Resignation of Jacobo Árbenz

Date: June 27, 1954 • Location: Washington, United States

Jacobo Árbenz resigned as President of Guatemala following a CIA-led coup against his administration.

Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 25th president of Guatemala. He was Minister of National Defense from 1944 to 1950, before he became the second democratically elected President of Guatemala, from 1951 to 1954. He was a major figure in the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution, which represented some of the few years of representative democracy in Guatemalan history. The landmark program of agrarian reform Árbenz enacted as president was very influential across Latin America.