November 4, 1914 – July 26, 1957) was a military officer and the 28th president of Guatemala.

He came to power in a 1954 coup d'état backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency that
overthrew the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, and consolidated his position in
an October 1954 election in which he was the only candidate. A member of the right-
wing National Liberation Movement party, he was also the first of a series of authoritarian rulers
in Guatemala who were close allies of the United States. Under Castillo Armas, the reforms of
the Guatemalan Revolution were largely undone. Land was confiscated from small farmers and
returned to large landowners, and thousands of people were arrested, tortured, or killed under
suspicion of being communists. In 1957 Castillo Armas was assassinated by a presidential
guard. His policies sparked a series of leftist insurgencies culminating in the Guatemalan Civil
War, which lasted f