Jacobo %C3%81rbenz
Colonel Jacobo rbenz Guzmn , nicknamed also The Big Blonde or The Swiss for his Swiss origins, was a Guatemalan military officer and progressive politician who served as President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954. He was previously the Minister of Defense from 1944 to 1951. He was a major figure in the Guatemalan Revolution.
rbenz was born in 1913 to a middleclass family, son of a Swiss German Jakob Arbenz Grbli and wealthy Guatemalan Octavia Guzmn Caballeros, and graduated with high honors from a military academy in 1935. He served in the army until 1944, steadily rising through the ranks. During this period, he witnessed the United States backed dictator Jorge Ubico use the military to brutally suppress agrarian laborers. As an officer in the army, rbenz himself was required to escort chaingangs of prisoners. This process greatly radicalized him, and he began to form links to the labor movement. In 1938 he met and married his wife Mara Vilanova, who was also a great ideological influence on him. Another strong influence on him was Jos Manuel Fortuny, a wellknown Guatemalan communist, who was one of his main advisers during his government.
Source: Wikipedia