 Following the coup , hundreds of peasant leaders were rounded up and executed . Historian Greg Grandin has stated that " There is general consensus today among academics and Guatemalan intellectuals that 1954 signaled the beginning of what would become the most repressive state in the hemisphere — a state responsible for the torture and murder of two hundred thousand of its citizens . " Following the coup and the establishment of the military dictatorship , a series of leftist insurgencies began in the countryside , frequently with a large degree of popular support , which triggered the Guatemalan Civil War that lasted until 1996 . The largest of these movements was led by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor , which at its largest point had 270 @,@ 000 members . 200 @,@ 000 civilians were killed in the war , and numerous human rights violations committed , including massacres of civilian populations , rape , aerial bombardment , and forced disappearances . Historians estimate that 93 % of these violations were committed by the United States @-@ backed military , which included a genocidal scorched @-@ earth campaign against the indigenous Maya population in the 1980s . 
