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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency backed a coup commanded by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas against the democratically-elected president, Jacobo Arbenz. He was considered a communist threat, especially after legalizing the communist party and moving to nationalize the plantations of the United Fruit Company. Following the coup, Castillo was declared president, and set about reversing land reforms that benefited poor farmers. He also removed voting rights for illiterate Guatemalans.

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Jacobo Arbenz, (born September 14, 1913, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala-died January 27, 1971, Mexico City, Mexico), soldier, politician, and president of Guatemala (1951-54) whose nationalistic economic and social reforms alienated conservative landowners, conservative elements in the army, and the U.S. government and led to his overthrow.

Arbenz, the son of a Swiss pharmacist who had immigrated to Guatemala, was educated at the National Military Academy of Guatemala. He joined a group of leftist army officers that overthrew the Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944, and in 1949 he was the minister of war in Juan José Arévalo 's government. In March 1951 he succeeded to the presidency, supported by the army and the left-wing political parties, including the Guatemalan Communist Party.

Arbenz made agrarian reform the central project of his administration. This led to a clash with the largest landowner in the country, the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, whose idle lands he tried to expropriate. He also insisted that the company and other large landowners pay more taxes. As the reforms advanced, the U.S. government, cued by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became increasingly alarmed, fearing the threat to sizable American banana investments and to U.S. bank loans to the Guatemalan government as well. Also of concern to the United States were the increasingly close relations between Guatemala and the communist bloc of nations. A public-relations campaign painted Arbenz as a friend of communists (whose support he undoubtedly had); however, the contention of the U.S. government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and much of the U.S. media that Arbenz had close connections with the Soviet bloc proved to be unsubstantiated. Working in Honduras and El Salvador, the CIA helped to organize a counterrevolutionary army of exiles led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas. Exaggerations of the size of the invading force panicked the capital; the Guatemalan army refused to fight for Arbenz, and he was forced to resign (June 27, 1954) and go into exile. He traveled to Mexico, Switzerland, and Paris and was offered asylum in the Soviet-bloc countries for a time. Meanwhile, in Guatemala, Castillo Armas, who soon became president, reversed most of the reforms of the previous decade and offered generous concessions to foreign investors. In 1957 Arbenz moved to Uruguay, then to Cuba, and in 1970 he returned to Mexico, where he was granted permanent asylum. One year later he drowned in his bathtub in Mexico City.

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Jacobo Arbenz, (born September 14, 1913, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala-died January 27, 1971, Mexico City, Mexico), soldier, politician, and president of Guatemala (1951-54) whose nationalistic economic and social reforms alienated conservative landowners, conservative elements in the army, and the U.S. government and led to his overthrow.

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Guatemala’s 36-year civil war began as left-wing guerilla groups started resisting government military forces. The country was now under autocratic rule by Gen. Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, who assumed power in 1958 following the murder of Col. Castillo Armas. The long conflict was marked by abductions and violence, including mutilations and public dumping of bodies.

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Civilian rule was restored to Guatemala and Cesar Mendez was elected president, but the civil war only intensified with a major counterinsurgency campaign by the army.

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Military-backed Carlos Arana was elected president, and he immediately placed the country under a state of siege, giving the military more control over civilians.  For the next decade, a series of military-dominated governments escalated violence against guerilla groups and indigenous communities.

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The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report blaming the Guatemalan government for thousands of illegal executions and missing persons in the 1970s, and documenting accounts of the slaughter of members of Indian communities.

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General Efrain Rios Montt seized power following a military coup. He annulled the 1965 constitution, dissolved Congress and suspended political parties. Montt formed local civilian defense patrols alongside the military in the country and rural indigenous regions, through which he was able to reclaim most guerrilla territory. This crackdown against the newly-united coalition, the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity, marks one of the most violent periods of the civil war during which a large number of indigenous civilians killed.

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A new constitution was drafted and democratic elections for president resumed two years after Montt was ousted in another coup.

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Then-President Jorge Serrano illegally dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court and restricted civil rights, but was later forced to resign.

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Under President Ramiro De Leon Carpio, the former human rights ombudsman, peace talks between the government and rebels of the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity began and agreements were signed on several issues including human rights.

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A new president, Alvaro Arzu, was chosen in a runoff election. Under Arzu peace negotiations were finalized. Peace accords ending the 36-year internal conflict were signed in December of 1996.

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Following the release of the CEH report in 1999, President Álvaro Arzú apologized for the government's role in the atrocities of the war.[117] Ex-leaders of the URNG also apologized and asked forgiveness of the victims.[118]

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The National Reparations Program was created in 2003, mandated to focus on "material restitution, economic restitution, cultural restitution, dignifying victims and psycho-social reparations."[116] According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, as of March 2012, 52,333 victims had been registered with the PNR and of those, more than 24,000 victims and/or families had received monetary reparations for crimes including rape, torture, execution and forced disappearance. Some other measures, such as naming streets after victims and creating a "Day of Dignity" to commemorate victims, have been instituted. PNR has primarily worked on economic reparation.

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In 2012, President Otto Pérez Molina denied that there had been genocide in Guatemala, arguing that it was impossible as a large portion of the army was indigenous.[119]

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In March 2013, the trial against former president and dictator Jose Efrain Ríos Montt for the genocide of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixils began.[130] On May 10 2013, Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison (50 for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity).[133] He is the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide by a court in his own country.[134] However, ten days later, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the verdict.[135]

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On July 7, 2015, former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Ríos Montt was declared mentally unfit to stand trial for committing genocide.[136]

Later in 2015, there was a populist uprising that eventually led to President Otto Pérez Molina’s resignation and imprisonment.

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Benedicto Lucas García, former chief of military intelligence Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas, and Military Zone No. 17 senior officers Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez and Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña Rojas were found guilty of not only crimes against humanity, but also aggravated sexual violation related to the Molina Theissen case.[86][140] The case, which saw convictions for the forced disappearance of her teenage brother, was the first court judgement in Guatemala genocide trials which involved the forced disappearance of a child.[86] Three of the officials, including both Lucas García and Callejas y Callejas,[141] received a sentence of 58 years in prison, while Luis Gordillo received a 33-year prison sentence.[140][85]

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In November 2019, Lucas García, Callejas y Callejas and retired Colonel César Octavio Noguera Argueta received additional criminal charges related to the Maya Ixil genocide.[141] Luis Enrique Mendoza García, who was third in command of the Guatemalan army during the government of Efraín Ríos Montt, would be charged genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil population soon afterwards as well.[142] César Octavio Noguera Argueta died in November 2020 while still being prosecuted with his two co-defendants.[143]

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In January 2022, five former paramilitary officers of the pro-government Civil Self-Defense Patrols militia were sentenced to 30 years in prison for the rape of several Indigenous women during the time the genocide progressed in the early 1980s.[144]