Editing Decree 900 (section)

==Background==
When Árbenz was elected in 1951, Guatemala had a high GDP but extremely unequal distribution of land: 2% of the population controlled 72% of the arable land. Only 12% of this land was under cultivation. Much of the population without land was [[Poverty|poor]], and had associated [[Diseases of poverty|health problems]].<ref name=Trefzger>Douglas W. Trefzger, "[http://www.ditext.com/trefzger/agrarian.html Guatemala's 1952 Agrarian Reform Law: A Critical Reassessment] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120713064808/http://www.ditext.com/trefzger/agrarian.html |date=2012-07-13 }}", ''International Social Science Review'', 22 March 2002.</ref> Indigenous people had been treated as subordinate for hundreds of years, and had become increasingly impoverished and dependent on wages from plantation work. Indigenous people were also required to serve as migrant laborers through legal coercion, as Guatemala's coffee industry expanded rapidly from the 1870s through the 1930s.<ref name=Wittman/><ref name=Davis/><ref>Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), pp. 8–9. "The 1879 Constitution excluded the indigenous population, the primary workforce in Guatemala, from citizenship (Reeves 159). Spanish and mestizo rights to land were restricted through the nationalization of land for the increased emphasis on coffee production."</ref>

After Juan Jose Arévalo won the 1944 election, Guatemala created a reformist constitution in 1945. This constitution explicitly stated that the government should protect communal land and create policies that would lead to equitable distribution of wealth.<ref name=Wittman/> Article 88 of the [[Constitution of Guatemala|1945 Guatemalan Constitution]], which served as the legal basis for Decree 900, stipulates: "It is a primary function of the State to develop agricultural activities and industry in general, toward the end that the fruits of labor shall preferentially benefit those who produce them and that the wealth shall reach the greatest number of inhabitants of the Republic."<ref name=Trefzger/> Article 90 recognizes the existence of private property, but suggests that rights to property could be waived in the social interest.<ref>Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), p. 9.</ref><ref>Theo R. G. Van Banning, ''The Human Right to Property'', ''Intersentia'' (2001), p. 141.</ref> This constitution marked the beginning of the Ten Years of Spring, also known as the [[Guatemalan Revolution (1944-1954)|Guatemalan Revolution]]: a period of democratization and liberal reforms.

Árbenz sought to transform Guatemala from a [[Feudalism|feudalist]] to a [[Capitalism|capitalist]] economy by distributing capital and creating infrastructure to increase production.<ref>McCleary, ''Dictating Democracy'' (1999), p. 10.</ref><ref name=UFHS>Marcelo Bucheli and Ian Read, "Jacobo Arbenz (1913–1971)", ''United Fruit Historical Society'', 2001–2006; accessed 19 November 2012.</ref><ref>David McCreery, "'An Odious Feudalism' : Mandamiento Labor and Commercial Agriculture in Guatemala, 1858–1920", ''Latin American Perspectives'' 13; accessed [http://lap.sagepub.com/content/13/1/99%20 via Sage], {{doi|10.1177/0094582X8601300105}}. "The shift of the North Atlantic economy in the nineteenth century from a predominance of mercantile to industrial capitalism, far from undermining the productive system or inducing and diffusing with in Guatemala modern capitalist relations, had the effect of strengthening precapitalist forms of exploitation and extending these to previously unaffected areas of the country."</ref><ref>Handy, "The Most Precious Fruit of the Revolution" (1988) pp. 683–684.</ref> The wish to transform Guatemala into a competitive capitalist nation led Árbenz to push for the construction of a national highway, a new port, a hydroelectric power plant—and for increased cultivation of unused lands.<ref>Gordon, "Case History of U. S. Subversion" (1971), p. 137. "Arbenz was determined to transform Guatemala into a modern capitalist state, to free it economically from dependence on world coffee prices and to wrest control of the economy from the US corporations dominating it. He launched four major projects to these ends: a highway to the Atlantic Coast to undercut the transport monopoly of the International Railways of Central America; an Atlantic port to compete with the one controlled by the Railway and the United Fruit Company; a national hydroelectric plant to lessen dependence on the Electric Bond and Share subsidiary; and an agrarian reform program which would greatly increase land and labor utilization and hence expand agricultural production, particularly of domestically-consumed foodstuffs."</ref>