In 1963, the CIA intervened again, this time to prevent Juan José Arévalo, Árbenz’s predecessor and political mentor, from returning to the country to run for reelection. Three years later, on the eve of another election, in which the front-runner was a civilian reformer, the agency sent one of its “fixers” to work alongside the Guatemalan military on a campaign known as La Limpieza, a social cleansing that consisted of arrests, tortures, and executions.
