Bananas : how the United Fruit Company shaped the world [2nd print. ed.] 9781841958811, 1841958816

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"Chapman's achievement is to make us reahze what a long and complex moral journey even something as seemingly innocent as a banana has made to our fruit bowls."- r//£ guardian (LONDON)

HOW THE UNITED

COMPANY SHAPED THE WORLD FRUIT

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BANANAS

Also by Peter

The

Chapman

Goalkeeper's History of Britain

BANANAS HOW

THE UNITED FRUIT COMPANY SHAPED THE WORLD

Peter

Chapman

II CANONGATE Edinburgh

•

New York •Melbourne

Copyright

© 2007 by Peter Chapman

Map © 2007 by

All rights reserved.

No

part

of this book

Begg

Ian

may be reproduced

in

any form or by any

electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information

storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except

by

a reviewer,

who may

institutions

publishers

quote brief passages

wishing

who would

to

in a review.

photocopy part or

like to obtain

all

Any members of educational

of the work for classroom use, or

permission to include the work

should send their inquiries to Canongate, 841 Broadway,

First

published in Great Britain

Canongate Books

Ltd.,

in

"200

2007 by

Edinburgh, Scotland

ISBN-10: 1-84195-881-6 lSBN-13: 978-1-84195-881-1

Canongate 841 Broadway

New York, NY

10003

Distributed by Publishers

Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

08 09 10

11

12

an anthology,

New York, NY

Printed in the United States of America

^

in

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

10003.

To Marie, Alex and Pepe

Acknowledgements Special thanks to: Sally (Holloway), for applying shape and

getting all

editing a

it

wodd, and

to the outside

in the FeHcity skills

whim and

Bryan

office; to

late

first

for his friendship

Marie Bill,

on

a

Friday night) going with the idea, to

for her

at

Canongate

for their help; to Clive

spotting the story and to

and support;

to

Marie

involvement and patience

I

Tim

(Whitfield)

for her concern,

('is it

finished yet?'),

Sue (and the boys) for helping whenever possible and

sister

and

II

Michele and

(Miller) for his acute

and enthusiasm for the subject, to Jamie for (on

Dan, Helen and everyone (Priddle) for

to Felicity,

Andy

Maria and a

much

my mother

for their support over

many

my

years;

belated note of thanks to Sussex, not least to

Roderick Ogley, John Maclean and Robin Murray.

Contents List

of characters

Memory

xi

Men

1

From

2

Lament

3

Roots of Empire

25

4

Monopoly

43

5

The Banana Man

59

6

Taming the Enclave

75

7

Banana RepubHcs

95

8

On

9

Coup

127

10

'Betrayal'

143

11

Decline and

12

Old and Dark Forces

173

Epilogue: United Fruit World

191

the

for a

of

Dying

Fruit

the Inside

Fall

1

13

113

159

Bibliography

211

Index

216

List

of Characters

Selected characters in order of appearance:

Eli Black: Last chief of United Fruit, his suicide in 1975

prompted

a furious reaction against the

company.

United Fruit Company: Multi-national

known

as

colossus, famously

the 'Octopus'. Mysteriously disappeared following

Eli Black's death.

Fidel

United

Castro: Cuban guerrilla, upbringing paid for by Fruit,

which

leased land to his father to

Seized power in 1959 viewing the

company

grow

sugar.

as a 'grave social

problem',

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nobel Prize-winning author, born in the

company's Colombian banana zone near the time of

the 1928 Santa Marta massacre.

Anastasio Somoza: Dictator of Nicaragua, deposed

whose family had enjoyed of

interests

for

many

in 1979,

years a close confluence

with the company.

Carmen Miranda: Brazilian entertainer. Enjoyed huge popuUS during the 'Good Neighbor' years of the

larity in the

1930s and 40s and inspired

many XI

in her 'tutti-frutti' hat.

BANANAS!

Dr Jose Maria

Castro: Nineteenth-century president of Costa

Rica whose wife,

Pacifica,

designed the national flag and whose

daughter, Cristina, married United Fruit boss

General Tomas Guardia: Brought the in the

Minor

Keith.

railroad to Costa

Rica

1870s and inadvertently opened the way to United

Fruit.

Minor

Keith: Keeper of the company store in Costa Rica

who went on century

as

Andrew

to lead the

company

in the early twentieth

the 'uncrowned king of Central America'.

Preston: Joined with Minor Keith in 1899 and ran

United Fruit from

its

headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.

General Manuel Estrada Cabrera: Dictator of Guatemala

who

seized

power

in

1898 and ceded

much of

it

to

United

Fruit six years later.

Samuel

Zemurray: The Banana Man. Organised the Honduran invasion of 1911 and was central to company affairs for over forty years.

Theodore Roosevelt: US

president

who

shared United Fruit's

expansionist views in the early twentieth century. the

company during

the building of the

Argued with

Panama Canal.

O. Henry: Author, coined the term 'banana repubHc' and portrayed

US

presence in Central America

loveable rogues.

xii

as

in

1904

a life

of

LIST OF

Lee Christmas: Led side his colleague

CHARACTERS

the 1911 invasion of

Guy 'Machine-gun' Molony.

Woodrow Wilson: US president, with United Fruit and

John Foster in Central

Honduras along-

its

1913-21, who crossed swords

weU-bred Boston

allies.

Dulles: Took a close interest in United Fruit

America from the

Went on when his brother Allen

to be

legal adviser.

First

US

affairs

World War and became

its

secretary of state in the 1950s

Dulles led the Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA); both instrumental in the 1954 overthrow of Guatemala's elected government,

which had made enemies of United

General Smedley Butler: Marine, unmasked plot against President

a

Fruit.

big-business

Franklin D. Roosevelt in the

1930s.

Blamed himself for the 'rape' of the Central American repubUcs. General Jorge Ubico: Guatemalan Bonapartist in the 1930s allowed

dictator

who

United Fruit to spread across the Central

American isthmus

to the Pacific.

Edward Bernays:

Self-professed propaganda guru, the 'Father

of Public Relations'. Orchestrated 1950s for the

US

public opinion

overthrow of Guatemala's elected government.

Senator Joseph McCarthy:

US

investigator of the 1950s 'red

menace'. Shared the company's world view.

President Jacobo Arbenz: Guatemalan the

company and deposed

dominated by

in the

his radical wife,

Maria.

Xlll

leader, adversary

of

1954 coup. Alleged to be

BANANAS! E.

Howard Hunt: Ubiquitous CIA man whose

paralleled that

career closely

of United Fruit in the 1950s and 60s. Jailed in

the 1970s for his role in the Watergate scandal.

Jose 'Pepe' Figueres: Costa Rican democratic leader invited

United Fruit to pay

got away with

who

for his country's welfare state,

and

it.

Jack Peurifoy: Brash

US

ambassador

who

supervised the 1954

coup from the Guatemalan end.

Richard Nixon:

US

vice-president in the 1950s. Went

be president and resigned

in

1974

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara: Tried the

company

in

as a result

on

to

of 'Watergate'.

armed

resistance to

Guatemala before making off

to join Fidel

to rally

Castro's guerrillas preparing their effort to

take

power

in

Cuba.

Jimmy Carter: US president, 1977-81, who advocated improved human

rights in Central

America. Regarded

at

home

as a

'weak'

leader.

General

Omar

of United the

Fruit.

Torrijos: Panamanian leader and opponent

Negotiated to have the

Panama Canal. Died

Ronald Reagan: US Cold War's

last battle

US

cede control of

in a plane crash in 1981.

president in the 1980s

on United

territory.

xiv

Fruit's old

who

fought the

Central American

LIST OF

CHARACTERS

John Negroponte: US ambassador

in 1980s

Honduras

who

said

he was not turning the country into 'an armed camp'.

Led

a successful

for the

2003

diplomatic career and

Iraq invasion

came out of retirement

and aftermath.

XV

i

From A

the

Memory

policeman called to the spot spoke of the

jumpers'. Locked in their

own

Men

of

selfishness

of

minds, they didn't think of

anyone 'down below'. This one killed himself in the Manhattan

number of people with

rush hour and could have taken any

him. Glass

fell

ramp used by

amid the

traffic,

the

body

itself

landing near a

US

postal service.

vehicles of an office of the

Postmen came out

to help

emergency workers

At dawn on Monday, February

1975

3,

clear up.

man had thrown

a

himself from the forty-fourth floor of the Pan-American building

on

New York's

as Eli

The jumper' was soon

Park Avenue.

identified

Black, aged fifty-three and head of United Brands, a large

food corporation. A

little

largest ever share deals

over five years

US

on the

over the United Fruit Company.

most famous —

if

not infamous

earlier, afi:er

one of the

stock market. Black had taken

He

had absorbed one of the

— companies

in the

world into

the United Brands group.

United built

an empire.

south of the republics':

was bananas. From bananas

Fruit's business

The

US

small states of Central

had come to be known

Guatemala, El

Salvador,

Costa Rica and Panama. United Belize

such

- former

as

British

America as

it

had

to the

the 'banana

Honduras, Nicaragua,

Fruit's

Honduras - and

reach extended to to

Caribbean

islands

Jamaica and Cuba. In South America, Colombia and

Ecuador had come under

its

sway.

I

A

company more powerful

BANANAS than

many

tomed

nation

states,

its

and accus-

itself

private fiefdom.

then had Black killed himself? Business was not

thriving.

A new banana disease had struck United Fruit's planThe Middle

tations in the early 1970s.

1973 had taken

of

law unto

a

to regarding the republics as

Why

cartel

was

it

its

on company

toll

East

war of October

OPEC,

fortunes:

the

of oil-producing countries, had multiplied the price

oil several times,

had had

which had

a particular effect

hit the

on United

banana-producing countries had

UPEB,

set

up

world

whole but

as a

Fruit. Latin a cartel

America's

of their own:

the union of banana-exporting countries.

UPEB

had

promptly declared 'banana war' on United Fruit to get more

money

out of the company.

From

the

money

it

minimum.

Fruit had always paid the producers the bare

1974 nature had taken

hand. Hurricane

a

Fifi

made, United In

had devastated

the company's plantations in Honduras. Hurricanes were an

occupational hazard in banana farming but

unprecedented force All these factors

a

wind of near

was of

Fifi

biblical proportion.

had contributed to United

Fruit's

current

malaise. Strangely, the business

world suggested another dimension

Amid

the expressions of sympathy at his

to Black's suicide.

funeral, in the press

of Wall killed

A

Street,

him.

He

and around

New York's

some wondered whether was

a

man

financial centre

Black's ethics

had

was

said.

of exceptional morality,

it

devout Jew, he was from ten generations of rabbis. Thirty

years before, Black

had been ordained and had served

a

Long Island. He had subsequently ventured — he was a brilliant salesman and had made some spectacular deals - but had retained his principles. community

in

into business

At Christmas 1972 an earthquake

2

in Nicaragua

had destroyed

FROM THE MEMORY OF MEN Managua, the

the centre of tion,

United Fruit was quick

of the time was the

who worked pay.

capital city.

to send aid.

A

Black's direc-

popular

poor conditions and

in

generosity of

spirit.

cause

for very

Black opened negotiations with their unions.

him mad

considered

his business associates

US

of Latin American farm workers,

fate

US

in the

Under

Soon

of

for such apparent

an

after his death,

Wall Street Journal suggested

low

Many

article

in the

might mean there was no place

it

of high moral standards in an uncompromising

for a person

financial world.

In 1975

I

was

student

a

the University of Sussex.

at

sorry to say that Black's death struck

The

idea of anyone

who

me

as

am

I

bizarrely comic.

ran United Fruit occupying the

moral high ground seemed absurd. The company's long history rendered

it

the ultimate 'corporate nasty'.

ments when

didn't like them, like the

it

It

one

changed governin

Guatemala

1954 that had wanted to donate some of United unused land

to landless peasants. In 1961

sailed to the

Bay of

Fidel Castro.

As

in the massacre

far

Pigs in

back

as

Cuba

in

in

Fruit's

United Fruit ships

an effort to overthrow

1928 the company was implicated

of hundreds of striking workers in Colombia.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez had written about the strike in

One Hundred

Years of Solitude.

Born

he had taken the name of

'Macondo' from

home

that

of

a

just before the massacre,

fictional

his

banana zone of

United Fruit plantation near

his

in Aracataca.

In the

1970s, information from Latin

surprisingly scant.

At the time,

I

of the earthquake in Nicaragua; the country's

name

3

still

saw television news footage I

don't think

A man

said before.

America was

I'd

ever heard

was climbing across the

BANANAS ruins;

he was overweight and doing so with

was consohng the bereaved and dispossessed.

He

Somoza, the president. There had been other

him and another him.

The

Anastasio, his son,

president ran

many of

was amazing he had any time

to

was Anastasio

Somozas before

was waiting to succeed

Nicaragua's businesses and

run the country

would do

already been speculated that he

but he

difficulty,

at all. It

it

had

well from the antici-

pated flood of earthquake relief funds.

Soon

after,

I

caught another programme,

mentary on Central America, first

time that

can

I

hundred miles of railway on east

its

coast. The

on the high

Honduran

years the city

and

had duly given the United Fruit Company

it

rialised.

grow

to

had been promised

its

a

capital,

central plateau. For

many

on which

built several

plantations in the distant north-

of the country on the Atlantic

Tegucigalpa, by contrast was

docu-

Company was

was reported, had

it

BBC

Honduras. For the

the United Fruit

recall,

mentioned. The company,

specifically

a rare

railway of

its

a lot

own,

of land

bananas, but the line had never mate-

Tegucigalpa, therefore, was one of the few capitals of

the world, possibly the only one, that didn't have

own

its

railway station.

As for bananas, I already had some

two months on Syria, at the

a

banana kibbutz

in Israel,

I

had spent

on the border with

southern reaches of the Israeli-occupied Golan

Heights, and Jordan. tractor

interest because

Its

plantation was a few minutes' drive by

from the kibbutz's

residential buildings,

and formed

kind of detached enclave on the outer edges of kibbutz It

was

a

few yards from the

far

a

Hfe.

nearer the neighbouring Jordanian village and only frontier wire.

The banana

plants

grew

to about five metres high, their fronds arching over us to

make

for a lot

of pleasantly refracted sunlight. Mostly, however,

4

FROM THE MEMORY OF MEN the plantation was a sweaty and contained world. Tarantulas

and scorpions allegedly lurked in each stem of bananas, though they failed to reveal themselves

were warned against snacking on with

which,

it

was

around

said, liberally pissed

any

fallen fruit, especially

had received the attention of

split skin, in case it

We

alone bite or sting.

let

rats,

in the plantation

by

night.

The work

involved

humping banana stems of some

forty kilos

hours

a day. Just

each from banana plant to tractor easy enough not to be onerous,

the 'dignity of labour'. a day but all

I

trailer for six

my

was

it

The pay amounted

experience of

first

to only a

few pence

quite enjoyed being out of the world of money.

those with

me

agreed: 'fucking communists', said Irwin,

Not

my

co-worker from Brooklyn.

Such experience of the world sity.

a

With

and

fees paid

detached enclave in

the forest ical

it

its

did

I

eventually

I

own a

came

me

to univer-

went

to Sussex,

took with

government right,

on the English south

improvement.

When

a

grant,

its

I

campus carved out of

and devoted to theoret-

coast

course in International Relations. to writing

my

final thesis

I

chose

the case of United Fruit and the banana republics.

'Banana republic' was

inoffensively jokey, at worst a

enough term.

It

had seemed

form of shorthand

for political

a familiar

and economic mismanagement, probably with corruption

thrown

in, plus

an element of national dependence on some

large external force.

It

turned out, however, to be

nising and derogatory term than

I

viewed by the countries and people It

was used

as if

it

a

more

had imagined, to

whom

described their original

patro-

at least as

it

was applied.

state,

while saying

little

of what role any aforementioned large external force

may have

played in creating or exacerbating their predicament.

very

5

BANANAS By

United Fruit had invented the concept and

actions,

its

of the banana repubUc*

reality

One

thing

I

my

learned during

research was that such a

repubhc didn't have to produce bananas to quahfy for the

title.

Nicaragua, for example, did not grow bananas in any great

commercial quantity. The country's banana republicanism resided in the happy coincidence of views enjoyed by the

Somoza

ruling

had been

family.

first

United Fruit and the US. The Somozas

to offer their services to assist in

Guatemalan coup

both the

1954 and the Bay of Pigs invasion in

in

1961. Washington regarded the Somozas' army (weU-equipped

with

US

arms) and United Fruit

as forces for stability that

kept Central America subdued.

By

the mid-1970s,

when

national corporations had

was writing

I

become

a

my

theme of the

thesis,

multi-

age. Salvador

AUende's left-wing government had been overthrown in Chile

by the armed forces led by General Augusto Pinochet. The International Telephone Sc Telegraph Corporation (ITT), a

US company to be

that

behind

had caused

it.

crisis

interests in Chile,

At the same time, OPEC's around the world, yet the

emerged with huge in Britain, was

had big

profits. Barclays

oil

was thought

oil

price rises

companies had

Bank, meanwhile, based

making big money out of apartheid

in

South

Africa.

