreporting the value of its land.

“In August 1953, the Operations Coordinating Board directed CIA to assume responsibility for operations against the Arbenz regime. Appropriate authorization was issued to

permit close and prompt cooperation with the Departments of Defense, State and other Government agencies in order to support the Agency in this task.”

— “CIA’S ROLE IN THE OVERTHROW OF ARBENZ,” MAY 12, 1975, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Back in the United States, the company hired public relations guru Edward Bernays to lead a two-pronged assault, one on the public and the other on the U.S. government.v The goal was to convince both audiences that Arbenz was a communist. Arbenz did have politicians from the Communist Party within his coalition, but the Guatemalan military remained independent. U.S. Ambassador John Emil Peurifoy pressured Arbenz to exclude all communists from legitimate political participation. The U.S. State Department intervened on behalf of the United Fruit Company, advising the Guatemalan government that it should compensate the company $16 million—what the land was actually worth, in other words, and not merely what the company had claimed it was worth to avoid paying taxes. In mid-1953, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to overthrow Arbenz.

The CIA operation to destroy democracy in Guatemala was as cheap, sophisticated, and ruthless as the United Fruit Company’s cultivation of North America’s favorite fresh fruit. The heart of the campaign was psychological warfare, coupled with arming an expeditionary force out of Tegucigalpa, and a barrage of propaganda carried over the company’s Tropical Radio Network but disguised as La Voz de Liberación.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Qu210g3Rk



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BIA4dgAJ9A

Nobody is asking for their arrest

And today they're condemning Russia for invading Ukraine

Chai

Same way they ousted gadafi because he was a threat to them and the petrodollar regime of the US

He wanted an African currency to be adopted, so that African resources can be paid for with African unified currency by the west, but they kicked him out by arming rebel groups and today see what Libya is

They tried the same in Syria, trying to oust a government by inciting and arming the people, until Putin stepped in to wade them off asad

They armed and sponsor rebel groups across the world just to use them to promote their selfish agenda, they did that in Afghanistan and they got their ass wooped badly by the same taliban they armed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan

... And no one is charging them for war crime

Interesting read, I need to research more on this

The USA did atrocious things in other South American countries asides Gautemala.

Meaning they love bananas than monkeys

What we see happening today is just a day of reckoning for the US' past crimes. The British are still paying theirs. The Ottomans paid theirs, so did the Romans before them. The Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks are all examples for those who can see.

We were never made to live forever, neither is what we build. If you are lucky to come to this realisation, then you'll know that what matters is today and what you choose to do with it (good or evil). Ironically it only by doing good today, is your tomorrow guaranteed. Use today to develop yourself, use today to be good to others around you, use today to protect the environment around you, use today to consume only what you need for today.