1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

1954-06-18 - 1954-06-27

The democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz was deposed in a coup d'état in 1954, marking the end of the Guatemalan Revolution that had begun in 1944. The coup installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala, and was precipitated by the CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. The U.S. government had grown alarmed by Árbenz's land reforms granting property to landless peasants and his legalization of the communist Guatemalan Party of Labour.