But

in

all

such corporate practices United Fruit had been

there before. In order to price-fix, United Fruit hadn't trou-

bled with setting up

Never

let

commercial

name of

cartels,

it

just did the

job on

its

own

such sober interpretation, however, get in the way of a good idea.

a chain

'Banana Republic' has more

of mid-range clothing

6

lately

stores.

been employed

as

the

FROM THE MEMORY OF MEN through monopoly control of

its

market. As for repressive

regimes, they were United Fruit's best friends, with coups d'etat

among

its

United Fruit had possibly launched more

specialities.

on the banana's behalf than had

exercises in 'regime change'

even been carried out in the

name of

oil.

United Fruit had set the template for capitalism, the

modern

multi-nationals. Certainly there

big companies, the British East India

had been

at its

peak

in the 1700s.

Crown and dependent on

of the

had been other and older

Company, for example, which

By

mid- nineteenth century,

the

however, the East India Company, was

better:

first

agent of the

a licensed

knew

the British Empire. United Fruit

did things differently and beyond formal imperialism.

it

could often count on the help of the

US

It

government and the

CIA but maintained its boast that it had 'never called in the marines'. There were other older companies than United Fruit

modern types.

era too, but originally they

The US's nineteenth-century

ways, steel and banking

made

had been stay-at-home

'robber barons' in

their profits

beyond national borders. They had paid eventually laws were extent, they

made

a

set

up

this fate

contrast, for a

because

it

as

long

was out on

own enclave in Central America,

its

network of far-flung plantations and company towns

acted

far

a penalty for this as

were forced to 'behave'. By

wider frontier. It had

oil, rail-

without straying

to curb their practices and, to some

time United Fruit had avoided a

in the

that

an experimental laboratory for capitalism, unhindered,

unwatched and forging ahead into the

United Fruit had

started

of

and become

a railway line

with

a

great

unknown.

few bananas grown a global

power.

forms and went by many names: La Fmtera, the El Yunay,

as in

It

at

the side

took many

fruit

company;

Yunay-iQd Fruit; or simply La Compahia. Famously

7

BANANAS it

was El Pulpo, the octopus,

its

tentacles everywhere.

greedy and controlled millions of acres of land, only

of which

tively small part less

small farmers,

it

kept the

railways, a

countries built and paid

United

Fruit's

used. In countries of

against the heat,

many

plantations

its

it

had

good number of which

land-

fifteen

host

its

for.

Great White Fleet of refrigerated ships,

comprised the world's

'reefers',

was

keep out competitors and

rest to

and around

for a 'rainy day'. In

hundred miles of

it

It

a rela-

largest private navy. Painted

ships ran cruises to places of

its

could scarcely dream: Havana with

its

which people

casinos, brothels

and

other palaces of entertainment; the cays of Belize; the Panama Canal.

Its

in-house slogan, however, upheld

Its

merchant

line: 'every

banana

plantation hospitals,

modate

its

a guest,

which were mainly

status

built to

supervisors and managers brought

US, formed the

its

every passenger a

as

a

pest'.

accom-

down from

the

system in the world. In

largest private health

Guatemala the company saved the Mayan ruins of Quirigua firom the jungle.

installed the

It

of the Costa Paean For

my

There was other

thesis

I

it,

in the

more

as far as

modern

devoted to ature,

I

could

the company.

tell

than on any

Myriad left

articles,

academic

and right had been

United Fruit had even made the leap into

not that

from Chile, Fruit's

and polemics between

it.

on

For years United Fruit had

era.

attracted a great deal of attention. dissertations

electric street lighting

San Jose. United Fruit was power.

read the available material

of

a lot

company

tramways and

capital,

it

in

would have chosen

to.

Pablo Neruda was

South America, and well away from United

sphere of influence, yet in 1950 he

include a critique of the

Americas, Canto

liter-

company

in his epic

felt

inspired to

poem

about the

Ge^iera/. Through such attention. United Fruit

8

FROM THE MEMORY OF MEN had entered Latin American

Marquez had

folklore. Garcia

illus-

trated the point in the 1960s. Also, Miguel Angel Asturias,

The Green Pope, about

from Guatemala, had written

his novel,

United

country and had

Fruit's exploits in his

won

Nobel

the

Prize for literature in 1967.

By

the mid-1970s the hostile debate that United Fruit had

long prompted had died down. The company had transformed

more

into being invective.

Maybe,

tentacled

power

as if itself

matter for cultured reflection than fiery

a I

dared to presume. El Pulpo wasn't quite the

it

had once been. Then something happened

an act of magical realism. After

a

sudden, almost

violent upsurge of interest in United Fruit around the time

of Black's suicide, the company vanished.

The famously

moral,

late

and departed chief of United Fruit

He

had bribed members of

hadn't been

what he had seemed.

the military

government of Honduras.

in their country's

hour of need

inducement — one and

a

after

He

had calculated

Hurricane

Fifi, a

quarter million dollars

had waged war on United

Historically, this

company the years

was

a

cartel

Fruit.

very United Fruit thing to do. 'Fruit

bribes Central

American

miUtarist'

the stuff of

news than

a

less

small

— might

encourage them to pull Honduras out of the banana that

that,

had become over

statement of the obvious.

Yet the transgression provoked a storm of opprobrium,

a

whirl-

wind of moral

outrage. Strangely enough, this was not

United

most obvious enemies — bolshie students,

Fruit's

academic polemicists and Latin American magic

from

its

own

realists

from

- but

kind.

Wall Street was outraged. The company's shares crashed. The financial authorities 'its

muscled in to

further violation of the law'.

9

seize

The

cry

its

books, to prevent

went up

that

United

BANANAS up to

Fruit was

old tricks again from quarters willing to

its

overlook them in the

past.

Fruit out of the temple.

It

The was

was

effect

United

to drive

death squad from the

as if a

company's old Central American area had 'disappeared'

United

the

streets.

past

had done much

to

it

off

anti-democratic tendencies in the

Fruit's

encourage death squad

Now

activities.

familiar pattern. Quickly everyone stopped

events followed a

talking about the victim in anything but whispers; soon they

did not mention

As

for

his end.

EH

it

Black,

To smash

at

all.

more

Had

it

details

his office

ever been there?

emerged on how he had met

window he had used

his briefcase,

which was laden with papers and heavy books. He had thrown the briefcase out of the window, the papers scattering for blocks

around and retrieved by the postal and emergency workers

had been engaged anyone found to

One

in the clear-up.

a suicide note.

On

it

scrap

who

was the nearest

Black had written

'early

retirement, 55', suggesting he had plans to leave the company,

or others had such plans for him. It

materialised that Black had lost the confidence of his

senior managers,

the

company and

who had been

trying to get

into retirement.

As

a face-saving

they had approached the State Department, as

him out of

in

guardian of the US's foreign and diplomatic

its

measure capacity

affairs,

asking

The in number back reply, the a of countries came most likely of which was Costa Rica. There remains no way of knowing whether Black would have taken the post, or if Costa Rica would have taken someone from United Fruit.

if

any overseas ambassadorships were up for renewal.

names of

But a

it

was the country where United

Fruit's story

had begun

century before. In the circulariry of his masterwork,

10

it

seemed

that Garcia

FROM THE MEMORY OF MEN Marquez might have predicted United had referred

to his imaginary

Fruit's fate.

Macondo

in

of Solitude as a 'city of mirrors (or mirages)'.

had maintained inirrors, a

rule

its

How United

trick as practised

by

of chancers and charlatans, philanthropists and

somehow

Fruit

United Fruit Company had

a collection

fakirs. Yet, in

for a century

controlled a vast domain. Finally, the company, like

Macondo, had been struck by disaster

Years

had been an exercise in smoke and

huge confidence

singular fashion, the

The author

One Hundred

imminent,

its last

search for meaning,

a biblical

hurricane and, with

character had engaged in a deranged

knowing he was not going

to get out

of

its

heyday one of the most formidable companies

in the world.

United Fruit had been 'wiped out by the wind

it

alive.

In

and exiled from the

But

exiles

memory of

can return.

men'.

2

Lament

Bananas are cheap and

a

all

around

With no woody trunk

trees.

Dying

for a

herb and the world's

or bough, the banana

tallest grass.

a primitive island paradise

off a tree'.

The

fruit

plant and tends to

when

green.

but they don't grow on

us,

further confused the issue in South

of

Pacific

with their evocation

and 'bananas you can pick right

sour.

It

is

when

sale

The

vast majority last

on the

plantation in a

within twelve to thir-

teen days, three hundred hours, of cutting.

and see out their

a

still

and shipped

best picked

Normally bananas come from

very distant country to point of

start to rot.

a plant,

is

Rodgers and Hammerstein

does not ripen well

grow

Fruit

Any

later

and they

of bananas arrive in good time

days before market in industrial ripening

rooms.

Hot and damp growth, such

as

tropics. Central

are the banana's preferred conditions for

those found in the coastal lowlands of the

America's Atlantic coast

Bananas rarely grow outside the tion

and Iceland another,

is

therefore perfect.

tropics. Israel

in proximity to

its

its

occasional

proved the experiment's unravelling. Bananas thrive in

rich sandy a lot,

one excep-

steaming geysers.

Florida was once tried as a banana location but frosts

is

loam and,

since they

grow

need good drainage. Banana

13

where

plants enjoy the

of swamp but not actually being in standing in water.

in areas

it;

it

rains

ambiance

they cannot survive

BANANAS Banana

plants

grow

and nine metres. The are to hurricanes.

of between two and

to a height

they

taller

are,

To grow them,

underground stems of mature

more vulnerable they

the

from the

cuttings are taken

and planted.

plants

a half

A

month

later a tight roll

of leaves appears. As they grow, these

unfurl, quite

every six to twelve days and look like large

drooping is

fast,

feathers. The pulpy, fibrous 'trunk'

really the stalks

up

are

have

to three metres

leaves.

of the banana plant

Full-grown

leaves, or fronds,

long and sixty centimetres wide and

sweeping elegance,

a certain

start to

of these

rolls

until they split across

and

look untidy.

After ten

months

leaves, at the

a large

end of

bud appears from the unrolling

stem.

a

The bud

itself

made up of

is

small purple leaves that pull back to reveal clusters of small flowers. These clusters

grow

into tiny banana bunches.

are 'hands', the bananas called 'fingers'.

to

twenty fingers per hand and

They grow

five to ten

Bunches at

eight

hands per stem.

As the stems become heavier, they bend down and droop towards the ground, and

the bananas

as

grow

larger they

curve upwards.

Four to the stem

five

months

Experienced stem will

later the fruit

down. The violated stem carriers, often

wear an appropriate hat

into their hair.

bleached

it

I

known in the trade

to avoid having this juice leak

few weeks,

my

hair

fell

It

looked great for

and mind. They flourish in

regions, full of mosquitoes. bite

with the inside of

a

It is

areas hostile to

said that if

banana skin

14

a

out.

Bananas grow in distant realms, mysterious sight

as 'backers',

shampooed mine thoroughly every day and

dry in the afternoon sun.

while. After a

harvested by cutting

is

gives off a sticky juice.

it

places,

out of

man, malarial

you wipe

a

mosquito

will ease the itch. I've

LAMENT FOR A DYING FRUIT tried

of

it

and

worked

it

qualities, real

for

me. We attribute to bananas

all

sorts

and imagined.

Bananas have been

solve virtually every health

to

said

problem: obesity, blood pressure, depression, constipation. They have natural sugars for lasting energy, potassium to regulate

They

mood

blood sugar

levels, fibre for

alternatively

calm you down, containing the neurotransmitters

dopamine and seratonin

the bowels.

that, respectively,

hft the

or

repHcate Ecstasy and

Prozac.

Bananas stand for 'peace and in the 1960s in

love'.

Donovan sang about

'Mellow Yellow'. According

to his song's lyrics,

the banana was capable of 'electrical' effect.

counter-culture skins,

or so

smoked

was

it

this

To achieve

it,

the

the scraped and dried innards of banana

said.

The banana makes

us laugh. In a light-hearted

way

it

is

associated with insanity: 'going bananas', says the Oxford En^lisli Dictionary, entered linguistic

currency in 1935.

great deal of fun with the fruit: Charlie

on

others slipped ran riot with

it:

it.

From

'Have

on

'dirty' postcards

a

Chaphn and many

the 1920s to the 1950s music halls

a banana!' It

difficult to take seriously

Comedy had

was perhaps suggestive but

Banana humour

is

of the type featured

of the 1950s sent from outrcachcs of

England's disappeared holiday land Hke Clacton and

Bognor

Regis. In the

US Carmen

Miranda danced and sang with bananas

to great acclaim in her films

of the 1930s and 1940s. In one.

The Gang's All Here, her female chorus

laid

around her waving

huge make-beUeve bananas between

their legs. The scene

with an explosion of tropical

from her

Bananas speak to our

we up

to

it?

fruit

insecurities,

tutti-frutti hat.

male in

particular.

United Fruit used to make play of

15

ended

Are

this in its

BANANAS advertising.

was

banana of

pure statement of

not have been of

its

manuals on etiquette

than nine inches,

less

Of

for requirements.

fit

this as

No

With

to eat bananas.

symbolism

phallic

American

On

drawing back the

by way of direct conveyance to the mouth. to be

mind,

in

the turn of the nineteenth and twen-

at

tieth centuries taught well-bred

way

would

interpretation

fact; salacious

doing.

boasted,

it

company presented

course, the

touched by the

fingers.

A

ladies the correct skin, this

was not

Nor was

the fruit

and fork were

silver knife

used to cut and duly dispatch the banana in bite-sized pieces.

Any gentleman cause to

in attendance at such a ritual

uncomfortably in

shift

The banana manages with assumed

to

might have had

his chair.

mask much of

its

subhminal side

of innocence. Advertisements in the

qualities

1950s and 1960s on British commercial television,

phenomenon

at

the time, invited

you

were

still

the

novel

to 'Unzip a Banana'.

Was any connection drawn between zipping and wouldn't consciously have thought about

a

still

it.

zippers?

We

Anyway, fly buttons

norm.

In the late 1950s Harry Belafonte had a huge hit with the

'Banana Boat Song', a calypso about stevedores in the Caribbean approaching the end of their night like they

were having

Britain,

had no grasp of

such

I

a place.

Yet

it

shift:

a great deal

'Dayy-O!' It

why anyone would want

was already over

a

of Caribbean migrants seeking work and

been

sounded it

in

to leave

decade since in 1948

the Windrush, a banana boat, had brought the

In 1958 there had

all

of fun. Listening to

a

'race riots' in the

first

new life

shipment

in England.

Notting Hill

district

of London with the immigrant community alleged to be 'stealing

our jobs' and - perhaps more significantly -

our women'.

i6

'stealing

LAMENT FOR A DYING FRUIT As

and other such poHtical machinations

d'etat

where

it

no one laughs

of origin.

too serious

far

It is

depend. When

worked

I

at

the banana in

a business,

in Central

in the regions

known of

grown, we simply wouldn't have

is

a thing. (Incidentally,

lives

innocence being confounded by coups

for the banana's

its

such areas

on which jobs and

America,

I

never heard

one banana joke.)

The banana origins of

spans our history of imperfection from the fanciful

man

vations

on

banana

leaf,

to the

modern consumer

society. Scholarly obser-

the matter have suggested that rather than a fig leaf, that

it

Adam

was probably

and Eve wore

a

in

to hide their shame. The fig leaf

might have

looked most appropriate, but would have been too

difficult to

the Garden of

Eden

attach to the body.

The banana

leaf,

with

drape and wrap around things, was far

When

it

comes

there are few

to our

its

superior ability to

more

suited to the part.

contemporary shopping preferences,

more popular items than

the banana.

since outstripped the apple as our favourite fruit.

have gone further, rating the banana products on supermarket shelves. ably set aside such dull basics of

life as

that the only products beating the

market shopping

lists

among

One

of

fruit stakes

Clement after the

what

the most popular

study,

which presum-

banana on to our super-

were petrol and lottery

is

Recent claims

milk and bread, suggested

these qualify as true supermarket items but, either way,

has long

It

tickets.

may be

a

Whether

moot

an exotic and apparently marginal piece

an extraordinary claim on consumer affections.

Attlee, Britain's

prime minister

Second World War, had

a

in the early years

United Fruit shipload of

bananas brought over in 1945 to herald the idea of

new state'

point,

future. This

was to be

and the boat had

a

'Social

Democracy' and the

a bright

'welfare

banana on board for each child and

17

BANANAS pregnant mother of the land. His gesture, however, was taken

Waugh,

in other ways. Evelyn

melancholic terms, of a

lost

the novelist, saw

it

in

more

and glorious past.When the bananas

arrived for his three children, he had his wife serve the fruit

with

cream and sugar and scoffed the

rare

Auberon

(His son

had

his father

later

to say

lot in front

of them.

wrote that he had not taken anything

on

and morals very seriously there-

faith

after.)

