Editing Jacobo Árbenz (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Presidente Bernardo Arévalo participó en la actividad Caminemos juntos por "monumentos vivos"- Mapping de la Revolución" - 54080704476.jpg|200px|thumb|Photo of Árbenz projected on the National Palace during the official events commemorating the Revolution, 2024]]
Historian Roberto García Ferreira wrote in 2008 that Árbenz's legacy was still a matter of great dispute in Guatemala itself, while arguing that the image of Árbenz was significantly shaped by the CIA media campaign that followed the 1954 coup.{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=74}} García Ferreira said that the revolutionary government represented one of the few periods in which "state authority was used to promote the interests of the nation's masses."{{sfn|Garcia Ferreira|2008|p=61}} Forster described Árbenz's legacy in the following terms: "In 1952 the [[Decree 900|Agrarian Reform Law]] swept the land, destroying forever the hegemony of the planters. Árbenz in effect legislated a new social order&nbsp;... The revolutionary decade&nbsp;... plays a central role in twentieth-century Guatemalan history because it was more comprehensive than any period of reform before or since."{{sfn|Forster|2001|p=19}} She added that even within the Guatemalan government, Árbenz "gave full compass to Indigenous, campesino, and labor demands" in contrast to Arévalo, who had remained suspicious of these movements.{{sfn|Forster|2001|p=19}} Similarly, [[Greg Grandin]] stated that the land reform decree "represented a fundamental shift in the power relations governing Guatemala".{{sfn|Grandin|2000|p=221}} Árbenz himself once remarked that the agrarian reform law was "most precious fruit of the revolution and the fundamental base of the nation as a new country."{{sfn|Grandin|2000|p=239}} However, to a large extent the legislative reforms of the Árbenz and Arévalo administrations were reversed by the US-backed military governments that followed.{{sfn|Schlesinger|Kinzer|1999|pp=190–204}}