19541776 Club
Árbenz resigns and flees to the Mexican Embassy; the CIA's radio war has done its work
Operation PBSuccess never fielded an army large enough to win, but convinced Guatemala's military it already had; the elected president is gone before nightfall.
By the summer of 1954, Guatemala's elected president had redistributed 1.4 million acres of land to half a million landless farmers — and made a powerful enemy of the United Fruit Company in the process. The CIA, under Director Allen Dulles, ran a covert operation called PBSuccess: a small rebel force, a radio station broadcasting anti-communist propaganda, and enough psychological pressure to convince the Guatemalan army it was already defeated. On June 27, 1954, Jacobo Árbenz resigned the presidency and took asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Guatemala City. The civil war his ouster set in motion would not end for forty-two years…