The bananas

as a gift

from

greater luxuries to for

was

British public at large

some

less

benevolent

a

disposed to view the

than

state

first

week of

a hospital.

reached

By

promise of

while. Attlee delivered his greatest triumph three

and

years later, the National Health Service,

the

as a

come. They would remain disappointed

it

an EngHsh

in

1948 was the year

home

stately

when

Britain's

along with the public

a height,

s

I

was born in

converted into

post-war austerity

frustration

with

it.

then the subversive banana had long since slipped in

beneath the wire and people were hankering for more of the

TVs, in

and other goods they heard everyone had

fridges, cars

America. In

some

tion of the

became

them

Rare

Cold War and beyond. In Eastern Europe bananas

Union than

in the Soviet

as possible to

visitors

altars

be looked

formed

for

Germany keeping them for as

for other foods. In East

of bananas, at

or offered to honoured guests.

from the West found themselves mystified by the

solemn ceremony place

allure lasted for the dura-

the symbol of 'The West'. Longer queues

people laid out virtual

long

weird

areas the banana's

that

accompanied such

a seemingly

common-

gift.

When tunists

the Berlin Wall

were

first

came down

in

1989 freelance oppor-

into the breach, relieving East Berliners of

i8

LAMENT FOR A DYING FRUIT Western Deutschmarks in exchange for bananas.

their five free

The

East Berliners didn't care.

and marched on they went: 'Hold

Contrary to

banana we

my

hand,

appearance

its

They bought them,

ate

them

Many sang and chanted and take me to Banana Land'.

to the other side.

know

is

as a

as

primitive thing of nature, the

nothing of the kmd. United Fruit created

The company took bananas out of their jungle environment - they don't grow particularly well there - and put it.

them

into

huge

plantations, for mass production

and mass

consumption.

The banana

is

of the botanical genus Musa and has some

One

three hundred varieties.

wild type, Musa acuminata

giant jungle herb containing a mass of hard seeds that it all

but inedible. Musa paradisiaca

varieties

is

among

is

a

make

macho

the long

associated with Afro-Caribbean cuisine. Dessert

bananas include the stubby

Red Macabu and

Lady Finger. Another type dares

to be

the small yellow

named

One

Bananas come short and long, while

tastes

more

some

are straight, as if to

like a pear.

comply with

mythical regula-

a

European Union. Another, the

tion of the

'Apple'.

quadrilateral,

is

square.

United Fruit whittled the to one. This

tive varieties

good

Hke the

a thicker skin less

purposes It

down

was econom-

More sizeable than alternaRed Macabu or Lady Finger, Big Mike for profits.

meant consumers simply

nation with

its

was the Gros Michel or 'Big Mike'.

ically 'efficient',

With

varieties for

ate

more banana.

than some, Big

Mike

It

also travelled well.

arrived at

its

desti-

bruising.

United Fruit was

a

pioneer of mass production. With

one-size-fits-all banana, the

company 19

beat

Henry

its

Ford, the

BANANAS

man

often credited as the pioneer of industrial standardisa-

tion,

by

a

number of

Big Mike was on the shelves

years.

the turn of the twentieth century; the

on the other hand, Big Mike

Model T motor

also suited the

a little bland. After a

most general of

tastes. It

while no one

really

fact, it

knew any

was

different,

they were of remembering any other kind. United

we

today: the cup of cross-cultural coffee foam; the multi-

national hamburger. For Big

Mike

read Big Mac.

Bananas weren't seen in great number in Europe

way

was not

bananas were the forerunners of those products

Fruit's

know

as

car,

rolled off the production line in 1908.

too big or too small, too yellow, or too sweet. In

incapable

at

into the

mother

first

decade of the twentieth century.

till

My

recalled people biting straight into them; they

how

be shown

to peel

some

grand-

had

to

them. Today the British and Americans

eat twelve to thirteen kilos,

about seventy bananas per person

per year. Developing countries mainly consume savoury

cooking bananas,

a staple

fourth major food after It is

of

rice,

diet.

the world's

cavemen some ten thousand

ago.The name 'banana' comes from Africa. At some time,

somehow fossilised

it

jumped

rubbish

continents.

pits in

dating back 2,500 years. its

is

thought to have originated in the rainforests of Malaysia

in the Stone Age, discovered by years

The banana

wheat and milk.

way

to the Canaries,

Experts

rummaging

in

Cameroon have found banana tissue From West Africa the banana found and thence onward with the Spanish

conquest to the Americas.

The in

entrepreneurial friar

Tomas de Berlanga landed with

1516 in Hispaniola, the island

Dominican Republic and corporate ladder to

Haiti.

now divided between the He ascended Catholicism's

become bishop of Panama and took 20

it

the

LAMENT FOR A DYING FRUIT banana with him the Central

he moved west across the Caribbean to

as

American mainland.

US

Early reports in the

had

it

turning up in Salem,

Massachusetts in the 1690s, during the strange period of the

Someone cooked up

witch-hunts.

may have decided

tasted like the devil's

it

disappeared in the north-eastern

when

century

and

US

food. Bananas

the early nineteenth

till

as

items for

sale,

or

gifts for

incredulous rela-

friends.

In 1950s

North London we got ours from the Banana

halfway up Islington's Chapel Market. Italian,

own

they fetched up again with old sea dogs from

the Caribbean tives

the fruit with pork and

growling "ere

each bunch, in white said 'Fyffes'.

I

that

were

was

getchyer bananas'.

y'are,

letters against a

mistakenly took

— one of those

He

all

this to

a

The

Man

sad-faced label

on

dark blue background,

be

around us

a 'British'

like

company

Woolworth's and

Ford. But at that time Fyffes was part of the United Fruit

Company.*

The

banana's cheeriness looked unconvincing in the grey

of smoggy London but

it

was always

there,

where

seasonal

Soon we took it for granted. If we we would have been aware that it was hot countries, and poor ones too. But we would have

fruits like apples weren't.

had thought about

from the

had no idea the

it,

fruit

came by way of an

intensive process of

production, shipping and distribution.

The

fact

of the matter was that for most of the twentieth

century United Fruit had

a

monopoly on

four companies dominate, three from the

Ecuador.

*

Today

A name

FyfFes

is

Irish

the industry. Today

US

and one from

sometimes given them collectively speaks

and independent.

21

BANANAS banana industry's 'buccaneering'

for the

tradition: the

'Wild

Bunch'.

Now the

the banana itself

way of

creator,

its

is

disappearing.

United

It is

Fruit. In

the banana might have only a decade to

2003

has no downtime. The same appHes for

no other reason than

Panama

disease

that attacks

to attack

what they

is

from beneath

named

tified,

and

is

always working and

is

it.

the root of the plant.

at

of the

afford the fruit,

emerged

has

as

The

new form of

name of

it

was

'Tropical

Panama

own.

its

one

this

Race

inspection have

reproductive terms,

is

No

demise.

iden-

rain. It

is

disease has

one comes up

just called

a disaster.

by

its

4'.

no

genetic.

is

seeds to talk of, which, in

The banana does not come

New

by the processes of botanical intercourse. The

pointed

first

wind and

banana, however, has a deeper weakness. This

Most bananas on

us

the

cuts off

It

to death. Sigatoka

ripens prematurely. Black sigatoka

with colourful names anymore: laboratory

on

nasty variant, while

a

recently derived a

microbe

removing the protection they

plant,

which then

it

where

Fiji,

spore that sweeps in

a

attacks the leaves

main growing

understood in

call a fusarial wilt, a

verdant valley in

after a

as

that

to the pathogens created

the banana plant's water supply and chokes is

emerged

it

live. Its

regions of the tropics have no seasons

temperate climes. The banana, therefore,

apparently going

to

Scientist

this out when it broke the news of the banana's pending The banana 'hasn't had sex for thousands of years', said

the magazine unkindly.

The

fruit

is

effectively a clone, discov-

ered by those Malaysian cavemen and planted from cuttings ever since.

new

Without sexual reproduction arrangements, the banana has

22

to

re-combine

become more

its

genes in

vulnerable to

LAMENT FOR A DYING FRUIT disease.

This has been

of producing

made worse by

everywhere.

a single variety

any potential pest

for attack fi-om

the commercial fixation

since,

The banana while

ripe

is

pests

its

are

constantly evolving to find ways of carrying out their onslaught,

the banana

not evolving

is

Big Mike succumbed

resistant'

but

many

hit

United

long ago

as

Cavendish, was found to replace

variety, the

for

at all.

as

now

faces the

same

fate.

the 1950s. Another

Disease has been a threat

without the pubHc knowing

years,

Central America

United Fruit and

its

Panama

it.

Panama over

Fruit's plantations in

ago. Sigatoka hit

and called 'disease

it

disease

hundred years

a

in the 1930s.

successors have since

waged war on

the banana's enemies with pesticides and fungicides being

pumped onto

major food crops, the banana

and we of

is

the world's

the most chemically treated

trust a great deal, therefore, to the prophylactic

skin.

its

Of

the fruit at an increasing rate.

The

chemicals have proved ever

powers

less effective for

the task assigned them, however, and the revelation in 2003

of the banana's

crisis

on the companies For tries,

many

came when

that they

years they

had

it

finally

had run out of left

seemed

to

dawn

ideas.

the banana-producing coun-

with their scant resources, to seek alternative solutions

themselves. Scientists skilled in genetic modification have

been hired

But,

as

-

that

been

took the

greatly accelerated fruit

a result

it

is

now

to discover fruit.

dying, and a

anyway over the centuries

by United Fruit and

out of the jungle and turned

into a 'commodity', a thing of

As

factor

might save the

they graft and clone, so the banana

process that might have occurred has

some

in an efibrt to clone in

the mysterious combinations

-

commerce and

its

a natural

kind.

product

the mass market.

appears unequal to the business of survival.

23

It

BANANAS United

Fruit's

own

demise seemed to precede what may

well be that of the product years.

it

gave us by

some

thirty to forty

According to most accounts, the business practices

that

United Fruit was synonymous with have been consigned to the historical dustbin. Lately, however, the signs are of the old

company's re-emergence

The

spirit

it

as a

model

for the corporate world.

championed has been revamped and presented

us as the miracle formula

by which we

to

are required to live in

the era of globalisation.

The whole hundred and

business of United Fruit began, by chance, forty years ago.

24

one

Roots of Empire Chief

justice

of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica,

Maria Castro rose to to

make

his speech.

A

his feet at niidday

collection of

him on

gathered behind

the large

on August

Dr

Jose

18, 1871

the nation's dignitaries

wooden podium:

was

the arch-

bishop of San Jose, from the country's capital fifteen miles

away this

to the east; the large coffee growers,

Castro, the speaker's wife

was

Dona

day would signify for them;

also present,

still

sizing

Pacifica

up what

Fernandez de

and designer of the national

flag,

along with several of their fifteen children.

Seated next to her was the guest of honour, General Tomas Guardia, the

new

'establish

He

president.

before, proclaiming that he

had seized power the year

would

democracy'. To achieve

'break the oligarchy' and

this

Costa Rica needed to

be connected to the world. Castro had twice been president of the republic and twice

who

deposed by the army. The coffee oligarchs

controlled the

wealth of the country regularly got together with the military to

impose or depose presidents

had recently taken again.

It

The at

vowing

they wished. General Guardia that this

would not happen

was the reason Costa Rica was getting the railroad

the western

plateau.

over,

as

It

would run from

the small

railway.

town of

Alajuela,

end of the mesa, Costa Rica's high upland

would proceed

Atlantic coast. Generally

east for

100 miles

no one went 25

there.

down to the The flag that

BANANAS

Dona

had designed -

Pacifica

and lampposts

now

strung from balconies

in Alajuela's tiny streets

and town square in

the breeze of an immaculately clear Costa Rican day

showed the

nation's problem: at the banner's centre

was

a

all

warmed the Costa Ricans lived. The white

for

the mid-afternoon clouds that

broad horizontal stripe in red, for the sun that

mesa on which nearly bands around

were

it

brought the rain to

irrigate

rich volcanic

its

stripes at the outer edges represented

and Atlantic

The coffee

soil.

Costa Rica's Pacific

was

went out

fine:

it

had

a port.

to the world.

The

From

there,

Costa Rica's

trouble was that both the

coffee and any wealthy Costa Ricans bound for the

of the United States and Europe had to

Cape Horn. The journey, was

if

Panama, its

1502, on

his fourth voyage,

the Atlantic coast and called

was an

act

his patrons at offer; 'lands

Columbus

to

whom

US

its

for still

path.

Columbus had landed on

He

had to report back to

he had oversold the goods on

left

Costa Rica for the most miserable stage of fleet

He

his

tramping the coast in northerly storms

looking for what he imagined might be

his ships

by the

of vanity and delusion' they were calling them.

voyages yet, his

to China.

built

'Costa Rica', the 'rich coast'.

it

of wishful thinking.

home,

around the perilous

ramshackle carriages

of the roughnecks that followed in

In

It

sail

east coast

completed, took months. The only

the railroad across

the gold rush in the 1850s and full

blue

coasts.

Pacific

alternative

The

turned for

home

a sea passage

racked with

arthritis

through

and with

being eaten by seaworms.

Costa Rica's large Atlantic province of Limon remained mostly uninhabited but

that, as

Castro assured his audience,

would soon change. Twelve thousand people had packed 26

into

ROOTS OF EMPIRE Alajuela,

one

in twelve

of the nation's population, and they

he mapped out the future.

listened as

Fifty years

on from inde-

pendence from Spain, the swamp and desolation of Limon

would succumb

The

to the force of progress.

had been assigned to the

task

finest in the business.

This was Henry 'Don Enrique' Meiggs, the great American railway builder, presently resident in Peru.

The

contracts had

been signed and the pledges made: the railway would be finished in three years.

God and from

At which point, and by the grace of

General Guardia, Costa Ricans would be led

their

mountain

to the sea.

After the cheers, the archbishop gave the Te

descended from the podium to turn the earth with a silver shovel, specially cast. little

streets

The

than normal. After

earlier

down

Deum. Guardia

project's first clod It

of

started to rain, a

the crowds took to the

siesta

again with itinerant bands of acrobats and musicians.

parties,

and

a ball for the

VIPs, went on until

five the

works had not yet

arrived.

following morning.

Those placed

Henry

in charge of the

Keith, thirty-two, and his younger brother by nine years.

Minor, were

New York

still

and

at sea.

at

They had

Panama would

taken a steamer south from

side they

took

a ship

mesa three weeks the railway,

'at

He

after the official

opening of the works on

their uncle,

conveyed

wouldn't have time to construct Costa Rica's

from Lima up into the Andes,

project. His

the Pacific

the trot of their horses'.

railway since he was otherwise engaged. line

On

north to Costa Rica and arrived on the

Through them, 'Don Enrique' Meiggs, his regrets.

American

cross the Central

isthmus on the railway built for the gold rush.

a

He was building Peru's bigger and far trickier

nephews, however, came with

27

all

the necessary

BANANAS for the task at

skills

hand and

part of the family firm.

as

He

thoroughly recommended them.

For

was

all

him

the prowess ascribed to

as

an engineer, Meiggs

principally a talented political fixer and,

caught out, rush and

crook.

a

made

when he was

From Brooklyn, he had followed

a fortune

the gold

from land speculation on the San

Francisco waterfront. Accused of theft of city funds and stock

market fraud, he

later fled to

South America.

He made more

millions from building the coastal railways of Chile and Peru

before spotting a greater opportunity in the guano deposits, a

key source of agricultural Islands. Estimates

went

as

high

ible for the

of

as five

his

of Peru's offshore Chincha

fortune from this slippery enterprise

hundred million

day and,

birdshit billionaire.

fertiHser,

if true,

was incred-

dollars; this

put Meiggs halfway to being a

He employed some

of his monetary reserves

vetting

membership of the governments of Peru, Chile and

Bolivia,

and arranging tax

rates to his advantage.

Henry Keith had been with

uncle in Peru

his

at

the time

the deal was struck and had assured the Costa Ricans that he

knew tion

the area

their railway

company of any worth was

across Central it,

where

was to

be.

Every construc-

interested in building a canal

America. Panama was one possible location for

but the favoured candidate was the San Juan River dividing

Costa Rica and Nicaragua on their Atlantic

had been

He

there,

he

said,

Henry Keith

and had surveyed the Limon seaboard.

understood whatever hazards

that basis, Costa

coasts.

Rica's railway

it

might have in

would

take

store.

On

three years to

complete.

The

Keiths were from Brooklyn, their father a wealthy

lumber merchant. They were Scottish some generations back; family

tales

had them on eleventh-century nodding terms with

28

ROOTS OF EMPIRE King Malcolm title

II.

Allegedly they had had

some claim

to royal

and land in the region of East Lothian. The Meiggs

side

of the family claimed English background and to have emigrated from the southern county of Dorset in 1635.

The junior of to anything.

tion in

An

the two,

Minor Cooper Keith had not

him

expensive education saw

menswear

in a

Broadway

settled

up

take

a posi-

week.

store at three dollars a

He went into wood with his father, who then - having bought Padre Island, a hundred-mile sandbar off the Texas coast - sent Minor

run

to

Surrounded by

a ranch.

as

it

of water,

a lot

wildfowl and deer, Minor enjoyed the solitude but not deal of luck.

