Short story: in 1953 Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala initiated a land reform program. Large uncultivated holdings were expropriated, the owners compensated as per the value they themselves declared on their tax forms, and redistributed to the landless peasantry. Previously, 2% of the population controlled 72% of the arable land (with the United Fruit Company alone owning 42% of arable land!), poverty was widespread, but at the same time much of the land was unused. Practices such as labour-as-rent meant that much of the population, especially indigenous persons, were effectively serfs in a feudal system. Health outcomes were also very poor.

After the reforms poverty was slashed, The government also created a line of credit for the newly landed farmers to get their things going: it dispensed $3,371,185 in loans during 1953. By July 1954 $3,049,092 had been paid back! An success almost without parallel in history.

Cutting to the chase, the US didn't like that, so they initiated one operation to boot him out and install a sympathetic dictator. It failed, so they tried again, and it succeeded. The new establishment proceeded to revert all those reforms, give back land to foreign hoarders. The US also placed death squads through the countryside to enforce the change, paving the way for decades of civil war.