wausfpp.org
Guatemala: It's the 1950s. The elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, creates a land reform program to give land to the peasants who work it. Problem: United Fruit corporation (UFCO). UFCO employees and board members include the husband of Eisenhower's personal secretary, the secretary of state of the USA, John Foster Dulles, and two directors of the CIA, one of whom is Dulles' brother Allen. UFCO owns all of Guatemala's banana production, runs the main harbor, owns all telephone and telegraph services in Guatemala, and nearly all railroad track. Arbenz tries to weaken its grip by building a new harbor and giving some UFCO land to peasants. He agrees to pay UFCO what UFCO has been saying the land is worth on its tax statements, but UFCO demands thirty times that much. While Arbenz has no diplomatic relationship with USSR, which has no interest in Guatemala at all, not even bothering to have an embassy there, he does allow communists to have political freedom, and has a few communists in his ministries.
US Information Agency creates huge propaganda campaign throughout Western hemisphere with conferences and articles in newspapers about "communist threat" in Guatemala. From a base in Florida the CIA plans a massive military campaign with help from Nicaraguan dictator Somoza. CIA acquired Soviet weapons to be brought into Guatemala as "proof" of Soviet complicity. June 1954 CIA aircraft drop leaflets, then begin a series of strafing and bombing raids on the capital, on military barracks, on schools, all to soften up the democratic govt. CIA-led forces invade from Honduras, install Colonel Castillo Armas as dictator.
Thousands arrested, many tortured, many killed, the usual. Opposition newspapers shut. New govt gives all land back to UFCO, bans all unions on banana plantations. CIA and US media create fake evidence of communist influence in Guatemala, disseminate it throughout the hemisphere. US support for Guatemalan dictatorships continues for forty years, with rise of communist guerilla army to oppose the US-backed government.
War continues. In 1980s US govt supports genocidal govt of Christian fundamentalist Efrain Rios Montt, which slaughters thousands of Indians in highlands (I don't know the most accurate figure on deaths; 100,000 - 200,000), creates one of world's most successful terrorist states. One govt policy is to round up villagers and shoot them en masse. Torture, disappearances, rape, people forced to shoot each other. US govt supplies training, leadership and money to these forces. Largely a war against indigenous highlanders, ended in total defeat for non-govt forces, "peace" accord in 1996, but still people being "disappeared." At a trial of Guatemalan military officers Guatemalans were chanting "U-S-A."
[Source for most of this is William Blum (2004, Common Courage Press) Killing Hope.]