A

Market

prices

Mexico

hurricane off the Gulf of

cows into the

his

saying he could

many

of

his.

When

his

in search

in a lifetime,

also

blew

in Costa

he was

easily

for.

thousand of

a

Henry wrote

brother

make more money

on Padre

years than so

sea.

a great

were not what he had hoped

Rica

to

him

in three

persuaded. With

of El Dorado, Minor took off

in pursuit

Older brother Henry took the easy part of the work, on

A

the mesa.

locomotive was on

rails

and running around

Alajuela within weeks, scaring the people; 'they thought to hell

it

would

steam and

take them', said a report of the engine that spat

fire.

Henry named

Minor was packed

off to

it

the 'Limon

Number

Limon with mules and

One'. a guide.

'Dreary miles of uninhabited beach', read one description of the scene that greeted him, 'but for the huts of a few Caribs

and other

Indians'.

There was no

fresh

meat or

vegetables.

Stretching away into the unremitting heat lay the 'interminable

swamp'.

Minor it

and

Keith's

sell it

job was to run the workforce.

things

He

was to hire

from the conmiissary, the company

29

store:

BANANAS clothing, basic

provisions and machetes for hand-to-hand

combat with the jungle. He had some banana had picked up on Panama.

He

his

way

to Costa

cuttings that he

Rica while passing through

planted them. The fruit would grow quite quickly

and he could

to the

sell it

men.

Some Jamaicans had already been hired to clear the jungle and swamp but Minor wanted hardened US labour. He took

New

the project's steamboat to

Orleans to recruit from

waterfront bars and flophouses. At a dollar a day and food,

occupants of the ices.

were

city's jail

also

keen to

its

many

offer their serv-

As they Hned up on the dockside ready

embark, the

to

police chief couldn't believe his luck in getting rid of them.

good number of

Keith's recruits included a

Some even had

veterans. latter

tropical experience

Civil

a kind.

War The

had been William Walker's men. Walker was another Scots

US

emigre and had come to the set off to

chance

extending the

and

US

of

his

US

in the 1850s

in the 1840s.

He

had

also

luck in Central America. His methods of

frontier

were more Old World than

New

he had declared himself King of Nicaragua.

The US government in Washington, enamoured of this regal idea, gave him its support. His mistake was to make an enemy of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the

US

magnate

railway and shipping

who

had established

a

presence in the area with the intention of building the transisthmian canal. When Walker fired on Vanderbilt's boats on the

San Juan River between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Vanderbilt hired Central for the

US

American mercenaries

pronounce himself king as

to retaliate.

aboard an American gunboat. again,

He

later

Walker

fled

returned to

though he only made

it

as far

Nicaragua's northern neighbour, Honduras. Here in 1860

he was put against

a wall

and

shot.

30

ROOTS OF EMPIRE

Many the

new employees jumped ship in Havana, of call made to take on sugar. When the boat

of Keith's port

first

ran aground

on the Chinchorro Bank

Yucatan, Keith and a few

had

loyalists

gunpoint from rushing the

lifeboats.

storm off

in a night

to hold off the rest at

Only when

the storm

eased next day were the malcontents persuaded to help jettison

cargo and re-float the boat. All but a

working

in

few of

shipment and others that followed died

this

Limon.

No

proper records were kept but the

first

twenty-five miles of the Costa Paean railway were estimated

thousand

to have cost four

the

main

causes,

Malaria and yellow fever were

lives.

though no one

at

the time

knew of

the part

played by the Atlantic coast's especially virulent mosquitoes.

Word went around among New

Orleans' dwindling supply of

labour that Keith was an employer to avoid.

He

was obliged

to turn almost exclusively to recruiting Jamaicans.

The

railway advanced only four miles in the

The money

proper survey had been done.

mishandled bond

behind

it,

the

issues in

US

London. With the

was no good for

credit.

first

year.

No

ran out thanks to Civil

War

only just

The Franco-Prussian

war had put Europe's continental bankers out of commission and the bankers

in

London saw

the Keiths and the Costa PJcans

coming. Most of the loans raised went In

payments.

1873 the markets crashed. Henry Keith went

claiming Costa Rica intervention. struction,

enquiry.

his

Still

owed him money and

engaged in

its

down by

its

to Costa

disease.

home

calling for

US

period of post-Civil War recon-

Washington confined

Henry returned

tude struck

and

in interest

He

action to a letter of polite

Rica only to join the multi-

died leaving both the railway

younger brother Minor stranded.

31

BANANAS Pride of

place

official

1876

in

the

at

Great Centennial

Exhibition in Philadelphia went to George H. Corliss's magnificent contraption.

The Rhode

rose like the nation

on

it',

a

did not hoard

not on every

Corliss

Ten

Monthly magazine.

Atlantic

whirred 'with

if

ounce of metal

'not a superfluous

wrote William Dean Howells, the novelist and editor

of Boston's

it

itself:

Island engineer's steam engine

hoarded power that makes its

power but suppUed

day.

The

would not allow

all

tremble'. In fact

free to other exhibitors,

exhibition closed on Sundays, his

machine

to

announce the US's

principal intention was to

the industrial elite of nations.

exhibition's

arrival

among

sixty-seven buildings spread

Its

across a square kilometre, the expanse

from

when

be used.

end of the Civil War, the

years after the

football fields. Staged

it

56-ton flywheel

Its

of two hundred American

May to November, it

attracted eight

million people in a country of forty-six million: 'sleek, confi-

dent and well-fed'. Most worked ten hours a day,

week, and with no paid time

off.

Many

six days a

took unpaid leave to

visit.

Entry cost was dollar twenty-one.

fifty cents,

The

gates

the average worker's daily

took

five million dollars,

sand and one of them counterfeit. children

lost, all

but

play.

six

for pick-pocketing.

hundred and seventy-five

One

as

arrests,

person was

though with no indication

'The American invents

loss

hundred and four

Four people died, none fi-om foul

There were

painted,'

one thou-

same

were returned to

which were

for fornication,

five

a

their families the

five

day, the rest the next.

Of the

wage

as to

fourteen of also arrested

with

whom.

the Greeks sculpted and the Italians

wrote The Times of London, worried about

Britain's

of technological supremacy Scotsman Alexander Graham

Bell, lately

of Boston, displayed

32

his

newly invented telephone.

ROOTS OF EMPIRE

The

Thomas Edison

presented his telegraph.

seen for the

time, as was the Otis brothers' steam elevator

first

typewriter was

machine. George Eastman, twenty-two, wrote

mother every

aisle'.

No mean

main exhibition

the

New York,

in Rochester,

feat; this

hall alone.

that

home

he intended to

amounted

to his

'traverse

to eleven miles in

Eastman was

five years

from

perfecting his easy-to-carry camera with flexible rolled film.

The Line-Wolf ammonia compressor represented an important advance in the technology of man-made ice. Also on show was

a

new refrigerated type of railroad car for perishable

Joseph

freight.

Tufts, a Massachusetts entrepreneur, exhibited his

which

fountain,

in a

dozen years or so would be

soda

usefully

employed by Coca-Cola. Exhibits from overseas were held to be of poor calibre, save that

from France,

France sent the

a sister republic

first

arm and

the right

historical friend.

completed part of the Statue of Liberty,

torch. Fifty feet high,

offerings in the shade.

sent a

and close

Turkey sent

it

a scarf

put other foreign dancer.

Germany

few machines courtesy of Krupp, the German ambas-

sador complaining they did nothing to brighten the dull image

of Prussia. Japan, noted William Dean Howells, sent an exhibit of

arts

and

who 'now

manned by

crafts

and then darted

a

a 'small

lady-handed carpenter'

disgusted look through his narrow

eye-slits at the observer'.

The Centennial to feature Native

objected.

The

organisers had planned an ethnology section

Americans. The Department of the Interior

organisers offered to use only the 'cleanest

finest looking',

who would

and

be English-speaking and accom-

panied by a child, dog and pony. Their idea was rejected and they had to use life-sized plaster models. Even

much

for Howells. In the 'extermination

33

this

was too

of the red savage',

BANANAS he wrote, 'one could hardly regret the

Apaches and Comanches'. filtered

through

the

at

And

of any number of

loss

he wrote

this

before

word

end of June of the massacre of Colonel

George Custer and two hundred cavalrymen

at Little

Big Horn

River.

The news from the republic's fact was,

the South Dakota Territory almost ruined

one-hundredth birthday party on July

however, that the frontier was

all

4.

The

but tamed. The US's

transcontinental railway had been completed in 1869. Barbed wire, invented in 1873, contained the vast expanses east

and west. Out

in the western mountains,

the thirty-eighth state of the

The Centennial

US

Colorado became the exhibition.

Exhibition's message was of a thrusting,

forward-looking nation.

of the

Union during

between

Some

popular events played to the idea

as pre-industrial idyll:

the Strawberry Display, the Trial

of Reaping Machines, the Exhibit of Sheep, Swine and Goats.

But the

flat

stoneless plains

of the Midwest had long since been

transformed into the nation's grain basket. since

Cyrus McCormick had invented

Or had him

was

construct

it?

The

forty-five years

his revolutionary reaper.

he stolen the idea from the Virginian

grim courtroom

slave

who

helped

reaper had featured over the years in several

battles.

For one of them

engaged Abraham Lincoln,

By

It

a

young

McCormick had

Illinois lawyer.

the time of the Centennial Exhibition the question was

being asked whether the US's age of invention wasn't

of blatant manipulation. Market crashes ran a decade.

The

'small

also

at a rate

one

of one

man' always ended up ruined. The crash

of 1873 had seen President Ulysses

S.

Grant, the Civil

War

leader and hero accused of accepting gifts from businessmen.

The robber

barons were blamed, characters like Vanderbilt, Jay

Gould, Daniel

Drew and James 34

Fisk.

Their preferred

title

was

ROOTS OF EMPIRE of industry'. Gould and Fisk had attempted to buy

'captains all

New York

the gold in

The

press called

chimed

A

Gould

US

in that the

hothouse of

City and almost got away with

man

the most hated

in America.

it.

Drew

had become too democratic.

US

where was the

activity,

to expel

energy? For most of the past hundred years,

it

its

spare

had turned

its

back on the Old World, got on with inward development and

expanded broader a

to

US

But the

west.

its

frontier.

had

boundary rope around the Americas,

foreigners. Outside influences

Cuba and

Spain in islands

- but

a

their

'Keep Out' sign to

a

remained -

colonial vestiges hke

Britain in Jamaica and other Caribbean

power had diminished.

Lately there had been a the region. In 1869 the

had

sketched out

also

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had thrown

demand

for the US's services within

government of the Dominican Republic

called for help and, in a parlous financial state, offered to

sell itself

to the

US. President Grant had drawn up

a treaty

of

annexation. The notion was dropped, however, after complaints

within the

with

US

that

a large black

to the

US,

it

was wrong for

population to turn

especially so

The Centennial

soon

Moresque

style

Caribbean republic

independence over

after the Civil

Exhibition's

horticultural hall. In glass

a its

and

most beautiful building was the steel, it

was of twelfth-century

with surrounding pools and flowerbeds,

tion of the Victorian passion for nature'.

magazine, remarked that

it

was the

weird - natural phenomena that

to

little

orange

a

visitors

compact and manageable

more than trees,

Leslie's,

displays

of the exhibition. The horticultural haU of being

War.

the popular

of exotic — even

considered the best part also

area.

had the advantage

Walking

a kilometre. Visitors flocked to

amounted

it

view

its

date palms, fig trees and pineapples, but

35

a 'reflec-

orchids,

one item

BANANAS drew

special attention:

with

elled It

plucked

of

to stop the

its

in.

-

fruit

'bark'

Its

stood a

from

his father

a visitor

who

tree', as

'a

observed by

had

in his teens

trav-

distant Illinois.

stood three and half metres high and

mounted

it

scrubby banana

'a

Upham Adams,

Frederick

guard had to be

a

They would have diminutive bunch of bananas' - stripped crowds pulling

and made off with

it

its

apart.

roots,

even the earth

it

Apparently they endorsed Adams's view, recorded in

book he wrote

romantic of

all

nearly forty years later that

the innumerable things

the (Centennial's) vast buildings'.

He

I

was the 'most

it

had seen

in

any of

had only seen bananas

before pictured in geography and reUgious textbooks, with

who

'fortunate natives

and

glades

the

less

had nothing to do but roam flowery

on them'. Boa

live

constrictors

hung around

eating

fortunate.

Adams's father had worked in Central America and the West

and talked often of bananas and other

Indies

fruits

'fever-stricken districts'. In the horticultural hall

again and the frankly curious

came from

distant parts

- but

knew

there.

they

he held forth

crowd gathered round. Most

of the world - or had parents

of

it.

Here was

a hint

who

and

its

far

'warm and humid

more

did

of what was out

Adams's father expounded on the difierence between

straggly product

in the

little

US

of those

bountifiil counterpart that

this

grew

coastlands near the equator'.

That evening the Adamses walked through the business of Philadelphia and stopped

district

at a store to

buy peaches.

Instead they saw a basket of small, cylindrical objects in tin

'This

foil. is

sir,'

the only place in Philadelphia

They were some

'Bananas, a great luxury,

ten cents each, or six for

for you,

sir?'

36

wrapped

said the shopkeeper.

which handles them.'

a half

doUar: 'Can

I

wrap

ROOTS OF EMPIRE

The

price was 'more than the native

who

raised

them could

earn in a month', said Adams's father but he took a half dozen.

Back

in the hotel

room, the

first

was black. This wasn't perfect but

He

had been 'about to

of the

six

to peel

were

a

banana nonetheless.

when

his father

stopped

it.

bananas were too decayed. All were small,

one on the market

three equalling the bulk of

Adams took

years.

was

it

bite the skin'

him and showed him how

Two

banana the boy unwrapped

the skins

home

to the

stalls

of

later

Midwest but they

black and his school friends were unimpressed.

all

William Dean Howells was, true to form, yet more scep-

He

tical.

departed for Boston assessing what he had seen in

the horticultural hall

as

poor

fare to the 'unbotanised' eye.

His

eyes had wearied of palms, cactuses and 'unattainable bananas'.

Other contractors had come

in to build the Costa

Rican

rail-

road in dribs and drabs. Minor Keith had stayed on, running

company

the

store

and the workers.

He

had planted more

bananas in cleared areas by the side of the line but wasn't selling as

grow

many

their

as

he had hoped: the Jamaicans had started to

own.

Fortunately for Keith, a market had stirred elsewhere. In

1870

a

schooner captain, Lorenzo Baker from Cape Cod,

Massachusetts, had dropped off

US

gold seekers some way up

From Venezuela he returned via Jamaica looking He had imagined sugar, rum and coconuts but on

the Orinoco. for cargoes.

the quayside at Port

He

Morant he found bananas.

had seen them before, although many of those

up sporadically in the marketplaces

of

a

as

US

turned

were of the type known around

'Cuban Reds'. These

yellow variety, more or

that

less

37

that

now were He bought

Baker saw

green on the stem.

BANANAS them

for a

few pence and sold

in Jersey City that

of wind and

such profit eleven days

at

he made further

Baker needed investment,

to

dump

He

in his

mid-twenties from Boston. In 1871 they landed their

full

shipment of 'Jamaica Yellows'

Minor Keith went cuttings

as,

Preston, a produce buyer

the

at

city's

first

Long Wharf.

into business with Gustav Frank, a grower

whom

from Panama from

way

Andrew

his

specifically a faster

boat.

joined forces with

later

some, the vagaries

him and he had

tide told against

rotting cargo at sea.

On

trips.

in 1871,

to Costa Rica.

he

Keith had picked up the banana

first

Panama on

passed through

Frank was

a naturalised

his

American and

a

former steward on Vanderbilt's Pacific Mail steamships. After the Civil War he began bringing back stems from the Caribbean to the

US

but since then he had

set

up small plantations on

the Atlantic coast of Panama. Keith sent the railway project's

boat to pick up modest shipments from Panama and take

them

to

New

Orleans.

Keith also shipped

north up the coast

sarsa, vanilla

at a

and

turtle shell

trading post he had established in the

Up

and down the

was old

pirate country.

rudimentary port of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Central American Atlantic seaboard, Sir Francis

Drake was buried

Bay - 'Capten, was spoken

as

from further

this

at sea

art tha sleepin' there

off

Panama

below?'* As

in

Portobelo

much

English

Spanish: Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua was once

Bragman's Bluff. From the presence of Miskito Indians, part

of the region had acquired

its

name of

the Mosquito Coast.

Remote from the capitals of each country, the Atlantic area had seen a new influx of buccaneering foreigners, many from the

*

US

'Drake's

enjoying the lack of extradition laws.

Drum',

Sir

Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)

38

ROOTS OF EMPIRE But by the end of the 1870s Keith was on the point of

A

returning home.

offshore turtle farm. railway's

Caribbean storm had swept away

He

his

remained in charge of labour but the

money had again run out and its last contractor departed.

