1952-53: GUATEMALA. The democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman behaves outrageously, guaranteeing freedom of the press, legalizing labor unions, guaranteeing equal rights for women and native people and maintaining a one-term limit for presidents.
This is really dangerous stuff and it gets worse.
Prior U.S.-puppet dictatorships in Guatemala had sold for a pittance vast tracts of land stolen from indigenous Guatemalans to the Rockefellers' United Fruit Company (Chiquita Bananas). United Fruit also owns the country's telephone and telegraph facilities, administers its only important Atlantic harbor and monopolizes its vital banana exports. A subsidiary of the company owns nearly every mile of railroad track in the country. Another U.S. corporation controls virtually all Guatemalan electric generation. All of this is courtesy of various U.S.-installed and maintained dictatorships.
In addition to his rash commitment to genuine democracy, a terrifying idea to the U.S. ruling class, Arbenz raises the ire of the Rockefellers by building a public highway and an Atlantic harbor to compete with their monopolies. Arbenz builds a major hydro-electric project to provide electricity at lower rates than the American-owned monopoly. The concept of free enterprise and competition is, of course, almost as repugnant to the Rockefellers as genuine democracy.
>Competition is a sin.
John D. Rockefeller