Beginning in 1948, Braden was a paid lobbyist for the United Fruit Company. When the company's interests were threatened in Guatemala by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, Braden helped to conceive and execute the 1954 coup d'état that overthrew him. In his first act as newly-ignaugurated President of Nicaragua on May 1, 1967, Anastasio Somoza Debayle conferred Nicaragua's highest decoration, the Grand Cross of Ruben Dario, on Ambassador Spruille Braden and his wife Verbena for their "unstinting efforts in the cause of freedom in all of Latin America".