In the early 1950s, the liberal Árbenz Government had effected the socio-economic agrarian reforms of Decree 900 (27 June 1952), the national expropriation and distribution to the peasants and of the unused, prime farmlands that multinational corporations (Guatemalan and US) had set aside as reserved business assets. The Decree 900 land reform especially threatened the agricultural monopoly of the United Fruit Company (UFC), the American multinational corporation that owned 42 per cent of the arable land of Guatemala; which landholdings either had been bought by or been ceded to the UFC by the military dictatorships who had preceded the Árbenz Government (1950–54) of Guatemala. In response to the expropriation of idle farmland assets, the United Fruit Company asked the US Governments of pr