What country did the Chiquita overthrow?

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asked Jul 30 in Other-Food Drink by sobbingmess (960 points)
What country did the Chiquita overthrow?

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answered Jul 30 by Caldecott (39,950 points)
The country that Chiquita overthrew was Guatemala.

Although Chiquita the fruit company did not actually overthrow Guatemala itself but they did play a significant role in the 1954 Guatemalan coup, in which the CIA backed overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

The intense lobbying and misinformation campaign that the company Chiquita was doing, combined with the CIA's covert operation, is what led to Arbenz's ousting and the installation of a U.S. backed military dictatorship.

In the year of 1952, the Guatemalan government began expropriating unused land that belonged to the United Fruit company for redistribution to landless peasants.

And United Fruit's feared the impact on it's business and also influence and so they launched a campaign to persuade the U.S. government to intervene.

The U.S. government, influenced by the United Fruit Company's lobbying and concerns about the spread of communism in Latin America, authorized the CIA to orchestrate a coup.

And the CIA's covert operation, code named Operation PBSUCCESS, involved arming, funding and training a military force to overthrow the Guatemalan government.

And in June of 1954, the CIA backed up coup succeeded in deposing President Arbenz Guzman.

The coup led to decades of the U.S. backed military dictatorships in Guatemala characterized by torture, violence and human rights abuses.

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