Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes

José Miguel Ramón Ydígoras Fuentes (17 October 1895 – 27 October 1982) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as the 32nd president of Guatemala from 1958 to March 1963. He was also the main challenger to Jacobo Árbenz during the 1950 presidential election. Ydígoras previously served as the governor of the province of San Marcos. He retained a great fondness for coffee as an adult, claiming to drink 10 cups of it in a day, and describing it as a "patriotic vice", referring to Guatemala's high coffee production. After Ubico was overthrown in the October revolution, Ydígoras was sent first to Washington, D.C., and then London, in diplomatic exile. He returned to Guatemala in 1950. The beginning of the leftist rebellion led to Ydígoras being accused of being "soft on communism" by other figures within the army. During his presidency, Ydígoras allowed the CIA to train the Cuban exile force that would be used in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Later life Later in his life, Ydígoras was bitter about the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In exile in El Salvador in 1974, he stated that he had been made a scapegoat for the failure, and that the US was responsible for his overthrow. Ydígoras died of a cerebral hemorrhage in October 1982, in a military hospital in Guatemala City, at the age of 87. He was survived by his wife and two children.