ABSTRACT
Ubico entered Guatemala’s military academy at the age of sixteen, was a colonel by the time he was twenty-eight and was Minister of War from 1922 to 1926. He stood for the Presidency in 1928 but was defeated. The Wall Street crash was followed by a period of political crisis, and Ubico was invited by US ambassador Whitehouse to step in as interim
President. He kept power by fraud and repression until he was overthrown by a popular insurrection in 1944. He is chiefly remembered for his authoritarian methods, the economic stagnation of the 1930s and his pro-Nazi sympathies.
