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The former headquarters of the United Fruit Company, in New Orleans. The company played a key role in instigating the 1954 coup d'état. By 1950, the United Fruit Company's (now Chiquita) annual profits were 65 million U.S. dollars, [b] twice as large as the revenue of the government of Guatemala. [54]
In 1901, the government of Guatemala hired the United Fruit Company to manage the country's postal service, and in 1913 the United Fruit Company created the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company. By 1930, it had absorbed more than 20 rival firms, acquiring a capital of $215 million and becoming the largest employer in Central America.
The Guatemalan genocide, also referred to as the Maya genocide, [3] or the Silent Holocaust [7] (Spanish: Genocidio guatemalteco, Genocidio maya, or Holocausto silencioso), was the mass killing of the Maya Indigenous people during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive Guatemalan military governments that first took power following the CIA instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.
In May 1952, Árbenz enacted Decree 900, the official title of the Guatemalan agrarian reform law. [24] Approximately 500,000 people benefited from the decree. [25] The United Fruit Company lost several hundred thousand acres of its uncultivated land to this law, and the compensation it received was based on the undervalued price it had presented to the Guatemalan government for tax purposes. [17]
Several factors besides the lobbying campaign of the United Fruit Company led the United States to launch the coup that toppled Árbenz in 1954. The US government had grown more suspicious of the Guatemalan Revolution as the Cold War developed and the Guatemalan government clashed with US corporations on an increasing number of issues. [100]
The United Fruit Company responded with intensive lobbying of members of the United States government, leading many US congressmen and senators to criticize the Guatemalan government for not protecting the interests of the company. [65] The Guatemalan government responded by saying that the company was the main obstacle to progress in the country.
Retired Guatemalan colonel Juan Ovalle Salazar was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for his role in the massacre of 25 Indigenous people, mostly children, some 40 years ago during one ...
Ed Whitman, who was United Fruit's principal lobbyist, was married to President Eisenhower's personal secretary, Ann C. Whitman. [14] These are simply a few of the individuals who influenced U.S. foreign policy towards Guatemala that had ties to the United Fruit Company. [14] Dulles received direct communications from contacts in Guatemala. [15]