Keith faced the prospect of returning to Brooklyn the failed prodigal, unable to

run

ranch or a corral of

a railway, a

Instead President Guardia approached him, in some

He

desperation of his own. success yet:

why

suggested Keith might have

of

it.

The

bananas for export

He

said

some

he would need more

railroad required freight to survive

fitted the bill.

from the national exchequer. Having done

Rican leader promptly died

and

Keith went into partnership

with a London shipping line and Guardia gave him dollars

of

not take over building the railroad completely?

Keith seized the moment. land, a lot

turtles.

state

a

milHon

the Costa

so,

in 1882.

Elsewhere other factors worked to Keith's advantage. In science, in the early 1880s,

Robert Koch

in

Germany worked

out that germs caused disease. Joseph Lister in Britain and Louis

became the

Pasteur in France backed his theory. Cleanliness

thing and in the

US domestic science boomed. Wives and mothers

took responsibility for family health facilities

fast

enjoyed by the better-off,

growth

in

risks

like

caused by food or

indoor bathrooms. The

newspapers and magazines encouraged debate

about the hitherto neglected subject of 'diet'.

and read about

literate

once decreed tive organs'.

it.

Prior authorities

that fresh fruits

Now

were

a

define

poor.

million people. itself,

It

on the

subject had

liable to 'disarrange the diges-

they were 'necessary to perfect health'.

Industrialisation increased rapidly

over

More people were

-

New York

The growing middle

class

City

now had

used food to

imitating the rich and rejecting the food of the

dumped

bluff basics Hke pork,

39

brown

bread, thick soups

BANANAS and dried-fruit

pies for

They had

the profile.

home grown and

were

more

Bananas edged into

delicate fare.

tropical cachet.

Other

fruits, like apples,

them

the poor could get

easily.

At the same time, more industry meant more working-class people.

The

New York and Pennsylvania New England had populations

of

cities

the mill towns of

was

had been hand

extra to spend. Life

little

now

were

space for

still

some

thought of

number and

small luxury to

their price

strongman and with Keith

two

industries

railway pushed

on which on

in a

mouth but there mood. Bananas

the

lift

left

the country without

key position.

He

controlled

the nation's future depended.

into the interior

the rivers Matina and Zent.

the terrain before him.

with that

was going down.

In Costa Rica, Guardia's death had a

and

luxury but they were arriving in

a

as

to

states

He

and the verdant

From any

hill

The

valleys

of

Keith could survey

offered to take

it

off the nation's

The Costa Ricans were only too happy and granted him more land than he could possibly use. He set about creating

hands.

enormous

plantations.

The country

also

handed him control of

least that vital part that related to the still

for

needed loans

London

One

to

fund

it

finances, or at

outside world. The railway

and Keith made ready

to depart

to renegotiate Costa Rica's overseas debt.

other task remained. At thirty-five and suddenly of

boundless means, Keith was engaged to a

Rican

its

aristocracy. Cristina Castro

child of

Dr Jose Maria

member of the Costa

Fernandez was the twelfth

Castro and his wife Doiia Pacifica. In

keeping with her background, Cristina was of 'good education',

which was

was mainly

as

well since the burden of communication

hers. After twelve years in

spoke only minimal Spanish, and

40

it

Costa Rica, Keith

would never

really

still

improve.

ROOTS OF EMPIRE In 1883 their

viewed the acclaimed

wedding took

area's bridge, as

the eighth

had broader horizons. wife,

whose

father

place, in

Brooklyn. The couple

which had been recently opened and

wonder of

He

the world.

sailed off to

Minor Keith

London with

his

new

was twice president of Costa Rica and

whose mother had designed

the national

41

flag.

4

Monopoly By 1885 Captain Lorenzo Baker was Boston

to

eleven

all

as

he could.

told,

He now

shipping

as

many bananas

had bigger and

faster ships,

on the Caribbean run from Jamaica, Cuba and

Dominican Republic. He named them the Great White Fleet - La Gran Flota Blanca.

the

Andrew

Preston, the Boston importer, was taking

than Baker could

He

fill.

east coast

of the

US

things

from Boston, Preston

the show.

He banded

form the Boston

to settle in the

As

it

orders

despatched bananas along the north-

Running

to

more

and inland in new refrigerated railway effectively

group of prominent

a

Fruit

city

cars.

took control of

names together

Company. Captain Baker was happy

Caribbean to manage matters from that end.

neared completion, the Costa Rican railroad was threat-

ened with ruin because of developments to the south

in

Panama. The Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps began works

on

a

waterway

Panama,

across

Suez Canal in Egypt.

De

after his success building the

Lesseps offered wages of five dollars

a day, five times the rate paid

by Keith, and Keith's Jamaican

workers departed en masse. Keith found no replacements to his satisfaction elsewhere in the

Caribbean and hatched the peculiar plan of getting

labour from northern

Italy.

In 1887 he hired

workers from Piedmont. They never settled and

and shovels one day in Costa Rica's

43

first

known

his

two thousand

downed labour

picks

strike.

BANANAS

Some went on

a protest

march

into the jungle; about sixty later

had brought

Many absconded

drowned

in the mangroves. Keith's

some

trusty explanations: the

chroniclers reached for

Italians

San Jose.

to

their 'secret societies'

family and villages' with them. But

and 'feuding between

how

Keith imagined

workforce from the foot of the Alps would in the

He

hot lowlands of

Limon was

toil

a

productively

fathom.

difficult to

was saved by the quick bankruptcy of de Lesseps' Panama

canal project.

It left

selves in the hills.

hundreds of Jamaicans to fend for them-

down

Keith sent boats

to pick

up

his errant

charges.

Costa Rica's railway pushed to completion sixteen years in 1890,

by which time

Keith's status

late

had risen from strug-

gling storekeeper to living legend. Blond, blue-eyed, of medium

height and slim, he strode about urging his

had them so enamoured of ran short they In the

their leader that

went without pay

men when

on. Stories the

money

to see the project through.

work camps he drank copious

quantities

of cheap whisky

with them, the only 'medicines' thought effective against the rigours of the swamp.

of

lives,

He

While the

railroad claimed thousands

Keith endured fevers but 'never took

a

day off

sick'.

had plunged headlong into the tide of the Reventazon,

Costa Rica's tempestuous principal to save a

monk on

river, in a sadly

horseback; he barely survived

vain effort

when

a bridge

he was on collapsed into the torrent. At the end, the driver of the

first

train to cross the bridge over the

unconquered canyon refused the

He

task,

till

Reventazon's

last

Keith went ahead.

rode the cowcatcher, the Stars and Stripes cradled in his

arms - according,

at least, to a

Bananas were arriving sharp change in their

at

own

painting of the occasion.

such

a rate in the

status.

44

Once

US

as to

prompt

a

bourgeois, the banana

MONOPOLY was

now positively proletarian. Accordingly, magazines advanced

the nutritious case for bananas and not just in relation to other fruits.

They urged

her family to regard the banana

The

mother struggling

the hard-pressed

meat

as a

crash of 1893 saw four million

jobs. President

to feed

substitute.

thrown out of

their

Grover Cleveland was in the White House,

a

man with a solid reputation for work. He even answered his own phone. Some of those who got through to him, however, left much to be desired. He arranged to bolster the nation's dwindling reserves through bankers. Cleveland's critics

loan from

a

J.

denounced him

P.

Morgan, the

for 'betraying the

moneymen of the east. had moved on a little since

nation' to the big

the recent times The debate when the robber barons had been defmed as the problem. It was now a little less personal, more institutional, and

dangerously

so.

Once, Messrs Morgan, Rockefeller, Gould

and others were imagined to to

rise

do mankind down. Some of

done

so.

up by

But

lately there

'the system'

nies. They

was

were known

was

each morning determined

their

number may

well have

sense that something thrown

a

at fault:

the large banks and

as 'trusts',

from

a

compa-

term the economics

profession used to denote large industrial and financial

monopolies.

how

Their very name showed

devious they, or indeed

economics, could be.The feeling was that they could be

above

all

to feather their

own

'trusted'

corporate nests. Consequently,

Washington introduced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 and more

legislation

prohibit conspiracies cartels

and the

soon followed.

Initially

the laws were to

between companies; the

like, that

led to price fixing

olistic practices.

45

setting

up of

and other monop-

BANANAS According to

'natural law', this legislation shouldn't have

been necessary.The market,

Adam

Smith's 'hidden hand', always

intervened to rectify wrongdoing. Admittedly, to

set

happen

any time

at

some hope

thereby bring

its

this

was never

supporters could predict and

to the suffering: the masses

of unem-

ployed, for example, that sprung into being with every market

But now, with

crash.

ficial layer

this 'anti-trust' thinking, there

being built into the

the very spirit of enterprise. lators'

be

who presumed

It

capitalist

spawned

a

new

to oversee the market.

however, regarded them only

breed, the 'regu-

They claimed

'sell-outs',

as

appointed to tidy up the jungle but

own

arti-

to

those they were created to supervise, who,

as capitalist as

their

was an

system that went against

a

hyena

class

only scavenging for

really

benefit.

Keith was

at least

on the

proper, out

keeping the flame burning in the jungle system's periphery

where the pure

spirit

of capitalism could flourish in line with the forces of nature. Keith

moved

into

outlying reaches of Colombia, buying

extensive banana land near the city of Santa Marta,

Caribbean

coast.

Founded

in 1525, Santa

Spain's oldest settlements in

South America and the point

from which adventurers anciently

set off

inland in search of

El Dorado. Keith had struck a rich seam in

ready-made

asset.

on the

Marta was one of

coming

across a

Colombian businessmen had developed the

Santa Marta banana zone, even constructing their roads, but lacked the contacts to build

own

rail-

up an international

market. As such, they had not been able to compete with the likes of Preston and Keith. Cuckoo-like, Keith

now moved

into a nest built by others.

Colombia's rulers were quite content to see Keith take over the

abandoned northern

lands. In the

46

Andean

capital,

Bogota,

MONOPOLY

were

from the Caribbean, Colombian governments

distant

loftily

historically apt to neglect their far-flung provinces. In

move

1897, Keith's next gambit was to

Panama -

technically

into another

one -

under Colombian rule but yet more

remote from Bogota. Keith's purchase was just across the

Panamanian border from

his

disputed frontier. There was

no argument, however, about w^ho

was the

new and

true

power

plantations in Costa Rica, a

in the vicinity.

Keith bought several thousand acres in the Bocas del Toro area of It

Panama, around Almirante Bay and the Chiriqui Lagoon.

produced more bananas than Costa Rica but Keith's new

rivals

were small growers — many had begun

jobs on de Lesseps' defunct

would

set

namely taking them

Keith's ventures into

over.

Colombia and Panama were made London.

excellent contacts in

his

on behalf of Costa

further trips fixing his

Panama Canal. Before long he

about introducing them to the forces of economic

rationalisation:

through

after losing their

own

beneficial deals.

He

Rica's debt problems, while

When

he was out in the

man's world of the City of London, however, lonelier for

Rican at

the

Mrs Keith than back home with her

family.

On

bottom of

staying in the

had made

life

was

far

large Costa

one occasion she was found unconscious a lift shaft at

Maida Vale

the hotel

area of

several hours, she survived

where they were

London. Unnoticed

what may have been

for

a

suicide

established an informal partnership with

Andrew

attempt.

Soon Keith Preston's

Boston Fruit Company. Boston

Fruit's

Caribbean lands

were unable to meet the burgeoning demand for bananas the northern the

in

US. Keith's Central American plantations suppHed

American South through

New 47

Orleans and other Gulf of

BANANAS Mexico Preston

with plenty to

ports,

sent the surplus to

required.

as

With an

on

eye

sell

Effectively they carved

Cape

line at

new

the

quietly agreed not to

drew the

He

spare.

partners

independently in each others

US

up the

Hatteras,

and 'graveyard of the

new

anti-trust laws, the

market between them. They

North

Atlantic'.

area.

Carolina, place of storms

But with

their arrangement,

Keith and Preston ensured themselves smooth passage into the future. The regulatory hyenas

were conspicuous by the absence

of their yelping. They were more concerned with the big

companies involved operations were ,

Where

and banking whose

in railways, steel, oil

more domestic and

readily visible.

Keith almost came unstuck was in the inadvertent

backwash of the

anti-trust laws.

nies couldn't conspire

The

legislation said

compa-

and plot together but made no mention

of them taking each other over. The

result

was the great

merger wave of the 1890s. Keith had almost survived the difficult years

prosperity

following the 1893 crash in

when

a

company

that

handled

his

of rising

a state

bananas in

New

Orleans went bust leaving him with large debts and vulnerable to takeover.

Costa Rica

rallied

from the national

on

his behalf,

voting large sums of

coffers for Keith to

pay off

his bankers.

Experts on the Costa Rican constitution supposed illegal

but no one

in the direction

help put

He

really

checked and so another

money

step

this

was

was taken

of banana republicanism. While Costa Rica's

him back

in the black,

it

didn't

end

Keith's troubles.

lacked the cash to run his day-to-day business.

Around

the

witnessed the

New

Orleans waterfront the merger wave had

number of companies engaged

in the

banana trade

shrink in the past year firom a hundred smaller ones to a dozen

48

MONOPOLY that

were

far larger.

Keith was

a

most

desirable target for them.

Pre-emptively, he approached Preston, a deal of his

The new United

Company was

Fruit

across six lands: Costa Rica,

a

own in

mind.

brooding presence

Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica

and the Dominican RepubHc. From the Mosquito Coast, once a

haunt of Blackbeard and Morgan,

Domingo hammock while his men

Dominican slung his It

fifty

was

a

capital,

giant farm of

thousand

acres,

third of the land to hoard

At

company

whose

cathedral

Drake

sacked the city in 1587.

a little less

than two hundred and

thousand square kilometres. Only

tilled.

no

hands, then

its

was

real

a

United Fruit would always prefer

some

energy, partly as a hedge against

its

present, this

faced

a

in

the

to

At the same time, the company figured

the land was in

rivals.

or

was

much of

future adversity. if

Santo

stretched

it

entirely

it

that

couldn't be in those of

new

academic because the

competition. United Fruit controlled

three quarters of the banana market.

A

quiet

announcement - one inch square

marked the company's

birth

on March

in the press

-

30, 1899. Again this

reflected a corporate preference: to be understated. Preston

would be

president of the

new

This might have been taken to

giant, Keith reflect that

its

vice-president.

Keith had

Preston, cap in hand, to fend off unfriendly takeover.

need was mutual. In Jamaica, the had brought recent destruction Caribbean

were

islands

island's fabled

contained

its

to

their

high winds

to Preston's plantations.

relatively

The

finite territories,

vulnerable possibly to one hurricane wiping out the

America had

come But

lot.

expanses of jungle, thought infinite

Central at

the

time.

Their job

titles

also

spoke for different aspirations. Keith

49

BANANAS was the railwayman, tropical forest.

by

steel', a

On

rarely happier than

He now

when

alone in the

envisioned a Central America 'united

railway from the borders of

Mexico

merger, he saw further possibilities and

to

Panama.

set off across the

Caribbean Sea to upgrade Preston's railways in eastern Cuba. Socially

ambitious Preston preferred to stay

Boston's 'Brahmins' were a tight-knit

bunch

and whose number Preston hoped

city

many

back

Protestants

at

home.

that ruled the

to join.

They went

generations. 'Wasps' - white Anglo-Saxon - they were mostly of English background,

although one leading family, the Cabots, came in 1700 from Jersey in the

Channel

Many

Islands.

their fortunes to the slave trade,

some

captains to the East Indies. Others

of the families traced to the forays

of old sea

had stayed nearer-by, trawling

Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The 'Codfish Aristocracy'

the

was one Brahmin generic. The Lowells had mill

town named

London up

set

poor.

after

The

families

city

married well and famously, and

dynasties: the Jefferson Coolidges, the

As such they ran the

known

as

Massachusetts

a

them, the Peabodys helped house the

economic and

political,

'Beantown' for one of

its

Cabot Lodges. social life

of

a

favourite foods and

the 'Hub' from an assumed central position in the universe.

