ABSTRACT
Guatemala is a small state located in the middle of Central America, with coastlines on both the Caribbean and the Pacific. Under a series of prolonged dictatorships, the country has undergone continuous upheaval. The civil war, apparently concluded in 1996, had lasted for 36 years. In Guatemala, the roots of turbulence lie deep. With the Spanish conquest, Guatemalan Indians were forcibly integrated into Spanish culture and then into the capitalist world. Guatemala became independent in 1821, but this only served to replace the external power of Spain with, eventually, that of the USA. Between 1944 and 1954, there was a period of modernisation and democracy, but land reform in particular and the expropriation of land owned by US multinationals prompted a CIA-inspired overthrow of the government. The post-World War II history of Guatemala has been a classic of the Cold War period, during which the USA gave vast military support to oppose actual or supposed Marxist rebellions.
