Amanda Doyle

In exchange for UFC's political support and financial incentives to leaders, leaders gave UFC what they wanted at the expense of their own people –

Guatemala's dictator, Jorge Ubico, provided UFC vast land grants, allowed it to pay little or no taxes, and approved forced labor systems victimizing rural indigenous populations.

This blatant patronage, in which the government was organized to serve UFC's profits, is actually the origin of the phrase Banana Republic.

UFC workers endured extremely low wages, dangerous conditions, violent, often lethal repression of strikes and extreme hours.

You know that song, day, oh, day, oh, daylight, come man, me wanna go home.

That like, come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana.

That comes from the brutal hours and low wages of the UFC workers.

In 1944, Guatemalan students, workers, and civilians bravely rose up in revolution against authoritarian rule, forcing Obico out and opening Guatemala's 10 years of spring, the only sustained democratic experiment the country had ever known.

In the second ever democratic election of 1951, Arbenz, one of the officers who led the revolution, was elected president.

He was focused on four main democratic projects, labor rights, education, public health, and most importantly, land reform.

The goal of his land reform, called Decree 990, was to modernize the Guatemalan economy from a feudal economy to a capitalist one by buying back unused Guatemalan land and allocating it to peasant farmers to work the land to support themselves, to increase agricultural production and create a domestic market to reduce dependence on the single export crop of bananas.

This reform was vital.

Guatemala's economy was stagnant because land wasn't being farmed productively.

It was actually being intentionally hoarded and unused by the UFC.

The UFC owned land that was actually not in use, but it was strategically holding the land vacant so it could continue to tightly control production and profits.

it also often poisoned the land for the same reason, poisoned so no one else could farm it.

And that poison still infects the land today.

At this point in time, about 2% of landowners controlled more than 70% of Guatemala's land.

And the majority of Guatemalans, especially indigenous Mayan farmers, had no land at all.

So here comes Arbenz.