As

a local toast

The

would have

it:

'And

land of the bean and the cod,

to the Cabots, Little

And

this

is

good old Boston,

Where

the Lowells talk

the Cabots talk only to God.'

did he suspect, but Preston had missed the boat.

had many

now

ploughing the

seas

He

but Boston's best had quietly

closed the gates to further admittance a few years after the Civil

War. 'Merchants' weren't what they had been — according to

Dr Johnson's definition, he who 'trafficks to remote - but were now 'general traders' and probably too 50

countries' crassly

on

MONOPOLY

who had come

the make. Preston was the 'right' type

'wrong'

But

good

in the

era.

that didn't prevent Boston's 'old

money' spotting

a

when they saw one, and they backed venture. And whatever he lacked in terms

financial thing

Preston's business

of the Brahmins' Keith with his 'plant

big'

celestial

connections, Preston always had

feel for the soil. It

had been Keith's move

to

and create enormous plantations. Progressively

these featured Big

Mike bananas and through

the 1890s the

Red Macabu, and

bigger pale-skinned variety drove out the

any other would-be occupants of market terrain. Articles appeared in the press saying

The world of years yet

Tropics,

of the forces involved.

arose. But,

in his

which must be Frederick

to

do

book

so, that

wrote Samuel Crowther admiringly,

Tlie

that

'demand

Upham

Adams,

who

as a

a

thing

young boy had been

He

conjured

a

new

plants'.

his

at

the Philadelphia

own book

romantic vision:

And

this

The Story of

United Fruit Company.

in

awe of

'vast

plan-

was no mirage.

was the norm in Central America, he noted in

the

is

created'.

of nodding banana

of the Tropics:

early days of

Romance and Rise of the American

Centennial Exhibition, had written

tations

on these

later

by the 'scrubby' banana plant

the company.

many consumer demand

business and economics believed, and for

what was being discovered was

fascinated

but

instinctive grasp

got.

looking back nearly twenty years

United Fruit

it

before their tmie, Keith

would continue

somehow just

preferred

Long

consumers took what they

and Preston had an

how consumers

the Creative Enterprises

his

Conquest

Conducted by

The 'banana of commerce'

sented man's 'profound triumph over nature'. If

It

it

repre-

weren't for

United Fruit the banana would never have emerged from the

51

BANANAS dark, then arrived in such quantities as to bring prices that

made

it

available to

all.

To be

able to intervene like this in the

market system already displayed the laws of supply and

Now,

supernatural powder, since

a

demand were

hitherto thought divine.

suggested Adams, they could be both usefully challenged

and harnessed. United Fruit was 'The Machine'. Was engine, perhaps, or Hke America motions',

Adams

it

itself?

like Corliss's

steam

'made no

useless

It

wrote, and 'brought together the

parts'.

Never

before had distant pestilential lands been Hnked with the thriving

New

metropoHses of

York and elsewhere

benighted tropics would be

would the

so too

'civilised' in

civilising process

in the

US. The

the process but, crucially,

come

to bear

on the

US

condition. United Fruit had been born not only of the 'Age of Invention', but also of the 'Age of Panics'. These

saw the natural

order of the market regularly collapse under the weight of 'petty, planless It

and wasteful competition'. But United Fruit had

was the

Its

monopoly' that would

'efficient

destiny,

it

appeared, was Httle

craft

set

about eliminating

New Orleans these had preyed on Now United Fruit came after them. It

In

rivals.

order from chaos.

than to save capitalism.

less

Thus, United Fruit had immediately

Keith.

a plan.

its

the unfortunate

took over ship-

ping companies and importers and put others out of business.

Some formed an avail.

anti-United Fruit 'resistance front' to limited

Rival ships docked to find United Fruit dropping

below anything capable of loss. its

When

prices.

give

it

they had sold their cargo. United Fruit

It

away

company

them

profit, so forcing

could afford to destroy

fruit to

to stop others selling theirs.

raised

its

and 90 per cent;

all

of

52

it.

prices

sell at

would

a

raise

keep prices up, or

By

such means the

share of the banana market to

effectively

to

its

between 80

MONOPOLY

Many

Jamaican growers in Costa Rica had to

sell

up

to

Keith. If they didn't like the prices he offered for their

bananas, or that he charged for use of his railway, they could always exercise their freedom of choice and leave their fruit to rot. In

Panama around Almirante Bay and

the Chiriqui

Lagoon, Keith pushed small growers out of business by undercutting

Meanwhile, cheap

and

prices

their

parcels

buying

of land

up

officially

land.

their

intended for

peasant farmers were purchased by United Fruit's local lawyers in the names of family

on

sold

US,

1893

a

friends and

to Keith.

United Fruit captured the the

members and

in

its

foreign

affairs,

spirit

of the times. Until recently

had been inhibited by

posse of planters, mainly from the

Hawaii's

Queen

Liliolukani and called

history. In

US, had overthrown

on Washington

the islands. President Cleveland refused: this was

to

annexe

no way

for

an anti-colonial power to be acting. In 1898 President WiUiam

McKinley had no such qualms and went ahead with the annexation. In the space fully

of

1

1

3 days that year, McKinley had success-

fought the Spanish—American War, ejecting Spain from

Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. protested against

imperial Spain,

US

When

rule merely taking over

McKinley resolved

to

'uplift,

the Filipinos

from

that

civilise

of

and

Christianise them'.

United Fruit engaged

in capturing the nation's hearts

and

minds. Soon after the company's birth, Keith chartered four

new

ships

for the

from the navy

that

had not been finished

in time

Spanish-American War. They were bigger than the

rest

of the company's boats and he had them converted to carrying

both cargo and fee-paying passengers. Keith knew the

allure

of the tropics and anticipated their popular appeal. With the

53

BANANAS Great White Fleet, United Fruit steamed into the 'American Century'.

Its latest

in

emergency

One of

dictator assassinated, the

Guatemalan Cabinet had met

session in February

1898 to choose

a successor.

person they had neglected to invite was the army chief

General Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Piqued, General

staff,

Estrada Cabrera stormed in with pistol drawn to save

them

the agony of deliberation. Brazil's recent

entry to the international coffee market had

brought prices crashing down. The

of

a crisis

spiralling

result for

debt and rampant inflation. Like Costa

Rica, Guatemala had been building using

its

The racial

coffee to pay for

its

own

railway,

though

it.

railway was intended to bridge the nation's class and divide.

Mayan. They

The

majority of Guatemala's population was

lived in such impoverished provinces as

and Quezaltenango

in the

Quiche

mountainous north-west of the

country, the Indian Highlands.

The Mayans comprised many

communities, identities and languages, to

Guatemala was

all

agreed in their wish

keep themselves to themselves. 'Guatemala' was

a

theory

them by others. These others in the 'ladino' - or 'mestizo' - minority of

devised and imposed on

main were the

sizeable

mixed Indian and Spanish blood. The ladinos regarded the

Mayans

as

backward and lacking

in ambition.

'white' elite, oligarchs of Spanish, British stock,

and

also a

Over

all

a

and Scandinavian

wealthy community of Germans, ruled the

land.

From

the Pacific coast in the west, the railway system had

already reached Guatemala City, the nation's capital located

more or

less

midway between 54

the coasts. As the line had

MONOPOLY approached from the Atlantic

had run out. The railway had stopped of El Rancho, sixty miles short of invited It

Minor Keith

would prove

money

in the east, the coffee

the tiny settlement

at

Cabrera

goal. Estrada

its

to finish the job.

country but railways

a fateful step for the

were the technology of the day and Keith's terms were matchless.

land

Rather than cash upfront, he asked as

it

would

familiar ring.

As

grow

take to in

for

his bananas.

merely

The

as

much

plan had a

Costa Rica, bananas would pay for the

railway Other foreign contractors were only skilled in the ways

of railroads and could not offer final

this integrated

payment, Keith would take

his profits

approach. For

from running the

Atlantic side of the railway for ten years following tion. After that

it

would come under Guatemalan

comple-

control, in

theory, at least.

The

implications were not missed at

in Guatemala', read the

New

was broke and, with such the world,

amounts of Brazilian coffee

sufficiently to take over

railroad even after ten years.

By

would end up

of Keith and United

The

in the hands

its

in

Atlantic

default this vital infrastructure

contract allowed three years for the

oning came sooner. Heavy

Guatemala

York Times headline.

vast

would not recover

home: 'Americans win

rains,

Fruit.

work but

the reck-

flooding and labour prob-

lems dogged the project. President Estrada Cabrera revived old laws to have workers forcibly drafted.

Indian Highlands and, tations, fell sick or

more used

died in the

Many came from

the

to the elevated coffee plan-

humid

eastern lowlands. Others

ran away to next-door Belize. Keith recruited Jamaicans, well as Afro-Caribbean workers from the

US, but the works

from El Rancho dropped behind schedule.

He

extension to his contract's three-year deadline.

55

as

requested an

BANANAS Estrada Cabrera attempted to assume his role national events and force the issue, a tactic

the Cabinet a foreign

room

more

He

Germany and France had

had shown

they

know about

Keith

interest

in other contrac-

their railway builders

but the problem remained: what did

bananas?

matters

left

successful in

threatened to take the Atlantic contract

away from Keith and nnagined he could get

who

of

than in the present circumstances of facmg

company.

tors. Britain,

as dictator

to

appointed

his

representative

in

Guatemala, Percival Farquahar. While upgrading Preston's railway in Cuba, Keith had

company.

won

He

had

a

met Farquahar working

the contract to electrify Havana's street railway, Farquahar 's

detractors had accused

him of such

tactics

as

bribery and

attempted kidnapping. In Guatemala he resorted to if

for another

persuasive line in negotiation. After he had

summary manoeuvre

still

across

that Keith himself

by chance in Costa Rica.

part of many

a

It

a less dark,

had stumbled

would become

a regular

multi-national company's armoury. Companies

always had the option of departing from whatever country

they found themselves in and Farquahar

ened

that Keith

He

had

and United Fruit would

his bags

his hotel in the

simply threat-

of Guatemala.

packed and ready to leave in the lobby of

centre of Guatemala City at breakfast one

morning. Estrada Cabrera's relayed

now

pull out

word back

spies,

notoriously everywhere,

to the palace just

An

around the corner.

appointment with the president was arranged for noon. In the contract signed in

terms. Keith took side

full

1904, United Fruit

control of the railway

of the country. This included

all

named

on the

its

Atlantic

rolling stock, stations

and

telegraph lines, plus the lately constructed Atlantic port of

Puerto Barrios. All had been built

56

at national

expense.

The

MONOPOLY company gained huge new banana to speak of.

It

would pay no

taxes

The government would not have known how

them anyway.

assess

lands.

It

waived

all

rights to

to

view the company's

books.

Before long, the company would take over the nation's road on the Pacific

happy

side, too.

to sell up, since they

had

custom from Guatemala's

little

who were mostly located in

hard-hit coffee growers,

rail-

The present owners would be that region

of the country. In future, any growers - of coffee or other products in the west of Guatemala, or of bananas in the east nearer the Atlantic coast at prices

tively

— would have

dictated by United Fruit.

to use Keith's railway

The company had

assumed control of the means by which

country's

economic

life

much

effec-

of the

was conducted.

Shortly after the agreement, Farquahar was called in to explain the

it

over beer and dinner to the oligarchs gathered

at

German legation. One by one as the drink flowed they condemn their president's failure to defend the national

rose to

interest.

When

Farquahar soberly asserted that no bribes had

been involved, he was greeted with Cabrera, sensibly not present later

at

gales

the

of laughter. (Estrada

German

thanked Farquahar for defending

his

legation dinner,

good name.)

The mirthful Germans had had their moment but ultimately knew the laugh was on them. For the sake of plugging the sixty-mile

El

Rancho gap

Guatemala's erstwhile ruling

As for the

deal, bribes

had

inducement

uncovered, but

it

amounted

its

much of their power.

to the president to a

value than a drink. In the

Guatemala needed

lost

on the whole had been unnecessary.

relatively small

more

and other members of

they

elite

few railway

A

was eventually shares,

judgement of

its

of

little

dictator,

railway and United Fruit alone had the

57

BANANAS resources to provide

it.

Thereafter for the better part of two

decades Estrada Cabrera and the

coincidence of views on Fifty years after the

how

company enjoyed

a

happy

the country should be run.

agreement, Miguel Angel Asturias's book

The Green Pope featured

a contract

engineered by

a fictitious

US railwayman. As turias named him George Maker Thompson, for

which presumably read Minor Cooper Keith. With

Guatemalan escapade, Keith rose yet again in

status:

his

from railway

builder carving plantations through the tropical forest to 'Green

Pope' and maker of governments.

J8

5

The Banana Man Minor Keith and Andrew Preston founded

If

United Fruit

and development

fate

the empire of

company's

in the early twentieth century, then the

of

in the hands

for

much of

the next

fifty

were

years

Sam Zemurray.

Born Samuel Zmurri in 1878 he was brought up m Bessarabia, a region on the Black Sea annexed to Russia. Today

home

his

of

parts

it

are in

Moldova and Romania.

of Kishinev, Russia staged one

city

and occasioned the

first

revolt

its

of the

US

and

his

where an

a

new

family name.

aunt headed south to Selma, Alabama, where

according to some accounts his uncle had a general a

offi-

immigration department misheard, misspelled

and sent him off with

He

Sam had

earlier,

arrived as a fourteen-year old at Ellis Island, cial

worst pogroms

by Russian Jews to defend

community. With an aunt, eleven years

their

In 1903 in

store.

For

while Zemurray went to work in the Gulf Coast port of

Mobile, 130 miles away, swabbing decks on banana boats. Later,

with

a small

fortune of 150 dollars, mainly his uncle's money,

he bought enough bananas to their ripeness.

They were

fill

at risk

a railway car

of rotting in the heat before

he could get them back to Selma. For persuaded the invention, to

He

arrived

train

beckon

but misjudged

a

few bunches, he

guard to use the telegraph,

still

a

novel

traders out to the stations along the line.

home with no

bananas but a thirty-five dollar

59

profit.

BANANAS By 1895

'Ripes' and risk were Zemurray's forte.

New

of seventeen he was competing on the front: 'Fifty stems,

some

I'll

take

fifty!'

He had a

the age

at

Orleans water-

thick accent, Russian,

Romanian. He was mainly conspicuous because of

said

of one metre ninety, over

his height

six feet.

He

took the

bananas big companies didn't want, those which were too ripe

-

sold to

him cheaply and sometimes even given

He bought

was mad, the Banana Man.

soon began to

He

and sold quickly and

companies'

profits.

was comfortable in the south US. Anti-Semitism was

norm

the

bite into the big

but colour prejudice significantly worse.

prominent

banana business, were

in the

anti-Italian feeling. As far

and their

through the

Italian

state

away

and

typal migrant

who

did

it

left

to the north as Illinois,

sisters to

Minor

come

to the

of

fruit

and

was the arche-

humble origin enough

to

Keith. Zemurray's risky investments

short of cash and, soon after United Fruit's

company,

Zemurray had was keen

He

US.

the individual of

formation in 1899, he proposed that that stake in his

fever.

for his mother, grandparents

'on his own'. But he was also smart

him

banana

crews were stopped from passing

made good:

have befriended often

whipped up

during one outbreak of yellow

Soon Zemurray had paid six brothers

Italians,

also subjected to

prejudice. Fears that the fruit brought disease

trains

He

to him.

his sights

to enter.

it

buy

a

60 per cent

a controlling interest.

on Honduras, which United

Fruit

The company monopolised the shipping Islands and much of that

from the Honduran Bay

from the mainland, but wanted

to

grow

its

own. Honduras

's

banana production was higher than elsewhere in Central

America and was mainly run by

local

and

operating in a hundred-mile stretch of

6o

Italian smallholders its

northern coast

THE BANANA MAN

known

The

as Atlantida.

area

boomed,

people:

some

port attracted

tory, the

US

engineers

who

especially

particular types of enterprising

had worked over the years on

Honduras's various stop-start schemes to build road; prostitutes

on

downward

a

US

As

assessed

was ripe for

on

by United

Fruit, the

propelled by

Ulua

off the

Honduran banana

men

it.

With

industry

The

Bar.

with poles to the big

was several days off

fruit

Mexico might

the plant and headwinds across the Gulf of

ruin

had turned

Producers floated their bananas out

rationalisation.

moored

who

fleeing the law.

'lighters', barges,

boats

a national rail-

from Marseilles

career path

to Port Said; an assortment of ne'er-do-wells

up from the

around the

On its sickle-shaped promon-

redoubt of Puerto Cortes.

coastal

yet

investment, small settlements like Tela andTrujillo

could be developed into fully-fledged ports of

call for

banana

boats.

Zemurray, the Banana Man, went beyond the coastal fringe

He

into the interior.

learned fluent Spanish.

prices to the producers, like the big

from

guys did. The

their boats

with

a

bought and shipped out steamer,

and

gave good

latter habitually

turned lighters back

weight of rejected cargo. Zemurray quickly.

He

moving on with United

freighters that

He

didn't quibble over quality quite

were once among the

had

started

Fruit's fastest

Buenos Aires run. Soon he was itching

to

with

a

tramp

backing to two

on the Liverpoolbuy

his

own

plan-

tations.

Sam Zemurray, with the job

much

of

at

it

hand

his early life

was that is

said,

was so intent on getting on

he had no eye on posterity. Not

known and he

left

no

private papers.

Possibly Arthur Miller, the playwright, was speaking for

him

in Death of a Salesman through the ghostly voice of Willy

6i

BANANAS

who made

Loman's brother Ben, the one jungle

at

seventeen, and

at

it: 'I

went

twenty-one, by God,

I

into the

came out

rich.'

United Fruit suffered disease hit

its

its first

big blow in 1903,

when Panama same name.

plantations in the country of the

Disease was not exactly new, but the big plantations were. small plots and lots or

would

on

die out for lack of

anywhere

United

to go.

disease

jumped borders

huge

Fruit's

plantations extended a graphic invitation to disaster

Panama

On

scattered plants in the jungle, disease

- soon

Costa Rica and headed

to

north to Nicaragua, and beyond.

