This book describes the interlocking relationship of government and multinational corporations (MNCs) that led to U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954. It explains the intervention in terms of the continuous penetration of the extended domain of the metropole.

Although most discussions of the Guatemalan "revolution" of 1944-54 focus on international and national politics, Revolution in the Countryside presents a more complex and integrated picture of this decade. Jim Handy examines the rural poor, both Maya and Ladino, as key players who had a decisive impact on the nature of change in Guatemala. He looks at the ways in which ethnic and class relations affected government policy and identifies the conflict generated in the countryside by new economic and social policies. Handy provides the most detailed discussion yet of the Guatemalan agrarian reform, and he shows how peasant organizations extended its impact by using it to lay claim to land, despite attempts by agrarian officials and the president to apply the law strictly. By focusing on changes in rural communities, and by detailing the coercive measures used to reverse the "revolution in the countryside" following the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, Handy provides a framework for interpreting more recent events in Guatemala, especially the continuing struggle for land and democracy.

In 1952, Guatemala enacted the Agrarian Reform Law Decree 900. The Decree became an instrument for national development through land redistribution and the development of agrarian rights. Although the law was only upheld for eighteen months, the Decree influenced land and labor legislation through today. Struggles for agrarian rights continued throughout the military dictatorship and civil war which plagued Guatemala until the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords. Ideals for land reform originating in the 1952 law continue to have a pervasive influence on the Guatemalan land reform movement. This study is further contextualized and framed with quotes and analysis from José Luis Paredes Moreira’s investigation of Decree 900 and its impact in Guatemala. The second section of this project includes an original translation of Decree 900.