JACOBO ARBENZ GUZMAN
(Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán)
The President was a left wing nationalist whose policies were counter to the interests of the United Fruit Company and other American businesses. His plan to build another canal connecting Atlantic and Pacific Oceans threatened to take business and control from the Panama Canal which at that point America owned. The CIA covertly engineered a right wing coup ousting him. At the time, it was US foreign policy to try and change any regime that was not acceptable to American Business interests in Latin America or was socialistic or both.
He was a left wing nationalist whose policies were counter to the interests of the United Fruit Company and other American businesses. His plan to build another canal connecting Atlantic and Pacific Oceans threatened to take business and control from the Panama Canal which at that point America owned. The CIA covertly engineered a right wing coup ousting him. At the time, it was US foreign policy to try and change any regime that was not acceptable to American Business interests in Latin America or was socialistic or both
Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th President of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1951, and the second democratically elected President of Guatemala, from 1951 to 1954. He was a major figure in the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which represented some of the few years of representative democracy in Guatemalan history. The landmark program of agrarian reform Árbenz enacted as president was very influential across Latin America.
