Árbenz, realizing that the US was determined to oust him, began to contemplate giving in. His government frantically offered to give United Fruit what it wanted. But it was too late for concessions. The communists and a few others urged Árbenz not to hand over power. In vain, a twenty-five-year-old Argentine doctor living in Guatemala City at the time, named Ernesto “Che” Guevara, volunteered to go to the front, then tried to organize civilian militias to defend the capital.
