A year later , in '' Operation PBSUCCESS '' , the CIA assisted the local military in toppling the democratically elected left-wing government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala and installing the military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas . The United Fruit Company lobbied for Árbenz overthrow as his land reforms jeopardized their land holdings in Guatemala , and painted these reforms as a communist threat . The coup triggered a decades long civil war which claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people ( 42,275 individual cases have been documented ) , mostly through 626 massacres against the Maya population perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan military . An independent Historical Clarification Commission found that U.S. corporations and government officials " exercised pressure to maintain the country 's archaic and unjust socio-economic structure , " and that U.S. military assistance had a " significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation "
626 massacres against the Maya population
Guatemalan genocide
Foreign policy of the United States