He implemented a moderate program of social reform, including a widely successful literacy campaign and a largely free election process, although illiterate women were not given the vote and communist parties were banned.

Fearing the possibility of a revolution, the landed elite lent their support to Jorge Ubico y Castañeda, who had built a reputation for ruthlessness and efficiency as a provincial governor.

He abolished the system of debt peonage, and replaced it with a vagrancy law, which required all men of working age who did not own land to perform a minimum of 100 days of hard labor.

[12] Like his predecessors, he made large concessions to the United Fruit Company, granting it 200,000 hectares (490,000 acres) of public land in exchange for a promise to build a port.

[15][16][17] The protesters, who by this point included many middle-class members in addition to students and workers, called for a general strike,[18] and presented an ultimatum to Ubico the next day, demanding the reinstatement of the constitution.

Ubico appointed three generals, Federico Ponce Vaides, Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, and Buenaventura Pineda, to a junta which would lead the provisional government.

[25] That same day, a small group of army officers launched a coup, led by Francisco Javier Arana and Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.

Initially, the battle went against the revolutionaries, but after an appeal for support their ranks were swelled by unionists and students, and they eventually subdued the police and army factions loyal to Ponce Vaides.

[39] The protests of 1944 strengthened the labor movement to the point where Ponce Vaides stopped enforcing the repressive vagrancy law, which was abolished in the 1945 constitution.

This law was revolutionary in many ways; it forbade discrimination in salary levels on the basis of "age, race, sex, nationality, religious beliefs, or political affiliation".

He approached several leaders of democratic Central American countries, but was rejected by all except Castañeda Castro, the president of El Salvador.

In late 1945 they announced the formation of the union, but the formalization of the process got delayed by internal troubles in both countries, and in 1948 the Castro government was toppled in a military coup led by Óscar Osorio.

[46] As the highest-ranking military officer in the October Revolution, Francisco Arana had led the three-man junta that formed the interim government after the coup.

In return for allowing Arévalo to become president, Arana was granted the newly created position of "chief of the armed forces", ranked above the minister of defense.

[49] Árbenz's role as defense minister had already made him a strong candidate for the presidency, and his firm support of the government during the 1949 uprising further increased his prestige.

[52] In 1935 he had graduated from the Escuela Politécnica, Guatemala's national military academy, with excellent grades, and had subsequently become an officer in the Guatemalan army under Ubico.

Highly offended by this, Árbenz plotted against Ponce Vaides, and was one of the military leaders of the coup that toppled him, in addition to having been one of the few officers in the revolution who had formed and maintained connections to the popular civilian movement.

The National Agrarian Bank (Banco Nacional Agrario, or BNA) was created on 7 July 1953, and by June 1954 it had disbursed more than $9 million in small loans.

[56] Historian Greg Grandin stated that the law was flawed in many respects; among other things, it was too cautious and deferential to the planters, and it created communal divisions among peasants.

[61] Under Manuel Estrada Cabrera and other Guatemalan presidents, the company obtained a series of concessions in the country that allowed it to massively expand its business.

Among other things, the labor code passed by the government allowed its workers to strike when their demands for higher wages and job security were not met.

American historians observed that "To the Guatemalans it appeared that their country was being mercilessly exploited by foreign interests which took huge profits without making any contributions to the nation's welfare.

[65] More expropriation occurred soon after, bringing the total to over 400,000 acres (160,000 ha); the government offered compensation to the company at the rate at which the UFC had valued its own property for tax purposes.

During the years of the Guatemalan Revolution, military coups occurred in several other Central American countries that brought firmly anti-communist governments to power.

Army officer Major Oscar Osorio won staged elections in El Salvador in 1950, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista took power in 1952.

[71] The CIA placed a shipment of weapons on a vessel owned by the United Fruit Company, and the operation was paid for by Rafael Trujillo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the right-wing anti-communist dictators of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, respectively.

This campaign included using Catholic priests to give anti-communist sermons, strafing several towns using CIA aircraft, and placing a naval blockade around the country.

[79] The military force led by Castillo Armas attempted to make forays towards the towns of Zacapa and Puerto Barrios; however, these were beaten back by the Guatemalan army.

[86] Following the coup and the establishment of the military dictatorship, a series of leftist insurgencies began in the countryside, frequently with a large degree of popular support, which triggered the Guatemalan Civil War that lasted until 1996.

[87] Historians estimate that 93% of these violations were committed by the United States-backed military,[87] which included a genocidal scorched-earth campaign against the indigenous Maya population in the 1980s.