 Following the end of Arévalo 's presidency in 1951 , Jacobo Árbenz was elected to the presidency in a landslide . The progressive military leader of 1944 continued Arévalo 's reforms , and began an ambitious land @-@ reform program , known as Decree 900 . Under it , the uncultivated portions of large land @-@ holdings were expropriated in return for compensation , and redistributed to poverty @-@ stricken agricultural laborers . Approximately 500 @,@ 000 people benefited from the decree . The majority of them were indigenous people , whose forebears had been dispossessed after the Spanish invasion . Árbenz ' policies ran afoul of the United Fruit Company , which lost some of its uncultivated land . The company lobbied the US government for Árbenz ' overthrow , and the State Department responded by engineering a coup under the pretext that Árbenz was a communist . Carlos Castillo Armas took power at the head of a military junta , provoking the Guatemalan Civil War . The war lasted from 1960 to 1996 , and saw the US @-@ backed military commit genocide against the indigenous Maya peoples , and widespread human rights violations against civilians . 