The same

year also

saw constructive developments in

US point of US declared

Panama, from the United Fruit and Panamanian

insurrectionists

backed by the

view.

inde-

pendence from Colombia. Colombia was looking the other way, engaged in alists

its

'Thousand Days War' as

battled to decide

went

its

own

President

which way

way, or so

it

to

run

1898, the former governor of to

and feder-

Panama

seemed.

Theodore Roosevelt was

from domestic duties

centralists

their country.

in the

New York

play

a

US

White House.

In

had taken time off hero's

role

in

the

Spanish—American War. In Cuba he had led troops, the 'Rough Riders', in the victorious storming of San Juan Hill.

He

had

returned to be President McKinley's running mate in the election of 1900 and assumed leadership assassinated the following year.

the

US on

when McKinley was

The deceased

president had put

an imperial course and Teddy Roosevelt resolved

to continue the adventure.

He again

had been urging the Colombians

on

a canal across

Panama.

It

62

to get

works going

would provide

the key route

THE BANANA MAN for swift passage

by

of the

ships

US Navy

between the

and Atlantic Oceans. The Colombians baulked the waterway on grounds of

Pacific

the idea of

at

US

potential for increasing

its

intervention in the region.

Roosevelt intervened anyway. The Panamanian 'insurrec-

1903 had been flagged by an announcement in

tion' in late

US press some six months before. At the time of the rising, US Navy was primed to keep troops from Colombia at

the the bay.

United

tionists.

Fruit's fleet

When the

minimal combat had ceased, Panama became

recorded instance of

a rare

pendence and gave As things stood, been

even ran in supplies for the insurrec-

country that declared

a

up

a

canal across

that important to

its

inde-

the same time.

it

at

United

Panama wouldn't have

Fruit. Its plantations

yet

were in

the distant north-east of the country, well away from the canal's

prospective path. For the

company

it

was

easier to reach

its

Panamanian plantations by ship from Boston, than by the rough overland route from

Panama City near where

be. Eventually the canal

but that was

still

would provide

a relatively

the canal

would

useful access to California

under-developed market for the

company.

The

canal

scheme soon developed

between Roosevelt and United to follow Keith's that there

unholy row had wanted

example of hiring Jamaican labour on grounds

was none better for working in

pestilential tropical

needed Jamaicans

conditions. Keith, however, in

into an

Fruit. The president

for his railway

Guatemala and lobbied the British in Jamaica to stop them

going to such enraged

a 'terrible

place' as

Panama. Roosevelt was

at this treachery.

From Washington, United mind but now had

Fruit

had been out of

sight

inadvertently thrust itself into view.

63

It

and had

BANANAS from the course of normal business into the realm of

Strayed

'strategic interests'.

How He

Roosevelt dealt with United Fruit would be

tricky.

company had stood

in the

couldn't easily argue that the

way of

the

US

achieving

imperial destiny, because the

its

very idea was again under scrutiny. His Panama escapade had

drawn

a lot

of

with cartoons of him, the rotund

critical press,

'Rough Rider' bearing down on poor had blustered on, saying the

US

- which were 'determined

for us

little

Colombia.

had no choice

by

fate'.

in

its

He

actions

Joseph Conrad

subsequently published his novel Nostromo in 1904 with a

US

financier as

'we

shall

or not

.

one of

echoing the sentiment:

his characters

run the world's business whether the world .

.

the world can't help

it

— and

likes

it

neither can we,

I

guess.'

But the president had another at

the company. In his days as

was the reputed

'trust buster'.

new anti-trust legislation of the

Fruit,

Roosevelt put

With Keith

Keen

to

with which to

Now

was

a

good time

action. In

his anti-trust investigators

US

on the

Andrew

proceeded to inal

sell

case.

Preston

US

flank.

government's belligerence by taking

recent years United Fruit had bought

control of several companies, like leaving day-to-day

for a

make an example of United

usually in tropical absentia,

tempered the

evasive

the

1890s and attacked big compa-

assumed responsibility for guarding the company's

He

strike

governor, Roosevelt

He had warmly embraced

nies for monopolistic practices.

repeat performance.

stick

New York

management

control of

Sam

Zemurray's, while

in their hands. Preston

some of them back

now

to the orig-

owners. One, Italian-run and mainly operating in

Honduras, ambitiously named

64

itself

the

Standard Fruit

THE BANANA MAN

Company, while remaining too

small to be a rival.

company was Zemurray's but he United

Another

hadn't the cash to pay for

he remained in the company's debt

Fruit's share. So,

and in secret partnership. 1907 saw

Sam Zemurray and United

both

Honduran ambitions of

a further setback to the

Fruit.

The

president and

He had been

dictator.

General Manuel Bonilla, was overthrown.

a friend

of the thriving community of foreign entrepreneurs

on

Honduran

the

Atlantic coast and had a particular rapport

with Zemurray. Minor Keith was another pioneer of coastal

and

enterprise, with his trading post in Bluefields, Nicaragua,

others in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama.

The word was

that President Bonilla

for his patronage

of such commercial

ishly called this bribery.

A

took the

talents. Critics

rebellion

churl-

it

was merely

leader's

power and

Others countered that

due acknowledgement of the

tribute, in

position.

had been well rewarded

from within the Honduran armed forces

distinctly anti-Bonilla line and,

backed by an inva-

sion from the south by Nicaragua's army, forced the president to flee in 1907.

A US

gunboat

spirited

country and soon he turned up in

became

a familiar face, in early old

him away from

New

the

Orleans. Here he

age and with greying hair

and moustache, around the bars and other funhouses of the city's

Vieux Carre.

Both Honduras and Nicaragua had had

of

differences

opinion with the foreign business people on their Atlantic seaboards.

At times these

expatriates

things as if the coastal region It

on

seemed

to

want

were an independent

to

run

state.

was debatable whether Honduras had been well served

its

Atlantic side

railway, for

by 'gringo' enterprise. In the case of

example, the region had

65

a

few dozen miles of

its

line

BANANAS but these followed the meandering course of local

C.Trautwine,

a

US

railroad builder, constructed

rivers.

John

many of them.

The Hondurans had commissioned him to build a line inland to Tegucigalpa but made the mistake of paying him by the mile. His line wound around the coastal flatlands studiously avoiding the escarpment that led to the

money

contract

He

even wrote

capital.

home,

ran out, Trautwine retired

manual on the

a best-selling

When

art

the

man.

a rich

of building

the 'permanent way'.*

Such

tricks left Tegucigalpa stranded

Protected behind

its

three peaks and basking

echo of gentle church

in the

although

regard

difficult to

In the conduct of

had bought

Fyffes,

whose Jamaican

high plateau.

on moonlit

was

a pleasant city,

It

stepped up

a

gear in Europe.

a half share in the British

plantations

company

had been badly damaged

by hurricanes. Fyffes supplied the British market and plantations in the

Canary

nights

as a capital.

mode.

in radical

In 1903

bells, it

its

foreign business, United Fruit was

its

soon again it

on

Islands.

United Fruit took

also

full

had

control

of the company in 1910.

At the same time, the Caribbean

They were

lematic.

full

islands

of smallholders

were proving prob-

who

got in the

way

They

and produced

inefficiently

were apt

complain to their governments about the

to

by United

Fruit's standards.

company's overbearing presence. In Cuba the company stopped growing bananas and planted sugar cane instead.

United

If

on

Fruit's

many

read

it,

banana production was migrating west towards

few copied him. Most of the world's railways

either a standard or

narrow gauge. Trautwine had

'bastard gauge'.

66

his

are built

own, known

as

THE BANANA MAN the wider to

do

open

spaces of Central America,

and would continue

so.

United Fruit went on the warpath the disputed border with Costa Rica.

United Fruit

just to see the area as

Panama. This was near

in It

would have been

easier

territory, yet, rashly, a

US

The provocatively named American Banana Company, ABC, attempted to set up m rival

had chosen not

Panama by

lie

ABC

so.

the frontier with Costa Rica and near United Fruit's

plantations. line,

do

to

Having competently cleared jungle and

simply hadn't done

its

homework about

of the land. Costa Rican troops appeared one

assets to United Fruit. ABC and handed ABC sought legal redress in the US. Its

laid railway

the general day, ejected

its

chances looked

good. In 1909 Teddy Roosevelt had been succeeded by the administration of President William Taft, get tough

on big company

who

was prepared

bullying. Standard Oil

broken up in 1911. But United Fruit? Taft was provincial Ohio.

He

said

He

lawyer from

he had never wanted the job of pres-

ident and pined for the day

home.

a

to

would be

had no general

when he

could leave

and go

it

interest in foreign affairs, let alone

the particularities of Central America. Against such an executive backdrop

ABC

Supreme Court. The

way

to the

was thrown out, with such

distant

took United Fruit case

all

the

squabbles considered 'beyond jurisdiction'.

United Fruit sensed sive in

it

was time to get back on the offen-

Honduras. Panama disease had spread further across

Central America and just reached Guatemala. Honduras was the only major producer

Minor Keith

left free

saUied forth with

of the plague.

what was

party piece: a railroad-for-land scheme. its

railway to Tegucigalpa and virtually

67

fast

becoming

Honduras would anywhere

it

his

get

wanted;

BANANAS Keith would get large swathes of the country. the

By now, however,

Hondurans had the working examples of Costa Rica and

Guatemala to go by and turned him down. 1910, therefore, United

In

approach.

Sam Zemurray

some extent he was on mined

to

United

since

adopted

mission of his own.

a

his

Fruit,

own

different

He

was deter-

with

bananas. But he was heavily indebted

whom he had been in clandestine alliance

United Fruit had sold

his

company back

to

him

in

lOU.

return for an

Zemurray had two hundred thousand

dollars to invest,

of which had been raised from banks in Mobile,

and

a

go back into the jungle and enrich himself further

by producing to

Fruit

suddenly arrived in Honduras. To

New York. The

rest

came from 'secondary

sharks charging interest rates of

fifty

New

some

Orleans

financiers', loan

per cent.

He bought

expanses of virgin land and went to Tegucigalpa to claim the usual tax concessions. Without them, the jungle clearance work,

the drainage and irrigation, the building of railways and workers'

huts and

all

the other paraphernalia of banana production

would have been simply For some reason, tive

of the Banana

impossible.

difficult to

Man

understand from the perspec-

and United

Fruit, the

Hondurans

turned him down. Zemurray was especially perplexed; he faced financial ruin.

O. Henry was

first

to use the

term 'banana

republic', in his

only novel. Cabbages and Kings (1904). The popular and prolific

US short-story writer referred to the 'maritime banana republic' of Anchuria, which was

He

portrayed

it

as

his

a place

rogues, the latter mainly

imaginary version of Honduras.

of friendly natives and loveable

from the United 68

States.

THE BANANA MAN O. Henry had lived in Puerto Cortes and met these adven-

He was on the run from the law himself, and later returned to the US to face a charge of stealing funds from the bank in Texas where he had worked as a clerk. He served a three-year turers.

sentence, though subsequent suggestions were that his offence

jail

was more

bookkeeping error than

a

a crime.

When

Cabbages and Kings, and was being charitable about ters,

he wrote charac-

its

he was seeking similar redemption for himself.

O. Henry wrote

book of

the end of his

at

coup

a

d'etat in

He

Anchuria orchestrated by the 'Vesuvius Fruit Company'.

company

described the

in mildly critical but overall under-

standing tones: 'the

power

and uplifted finger

to

dren'.

the

And

company

The

coup was a tyrant

him and

replace

tale

developed that

its

of the

that forever stood

keep Anchuria

was removed, the right

itself in

part in framing

In Cortes he

chil-

gift

man found

of to

everyone's best interests served.

US

contemporary view on United

US

of good

of reasons: by the

for the best

played well to his readership. If a

with chiding smile

in the class

Central America, O.

public opinion Fruit's role

and

Henry played

his

it.

came

across the likes

of Lee Christmas, son

of a Louisiana cotton planter from near Baton Rouge. Christmas

had come

to

Honduras

to drive trains

railway but was colour-blind and at

vocation dependent on signals and

cenary matters, had luck. In

a

knack for

it

on John C. Trautwine's

some disadvantage

flags.

in a

He went into meruncommon

and enjoyed

one rebellion Christmas had been captured and put

before a firing squad. 'Don't bury

my

body!' he responded to

the request for his final wish: 'so the buzzards can shit

your heads', or words to similar impressed, possibly unnerved, and

69

effect.

let

him

me on

His captors were go.

BANANAS had worked for ex-President Bonilla,

Christmas banished.

He

had been made

ceremonial days and

a

white horse on

a

dark blue uniform tailored in Paris.

had been Bonilla 's head of security had once foiled

rode

a general,

now

He

in Tegucigalpa. Christmas

a plot against Bonilla, so

it

was written, when

he stormed the congress, arrested several deputies and threw

them

in

But he was more

jail.

home

at

in the sweaty climes

coast. The company he kept included Guy 'MachineMolony of New Orleans. Molony had gone to fight with

of the gun'

Boer Wars

the British in South Africa during the

of the century. Twice injured, once nearly to be nearer

home and hawk

Molony relished such fights. It was someone to finance them. When, m 1910, Sam Zemurray his

two hundred thousand

development,

it

the turn

he had returned

fatally,

his passion for rapid fire

turned out that

just a question

of finding

materialised in

Honduras

dollars it

around

Both Christmas and

the revolutions of Central America.

with

at

and

his plan for

jungle

was not the Hondurans

rejected his request for tax concessions at

all.

who

Honduras was

only playing to a script written by Washington, and what

happened next amounted

to the

Zemurray making war on

their

Such revolutions such ruses also

left

as

had

as

left

United Fruit Company and

own

government.

had deposed ex-President Bonilla, and railwayman Trautwine

Honduras deeply

in

a rich

man, had

debt, not least to bankers in

Europe. Washington feared that those bankers' countries might just be inspired militarily to intervene collect the

To of

its

on

their behalf

and

money.

deter such a threat, the

US

government had

present policy of 'Dollar Diplomacy'.

agency, appointed by Washington,

70

a plan, part

Some

reputable

would occupy Honduras

's

THE BANANA MAN custom houses and, with the country, maximise and collect

and generous

home

agreement of the

full

tax revenues. For an agreed

its

agency would make sure that foreign

fee, this

bankers and other creditors were paid and, therefore, eliminate the need for aggressive intervention.

hands of President

Taft's

Knox, the secretary of

The

reputable

appointed to

was

concessions, therefore,

down.

and

It

was

in the

was

it

bank and

a

was called the 'Knox

it

Plan'.

not universally regarded as such) agency

Morgan, the bankers.

P.

J.

(if

in the

foreign affairs specialist. Philander

state,

up shop

set

The scheme was

it

Honduran counting houses

When Zemurray Morgan

P.

J.

requested tax

him

that turned

was in Honduras for the serious

purpose of organising the nation's finances, not listening to fanciful

schemes of plantations rising from the jungle.

Zemurray reacted he faced bankruptcy the spirit of J.

P.

furiously. at

American

Morgan', he raged:

sent lobbyists to

entrepreneur, he argued,

the hands of a 'nasty enterprise, not 'I've

some

never even met

He came

to

his plea directly to secretary

of

state

met Knox. According

encounter led to

a

gave the

nod

Banana naries

it

Man

Mr

He

loitering in

Knox.

to

to his next course of action,

planned to buy

was

Morgan.'

No

record

Zemurray, their

meeting of minds. Knox, he

entailed rudely

He

Washington himself, and

suggests he ever

likely since

trust'.

'favourite son of

meet whoever they could while

the halls of Congress.

took

A lone

said,

even

which was hardly

abandoning the Knox Plan. The

a boat,

fill it

with assorted merce-

and crooks and overthrow the US-supported Honduran

government

itself.

Bonilla waited in exile in

New

Christmas and Molony, minus

his

were under observation by the

US

71

Orleans.

With him were

machine-gun, since they secret service.

Zemurray

BANANAS purchased

a large

motorised yacht called the Hornet, built in

the 1890s for one of the railway robber barons.

US Navy

On

cold w^inter's night around the

uncommonly

an

had

It

seen service for the

also

Spanish-American War.

in the

New Year

of 1911, BoniUa and friends waved the Hornet off from the quay.

The

had lodged an

boat's master

plan for

official sailing

excursion eastwards along the Gulf Coast.

a small

and Molony repaired to

Bonilla, Christmas

Evans's lodgings of entertainment quarter.

The

on Basin

secret service agent tailing

Madame May

Street in the old

them watched

ering from across the street tiU the early hours.

phoned

his office

—

shiv-

When

was told to go home. Within minutes, BoniUa 's party had

Madame

May's to take

They outpaced

a

a fast

watching

up with the Hornet off

The

They joined

nearby port of

question luck.

A

of the coastguard and caught

Biloxi, Mississippi.

Roatan

in the

Honduran Bay

rebel forces to begin an assault

castle

its

hung over whether gunboat, the

on the

William Walker, 'King of Nicaragua',

Trujillo.

had been put against

left

launch also provided by Zemurray.

vessel

three friends landed near

Islands.

he

nothing but a drunken party' — he

'It's

USS

waU and

this

shot in the 1860s.

