Jacobo Árbenz

Biography

Jacobo Árbenz was born in Quetzaltenango in 1913, the son of a Swiss-German pharmacist. His family's bankruptcy ruled out university, so in 1932 he entered the Escuela Politécnica, Guatemala's military academy, on a scholarship. He graduated in 1935 as one of its most distinguished cadets and returned in 1937 to teach there. Through his wife, María Cristina Vilanova, he became interested in Marxism.

Dismissed by the dictator Jorge Ubico, he helped lead the uprising of 20 October 1944 that overthrew Ubico's successor Federico Ponce Vaides, and then sat with Francisco Arana and Jorge Toriello on the junta that organised free elections. Under President Juan José Arévalo he served as the first minister of national defence from 1945 to 1950. In July 1949 a force he led intercepted Arana, who was killed in the ensuing shootout.

Árbenz won the November 1950 election with a large majority and took office in March 1951. His central reform was Decree 900 of 1952, which redistributed uncultivated land on large estates to some 500,000 peasants and touched the idle holdings of the United Fruit Company. The company's lobbying and Cold War fears of communism led the United States to plan his removal, first in the aborted Operation PBFortune and then in Operation PBSuccess. When Carlos Castillo Armas's CIA-backed force invaded in June 1954 and the army refused to fight, he resigned on 27 June.

He spent the rest of his life in exile in Mexico, Europe, Uruguay and Cuba, the target of a CIA smear campaign. He died in Mexico City in 1971. In 2011 the Guatemalan government formally apologised to his family for his overthrow.