Operation PBFortune

The United Fruit Company had lobbied intensively for the overthrow because land reform initiated by Árbenz threatened its economic interests.

The coup attempt was planned with the support of the United Fruit Company and of Anastasio Somoza García, Rafael Trujillo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the US-backed right-wing dictators of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela respectively, who felt threatened by the democratic Guatemalan Revolution, and had sought to undermine it.

The plan involved providing weapons to the exiled Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua.

[1] US Secretary of State Dean Acheson became concerned that the coup attempt would damage the image of the US, which had committed to a policy of non-intervention, and so terminated the operation.

Between 1898 and 1920, Manuel Estrada Cabrera granted significant concessions to the United Fruit Company and dispossessed many indigenous peoples of their communal land.

[4][5] Under Jorge Ubico, who ruled as a dictator between 1931 and 1944, this process was intensified with the institution of brutal labor regulations and the establishment of a police state.

[10] The coup leaders called for open elections, which were won by Juan José Arévalo, a progressive professor of philosophy who had become the face of the popular movement.

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

Anastasio Somoza García, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the US-backed right-wing dictators of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, respectively, felt threatened by Arévalo's reforms.

[22] Historian Mark Gilderhus opines that the doctrine also contained racially condescending language, which likened Latin American countries to fighting children.

[25] The United Fruit Company lost several hundred thousand acres of its uncultivated land to this law, and the compensation it received was based on the undervalued price it had presented to the Guatemalan government for tax purposes.

[26] At this point the US government was approached by Nicaraguan leader Somoza, who had been in the United States on a private visit, during which he made public speeches praising the US, and was awarded a medal by New York City.

[29] Smith also sent a Spanish-speaking engineer[a] under the codename "Seekford"[31] to contact exiled Guatemalan Army officer Carlos Castillo Armas and his fellow dissidents, who were in Honduras and Guatemala.

[29] The coup's plotters contacted Trujillo and Jiménez, who, along with Somoza and Juan Manuel Gálvez, the right-wing President of Honduras, had already been exchanging intelligence about the Árbenz government, and had considered the possibility of supporting an invasion by Guatemalan exiles.

In January 1952, officers in the CIA's Directorate of Plans compiled a list of "top flight Communists whom the new government would desire to eliminate immediately in the event of a successful anti-Communist coup".

[29] Nick Cullather writes that, due to Somoza spreading the word about the coup, the State Department decided the cover of the operation had been lost.

If PBFortune had become public knowledge, the fact that the US was supporting an invasion of a fellow member of the OAS would have represented a huge setback to US policy,[2] thus motivating the State Department to end the operation when they became aware its cover had been blown.

[42] Peréz Jimenez opened a line of credit that would allow Castillo Armas to purchase airplanes, and Trujillo and Somoza continued to support the operation, although they acknowledged it would have to be postponed.

Castillo Armas made plans to use groups of soldiers in civilian clothing from Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador to kill communist leaders in Guatemala.

Many senior figures in his cabinet, including John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, had close connections to the United Fruit Company, which made Eisenhower more strongly predisposed than Truman to support Árbenz's overthrow.

[41][44] In June 1954, the US trained and funded an invasion force led by Castillo Armas, backed by an intense campaign of psychological warfare by the CIA.

[47][48] Following his resignation, the CIA launched Operation PBHistory, an attempt to use documents from Árbenz's government and elsewhere to justify the coup in response to the negative international reactions to it.