 The Guatemalan Revolution ( Spanish : Revolución de Guatemala ) was the period in Guatemalan history between the popular uprising that overthrew dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944 and the United States @-@ orchestrated coup d 'état in 1954 that unseated President Jacobo Árbenz . It is also known as the Ten Years of Spring , highlighting the only years of representative democracy in Guatemala from 1930 until the end of the civil war in 1996 , and included a program of agrarian reform that was enormously influential across Latin America . 
