cia, united fruit, civil war and a slient holocaust

[andyassur]

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954.

By 1950, the United Fruit Company's annual profits were 65 million U.S. dollars, twice as large as the revenue of the government of Guatemala.[51]

The company's troubles were compounded with the passage of Decree 900 in 1952. Of the 550,000 acres (220,000 ha) that the company owned, only 15 percent was being cultivated; the rest was idle, and thus came under the scope of the agrarian reform law.[53]

The UFC responded by intensively lobbying the U.S. government; several Congressmen criticized the Guatemalan government for not protecting the interests of the company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

Decree 900 was thus a direct impetus for the 1954 coup d'état which deposed Árbenz and instigated decades of Civil War.

In 1953 Árbenz announced that under the Agrarian Reform Law—specifically, because of an order made by the DAN—Guatemala was expropriating approximately[53] 234,000 acres (947 km²) of uncultivated land from the United Fruit Company.[54] United Fruit owned 550,000 acres (2,200 km2) in Guatemala, 42% of the nation's (arable) land.[55] The company was compensated with $627,572 in bonds for the expropriation of their holdings, the amount United Fruit had claimed the land was worth for tax purposes. However, United Fruit proceeded to claim that its land was worth more. It had close ties to U.S. officials and lobbied the U.S. for intervention. The US State Department, on behalf of the United Fruit Company, claimed to Guatemala that the land was worth $15,854,849.[56]

A long period of civil war followed, with indigenous and poor Guatemalans pitted against landowners and the military. Peace accords reached in 1996 repudiate Armas's policy, and those that followed, calling for a return to the idea of land as a social good.[67]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_900

Silent Holocaust[2] refers to the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan military government's counterinsurgency operations. Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators at the hands of US-backed security forces had been widespread since 1965 and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_genocide

all this bananas?