1st Student's Major
Psychology
1st Student's College
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Students' Professional Biography
While earning his Associate of Arts degree, Mark Viskocil took an opportunity to travel the world by participating in the Fall 1997 Semester at Sea Program through the University of Pittsburgh. In 1998, he received his degree and moved to northern California, where he became an inspector for fire suppression systems inside critical environment data centers in the San Francisco Bay area (“Silicon Valley”). Upon returning in 2006 to his native town of Waseca, Minnesota, he enrolled as a Psychology major with a History minor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. After attending Dr. Matthew Loayza‟s Foreign Policy class in Spring 2007, he contemplated switching his major to History; due to the extended period of instruction, he decided against it. He graduated December 2007 and hopes to enroll in Minnesota State University‟s Master of Business Administration program.
Mentor's Name
Matthew Loayza
Mentor's Email Address
matt.loayza@mnsu.edu
Mentor's Department
History
Mentor's College
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Guatemalan political elites have traditionally resorted to violence and repression in order to suppress social reform movements. In 1944, a group of middle-class reformers, including army captain Jacobo Arbenz, spearheaded a revolution that replaced dictator Jorge Ubico and began instituting genuine democratic reforms. The new civilian president, Juan Arevalo, sponsored new economic and political reforms intended to benefit the rural poor that constituted two-thirds of the Guatemalan population. Six years later, the revolution continued with the election of Arbenz, who promised to continue the efforts of his predecessor. However, U.S. officials, viewing developments in Guatemala through a Cold War prism, came to see Arbenz as a communist subjugating Guatemala and turning it into a Soviet proxy state. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisors responded by approving and implementing a Central Intelligence Agency plan to overthrow Arbenz and replace him with a counter-revolutionary leader, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. This paper examines the results of the 1954 American intervention, why it ultimately failed and why historians have come to view it as a mistake. It is based on relevant secondary literature and original U.S. government sources, including Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency telegrams, correspondence and National Intelligence Estimates.
Recommended Citation
Viskocil, Mark
(2008)
"Considering Democracy "An 'Unrealistic' Alternative": The Results of the 1954 American Intervention in Guatemala,"
Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato: Vol. 8, Article 16.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56816/2378-6949.1086
Available at:
https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/jur/vol8/iss1/16
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License