Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Labrador-Rodriguez, Sonia

Area of Concentration

Spanish Language and Culture

Abstract

The Guatemalan coup d’etat of 1954 was widely considered to have a significant impact on both US policy and Guatemalan society; it provoked the decades-long civil war, in which tensions between the Guatemalan armed forces and impoverished rural class finally came to a head. It was also proof of the success of newer, psychological warfare tactics employed by the CIA as a means of interfering with what they perceived to be international threats, and the outcome of the operation PBSUCCESS began a new era of US covert operations. Despite what is known about the operation and its aftermath, many questions still remain regarding the motives of the Eisenhower administration for overthrowing democratically-elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. This thesis analyzes the causes of the overthrow by delving into Guatemala’s political and economic history, its relationship with the United Fruit Company, the Guatemalan revolution, and the agrarian reform proposed by Jacobo Arbenz. In addition to an analysis of Guatemalan society from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, this report also looks at US perceptions of nationalism and communism in the midst of the Cold War, and to what extent the Red Scare influenced the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to increase surveillance and eventually take action against the Guatemalan government.

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