Decree 900

14°36′48″N 90°32′07″W / 14.6133°N 90.5353°W / 14.6133; -90.5353 Decree 900 (Spanish: Decreto 900), also known as the Agrarian Reform Law, was a Guatemalan land-reform law passed on June 17, 1952, during the Guatemalan Revolution.^[1] The law was introduced by President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán and passed by the Guatemalan Congress. It redistributed unused land greater than 90 hectares (224 acres) in area to local peasants, compensating landowners with government bonds. Land from at most 1,700 estates was redistributed to about 500,000 individuals—one-sixth of the country's population.^[2] The goal of the legislation was to move Guatemala's economy from pseudo-feudalism into capitalism. Although in force for only eighteen months, the law had a major effect on the Guatemalan land-reform movement.^[3]

Indigenous groups, deprived of land since the Spanish conquest, were major beneficiaries of the decree. In addition to raising agricultural output by increasing the cultivation of land, the reform is credited with helping many Guatemalans find dignity and autonomy.^[4]^[5] The expropriation of land led major landowners–including the United Fruit Company–to lobby the United States government to intervene by construing the Guatemalan government as communist.^[6] Decree 900 was thus a direct impetus for the 1954 coup d'état, which deposed Árbenz and instigated decades of civil war.

^ "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1952–1954, GUATEMALA". US Department of State.
^ Gleijeses, Pietro (1991). Shattered Hope. p. 3. ISBN 9780691025568.
^ Harbour, Creating a New Guatemala (2008), pp. 1, 20.
^ Gleijeses, The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz (1989), p. 470. "What an anthropologist wrote of Guatemala in the early 1930s still held true in the fifties: 'The land is for the Indian the symbol of his right to live, the connecting link between the material life with the divine existence.' For the first time since the Spanish conquest, the government returned land to the Indians. For the first time, also, the rural workers and small peasants participated in trade union activities, even though their role was confined to the local level."
^ Gordon, "Case History of U. S. Subversion" (1971), p. 138. "The most striking feature of the Arévalo-Arbenz period was the organization and activity of the working class and peasantry, resulting in the development of new and powerful political groups—political parties, peasants' associations, agrarian committees for land allotment, labor unions, women's organizations."
^ Schlesinger, Stephen; Kinzer, Stephen (1999). Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 90–97. ISBN 978-0-674-01930-0.

[1] "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1952–1954, GUATEMALA". US Department of State.

[2] Gleijeses, Pietro (1991). Shattered Hope. p. 3. ISBN 9780691025568.

[3] Harbour, Creating a New Guatemala (2008), pp. 1, 20.

[4] Gleijeses, The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz (1989), p. 470. "What an anthropologist wrote of Guatemala in the early 1930s still held true in the fifties: 'The land is for the Indian the symbol of his right to live, the connecting link between the material life with the divine existence.' For the first time since the Spanish conquest, the government returned land to the Indians. For the first time, also, the rural workers and small peasants participated in trade union activities, even though their role was confined to the local level."

[5] Gordon, "Case History of U. S. Subversion" (1971), p. 138. "The most striking feature of the Arévalo-Arbenz period was the organization and activity of the working class and peasantry, resulting in the development of new and powerful political groups—political parties, peasants' associations, agrarian committees for land allotment, labor unions, women's organizations."

[6] Schlesinger, Stephen; Kinzer, Stephen (1999). Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 90–97. ISBN 978-0-674-01930-0.

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