Arévalo was succeeded by Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, who continued the agrarian reform approach of Arévalo's government. Arévalo freely yielded succession to his presidency in 1951 to Jacobo Árbenz in the second democratic election in Guatemala's republican history. Following Árbenz's expulsion in 1954, open democracy would not return to a destabilized Guatemala for three decades. Arévalo went into voluntary exile in Mexico as a university professor and writer. On 27 March 1963 he returned to his country to announce his candidacy for the November presidential elections. Dictator Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, who, despite the firm opposition of the Kennedy administration, had pledged to oversee a free and open election in which Arévalo would participate, flew into exile to Nicaragua after he was deposed in a coup on 31 March 1963. Enrique Peralta Azurdia then seized power, and Arévalo fled the country again.