Coup still scars Guatemalans 50 years later

[struggle4progress]

Anniversary recalls civil war that sent half-million to U.S.
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Fifty years later, the effects of a U.S.-orchestrated coup d'etat that toppled Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz are still reverberating, not only in Central America but also in the Bay Area.
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The coup, 50 years ago Sunday, ended the 10-year "October revolution" that had begun in 1944 under President Juan José Arévalo and ushered in democratic reforms, improved education, labor rights and an agrarian reform plan, according to the well-documented history.

In a country where, in 1950, 2 percent of the landowners controlled 70 percent of the nation's arable land, Arbenz set out to redistribute large parcels of idle land to a desperate peasantry. In his inaugural speech, he vowed "to convert Guatemala from a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state."

That plan did not sit well with the Boston-based United Fruit Co., which was Guatemala's largest landowner and had been accustomed to operating with a free hand in Central America.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/26/MNGKN7CPOP1.DTL