In 1944, a wave of Democratization hits Latin America. After generations of semi-feudal labor conditions under successive liberal dictatorships, Guatemalan school teachers rise up and overthrow the regime. Inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, these New Deal reformers join with indigenous activists and their commmunist party allies to launch the "Ten Years of Spring", a political movement to emancipate the indigenous majority of Guatemala and liberate it from foreign domination.
The Guatemalan right-wing immediately launches coup attempt after coup attempt, but fails to dislodge the popular, legitimate governments of Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz. But Americans, in the form of the United Fruit Company, in alliance with both New Deal liberals and right-wing conservatives in Washington, are determined to restore their near-total domination over the region.
Their efforts will become the template for "regime change" in the 20th and 21st centuries.
***
Using Guatemala and Cuba as narrative case studies, this series tells the story of Latin America during the Cold War and the social movements that challenged both local elites and American capital.
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