Guatemala, 1954 — military coup
Event Summary
President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala (1951–54), whose nationalistic economic and social reforms alienated conservative landowners, the army, and the U.S. government, was forced to resign on 27 June 1954 and go into exile.
The CIA had helped organize a counterrevolutionary army of exiles led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, who soon became president and reversed most of the reforms of the previous decade, offering generous concessions to foreign investors.
Films & Footage
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Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Foreign-backed
- How long it took
- 10 days from first move to resolution
- Direct foreign involvement or backing
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
09006271954- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-90-1954-06-27
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala (overthrown).
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; exiled. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →