Editing Jacobo Árbenz (section)

===Beginning of exile===
After Árbenz's resignation, his family remained for 73 days at the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City, which was crowded with almost 300 exiles.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=56}} During this period, the CIA initiated a new set of operations against Árbenz, intended to discredit the former president and damage his reputation. The CIA obtained some of Árbenz's personal papers, and released parts of them after doctoring the documents. The CIA also promoted the notion that individuals in exile, such as Árbenz, should be prosecuted in Guatemala.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=56}} When they were finally allowed to leave the country, Árbenz was publicly humiliated at the airport when the authorities made the former president strip before the cameras,{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=62}} claiming that he was carrying jewelry he had bought for his wife, María Cristina Vilanova, at [[Tiffany's]] in New York City, using funds from the presidency; no jewelry was found but the interrogation lasted for an hour.{{sfn|''PR Newswire''|2011}} Through this entire period, coverage of Árbenz in the Guatemalan press was very negative, influenced largely by the CIA's campaign.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=62}}

The family then initiated a long journey in exile that would take them first to Mexico, then to Canada, where they went to pick up Arabella (the Árbenzes' oldest daughter), and then to Switzerland via the Netherlands and Paris.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|pp=64–65}} They hoped to obtain citizenship in Switzerland based on Árbenz's Swiss heritage. However, the former president did not wish to renounce his Guatemalan nationality, as he felt that such a gesture would have marked the end of his political career.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=66}} Árbenz and his family were the victims of a CIA-orchestrated and intense defamation campaign that lasted from 1954 to 1960.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=54}} A close friend of Árbenz, Carlos Manuel Pellecer, turned out to be a spy working for the CIA.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=55}}