A

mission would enjoy better

Tacoma, seized the Hornet. BoniUa

and comrades, however, were aUowed

to

go on

their way.

The

Tacomas lingering offshore presence proved a better deterrent to the

Honduran defence

forces,

not emerge from their coastal

United Fruit landed

a

many members of which

forts.

company of men and guns

Minor Keith from company

did

raised

by

plantations in Guatemala. Puerto

Cortes, meanwhile, was alert to the appearance of adopted sons Christmas and

Molony from

In sporadic fighting

one

US

across the eastern horizon.

resident was killed. Talks to 'sepa-

72

THE BANANA MAN rate the sides', or rather, to arrange for the

government's step-

down, were held aboard the USS Tacoma. Thus 'patriots'

a

force of

marched off triumphant on the ascending road

to

Tegucigalpa.

His plan scuppered, the

Knox promised

same time, President

Taft

had no

a 'full investigation'.

At

desire to get involved

m

such far-flung events. Washington adopted the course of

least

resistance. What

was the point in doing otherwise? All that was

happening was

that control

of

a small

and largely unknown

country's affairs was passing from the hands of a large

US

banking house to an aspirant bunch of Banana Men. At

first

blush,

it

even appeared that the cause against oppressive big

business was being served.

The Honduran coup no trouble getting

successfully carried out,

his tax concessions

his lands. Elections

were staged

to

Zemurray had

and go-ahead

to develop

confirm Bonilla

as presi-

dent and he granted Zemurray whatever he wanted. The Banana

Man

was put in charge of national finances,

to raise the

government loan

that

his first

would pay

his

job being expenses

incurred in the invasion.

Perhaps the keenest protests against the coup came from an unlikely quarter.

had

initially

fine to

them

Honduras just

who

'in

The US

entrepreneurs of the Atlantic Coast

supported the exercise. that a force

with

the class of

that force was.

might of United

It

had seemed perfectly

interests like theirs

good

was keeping

children'. Until they reaHsed

Behind Sam Zemurray loomed the

Fruit.

The company denied party that had nothing to

all

involvement in events. Yet, for

a

do with anything. United Fruit was

handsomely rewarded. Zemurray presented the company with

two

large concessions

of land,

at

Tela and Trujillo.

With them

BANANAS the Banana

Man

cleared his debts

hacking

way

into the

its

The Honduran in

- and United

Honduran

invasion

Fruit was soon

interior.

marked an important development

United Fruit s world. Costa Rica and Guatemala had previ-

ously

succumbed

happenstance,

ill

to

banana republicanism through

fortune and stealth.

rection', but conspiracy

a

Panama had had

its

US

Atlantic coast in Nicaragua, a country

stay in

The

much

fold.

For

marines, briefly sent to Honduras to 'keep

the peace', were soon landing south along Central

causing too

'insur-

and violence were more the means by

which Honduras had been pulled into the company

good measure,

mix of

deemed

trouble in the region.

Nicaragua for over twenty

Americas

to have

been

The marines were

to

years.

events of 1911 in Honduras brought to an end what

might be termed the United Fruit Company's 'nice guy' period.

There would be Hshed

its

little

more of

that.

United Fruit had estab-

power and was of every mind

74

to wield

it.

6

Taming the Enclave United Fruit much preferred to do things its

distant

its

which on

way,

enclaves was generally possible. Inefficient and

bungling, the state lacked the company's understanding and

touch, and any interference was ignored.

One

sphere in which United Fruit excelled was in the

handling of labour. its

It

had

own

its

labour laws and any that

host countries might have had were suspended in United areas. It hired, fired

Fruit's

'ears

in

own

its

network of charge-hands, superintendents,

security forces, a

The

police and spies.

and controlled through

the ground',

latter

were known

as oidos en el suelo,

whose function was not only

to

listening out for political troublemakers, but also those

complained too

much

be

who

about working conditions.

United Fruit had recruited

far

and wide

in

effort to

its

discover the most cost-effective and productive workforce.

Minor

Keith's

sleazier side

first

of

reducing the

experiments with

New

size

ill-fated recruits

Orleans had succeeded in

of the

US

more than

criminal fraternity.

In Costa Rica, General Guardia had urged reliable

little

from the

him

to

import

Europeans, especially Swiss, Germans and British.

Instead Keith had pursued the cheaper option of getting Costa

Rica

to overturn laws forbidding Asian immigration. Itinerant

Chinese had

built the US's transcontinental railroad but

raised fears that suddenly hordes

had

of them would flood into

75 il

BANANAS Central America and the Caribbean.

become

allowed into Costa Rica, to

workers on the suffered the

railroad.

more

for

Regarded

being

where they could lodge

a

far

from

The Chinese were

duly

the worst treated of racially

as

all

inferior, they

home and from anywhere

complaint.

'I

present to you in irons

the following Chinese,' wrote a works superintendent to Keith

of one group 'whip them

The

who

as

Italians

be of

a

you

had committed some unspecified offence, see

fit.'

Keith hired from Piedmont were thought to

higher breed. His application to the Costa Rican

government

them

to allow

commended them

in

for being

'from a cold climate': they were in the habit of working hard to

keep warm. They would

also

be 'bettering the

of Costa Rica by mixing 'with the

drew

rest

of the

racial stock'

natives'.

He

comparison with the government recently importing

a

pedigree cattle to improve local herds.

Race became were 'weak'. At

down

a

key

home

issue.

In Guatemala, Highland Indians

they might walk miles each day up and

their volcanoes carrying firewood

couldn't adapt to conditions

on

and water, but they

the plains. Ladinos didn't arrive

looking for work on the banana plantations

been cleared and the most

useless

under

Held

till

to

the jungle had

be

among

were Afro-Americans, 'uppity' and spoiled by

association with tainted.

hospital built.

US

Caribbeans

life.

who

US management

Other black labour was

the

their

indirectly

had worked on the Panama Canal

had been 'pampered' by the experi-

ence.

Thus

the British West Indian surged to the top of the most

popular worker

list,

He

be 'extremely courteous'. This was attributed

was

said to

to a 'triumph

not only because of

his physical resilience.

of empire', its assumed old decencies and manners,

76

TAMING THE ENCLAVE Keith took on

and

also to Keith's 'charisma'.

that

of an imperial viceroy. With

The

akin to

his plans to build a railw^ay

new

the length of the region, he acquired a the 'Cecil

a guise

nomenclature:

Rhodes of Central America'.

reality

behind the legend

Jamaicans caused

w2ls that the

trouble and they complained about conditions, sometimes to

the British back in Jamaica and occasionally to passing ships

of the Royal Navy. They could always take or

move on

home was ment on

to different

work

steamer home,

Panama. But work

at

not plentiful or well paid. If they could fmd employ-

the Caribbean islands,

economic

in, say,

a

crises,

amid the sugar

gluts

and other

they were likely to be paid twenty cents a

day.

United Fruit paid such wages for one Yet the

company

two hours' work.

to

did not lose. Following the Civil War,

United Fruit served the function of 'exporting' and, were, 'rebranding' slavery.

regarded

have

a

as

The

both brutal and

Fruit provided basic

and had

store. at

it

was expensive to

inefficient. It

workforce around whether there was work to be done

new

or not and expecting bed and board. In the

will

as

had become

old system

its

bunkhouse

the store

made good

in 'scrip', pieces

the

at

company

of paper for exchange

where the company named profit.

United

hired and fired at

facilities,

workers spend their wages

United Fruit paid

era.

prices.

its

The

stores

Their standards varied, some being just

rough counters where workers bought basic items. Others

were department

stores,

ters, tropical suits

in some,

comfy

and

with

silk shirts

felt hats

and

displayed

chairs peculiarly ranged

ties

on dummies and, on upper

Prices for such items were out of reach for

white managerial few.

77

on the coun-

all

shelves.

except the

BANANAS Members of the upper echelons of management were generthe products of the US's better schools. Young men of the right type were sent down to sweat it out in the tropics, rather as their British counterparts were despatched to Aden and ally

other points

of Suez'

'east

The most junior

tion.

an exercise in character forma-

as

rose at five to harness their mules by

moonlight and head off for

a day's

and

and quantity of stems harvested.

carriers over the quality

The

prospect was that they might

arguing with the cutters

make

to the top and,

it

within ten years, control of a whole country could be

Or

they might

bottoms of

As

fall

glasses in the bars

for the

theirs.

by the wayside and seek wisdom from the of Puerto Cortes.

who

company's lower-level managers,

had

direct

control over the workforce, United Fruit held a particular fasci-

nation for whites from the

US

South.

recruited liberally

It

from among them. Such overseers were either of an age

to

remember

the days of slavery, or had been brought up in

its

aftermath.

Many were

of

a

mentality to regret

its

passing.

Jungle clearance work was the hardest and most likely to cause discontent

were

among

at their highest.

the rattlesnake,

one

in

it

The

risks

from snakes

At two and half metres long, the was

amarilla, or fer-de-lance,

throat markings, but

the workforce.

easily recognisable

would you

had no

rattle to

see

it?

with

Venomously

announce

its

its

harba

yellow

allied to

presence.

About

four workers received treatment for malaria. While

clearing land, they lived in hastily constructed palm-thatched

huts that gave minimal protection against the swarms of

mosquitoes. As market

demand

for bananas rose rapidly,

new

lands were constantly being cleared.

Work of

ships.

in the ports

The

call

depended on the

of the

siren

78

arrival

summoned

and departure

stevedores to the

TAMING THE ENCLAVE any hour of the day or night. Jobs were handed out

docks

at

on the

basis

of first come, first hired.

and carrying gangs began till

work

On the plantations, cutting

at

worked

short notice and

the required shipload of stems had been cut, carried and

transported to the docks in railroad cars.

swapped

Stories of discontent could, like scrip, be

company

store.

These were

the

at

sensitive places. Disturbances

broke

out in 1910 on United Fruit plantations in Guatemala after six

hundred Jamaicans gathered to complain about prices and

looted two stores. Against for the local military

its first

company

instincts, the

commander

to

make

arrests.

He

called

saici

wouldn't do so for fear of setting off further violence.

company

settled things, therefore, in

WilHam Wright,

of ladinos seized

own

its

a

manner.

A

he

The

group

Jamaican worker, and

lynched him. The police arrested one of those involved and released a

him

few days

a

United Fruit hired the man

later.

as

farm superintendent.

Such events remained hidden from the people

where United

Fruit

had managed to create

company had

impression. In 1912 the

Mayan

reveal the

a

at

home,

quite ciifferent

cleared the jungle to

ruins of Quirigua in eastern Guatemala.

Magnificent stone monoHths spoke of an ancient civilisation

by 'master

zine.

Other comment drew comparison between the 'mighty

races'

from

maga-

built

afar, said

race of people' that centuries ago

'new

civilisation'

Early in

of of

its

selfless acts

a

common

own

life,

the

built

Quirigua and the

company had discovered

of philanthropy.

it

had

forged by United Fruit.

nation's heritage.

culture aside,

National Geographic

was

It

had saved

But grand

also

a

gestures in the cause of

keen to identify with

man.

79

the virtue

precious remnant

that

of the

BANANAS In the

Work large social

US, concern

for the treatment

of workers was

rising.

conditions and hours, the attitude of employers, especially

companies towards

their employees,

and opportunities for

and educational improvement were exercising the public

mind. Cooper Union,

a university in

New York

City for students

of humble background - Edison had studied there - had provided the platform for the

workers' rights campaigns. In

first

Cooper

Union's Great Hall the great and the good addressed the concerns

of ordinary people. Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt had spoken there during their election campaigns. President Woodrow Wilson

had just taken first

office at the start

incumbent

to speak at

isation called the

to

it

of 1913 and would soon be the

Cooper Union. But

in July an organ-

Banana Buyers Protective Association beat him

and argued the case for the labouring poor.

Ironically, a rally

four years before in 1909

had seen the birth of the National Association of Coloured Peoples.

One

to abolish the practice

of the

at

Cooper Union

for the

Advancement

NAACP's main campaigns was

of lynching in the

US

South.

It

was

less

than a year later that William Wright was lynched in Guatemala, apparently with the approval of United Fruit.

In the guise of the

Banana Buyers Protective Association,

United Fruit took the offensive

enemy

now

against a

more

elevated

President Wilson had had the audacity to put a tax

bananas.

He

regarded the

fruit as a 'luxury'

and aimed

on

to use

the monies for reforms to improve conditions for the poor.

His plan backfired. Speakers from organisations representing the welfare of children and the struggle of housewives to

ends meet rose to

condemn

a penalty against the

make

people Wilson

claimed to protect. Almost everyone ate bananas. At the turn

of the century, the a

US

had imported eighteen million stems

year but by 1913 the figure was forty- two million. This

8o

TAMING THE ENCLAVE to four billion 'golden satisfiers of American desire',

amounted

proclaimed the president of the Banana Buyers Protective Association. 'Smite us not with a tariff

Few

on

bananas.'

the time missed the historical resonance. Seventeen

at

years earlier William Jennings Bryan, the populist politician,

had made and

his

famous speech on behalf of the labouring masses

in repudiation

mankind upon of

of the Gold Standard: 'you

a cross

of gold'. Bryan,

now

shall

nearing the end

was Wilson's secretary of

his political career,

not crucify

state.

Bryan soon found himself deluged with delegations of concerned leaders firom the states of Central

meant ruin

tax

advocates of

America and the Caribbean. The

for their countries, they insisted. Influential

good

relations

took the case to the Congress in Washington. Prior to banana vation, they explained, the countries to the south

of

of the

to

imply that United Fruit had changed

likes

culti-

had been lands

peoples' and 'haunts of incipient revolutions'. This

'shiftless

seemed

US

between the Americas, north and south,

of Lee Christmas and

all

that.The exploits

Sam 'the Banana Man' Zemurray

went unmentioned. President Wilson had misread the company's power. calculated that the public idential 'trust busters'

he could not trust'. ists

To

fail

to

mood

was in

he discovered that United that the

Fruit's

'nasty

lobby-

company was

actu-

benevolent one.

The New United

York Times opined that if the 'trust' in question.

Fruit, did trade in luxuries,

who were

then

it

was for the poor,

The president capitmessage from WASHINGTON', beamed the headUne

'entitled to their litde luxuries'.

ulated, 'joy

in the

with that of pres-

win sympathy by taking on another

his surprise

He

Roosevelt and Taft before him and that

had convinced enough people

ally a

line

New York

Sun. 'the

tax

is

8i

off!'

BANANAS

By in

its

tions',

chance, violent strikes simultaneously hit United Fruit

former lands of

and

its

peoples' and 'incipient revolu-

'shiftless

response was

less

than benevolent.

hand. United Fruit was certainly acting by

On

now

the other

like a true

multi-national.

To

strike-breakers

from Nicaragua and called for troops from Costa

address

one

Panama,

crisis in

Rica. To counter a strike in Costa Rica,

from the

distant island

of St

Kitts.

On

it

it

brought in

shipped in workers

their long journey across

know what they disembark when United

the width of the Caribbean, they did not

were Fruit's

sailing into.

They

refused to

courteous Jamaicans stoned their boat.

In Guatemala, meanwhile. United Fruit workers strike after the it

company decided they were going

It

soft;

had pampered them through association with

Guatemalan stevedores were paid by means of was one dollar twenty

from the railway

cars to the ships. The

the 'day-rate' system was

was not getting the creator of their

five cents for ten

wrong

effort

from

employment

surely craved the incentive

company

for its

all

went on possibly

US

life.

a rate per day.

hours carrying stems

company concluded

that

concerned. United Fruit

workers that

it

deserved

as

opportunities, and the workers

of 'piece

rates'

prosper.

to

The

one hundred

fixed rates at twenty-five cents for each

stems carried. Corporate experts on time and motion had calculated that each

man

could carry seven hundred stems

worker would pocket one a dollar profit

practice

a day.

A

dollar seventy-five cents, a clear half

over what he would have

no workers could carry

a daily

made on day

rate.

In

seven hundred stems,

some managing only two hundred.

When

the workers stopped

work

in protest,

United Fruit

appealed for help from the local military. Again the

commander

of the area refused to respond, so the company went directly

82

TAMING THE ENCLAVE to

its

friend, the dictator General Estrada Cabrera. This

was

body

that

contrary to United Fruits better judgement

much

didn't put

had

power of the

faith in the

He

had by

now wiped

He had

tion to his regime.

out

gradually

man

had one former Hberal president

home when

poisoned - on

a

effective opposi-

all

hunted down and knifed to death in Mexico diplomat had gone

But the general

by showing he was

reached this stage in his career

of purpose.

state.

a

as

it

City.

A

chief

US

was learned he was being

the dictator s say-so.

Now

that

it

came

to strike-breaking, however, Estrada Cabrera counselled caution.

Otherwise things could deteriorate into violence, he suggested.

The company's inflamed workforce maybe had Fruit should return to

On aghast.

The

strikes

Soon more

The message may

well have got through.

trouble broke out, this time

when

a ladino killed a

They

called for troops.

set

Jamaican

a

United Fruit game.

after a card

arrived in the night, firing indiscrimi-

an unspecified number. The company

'amounted

wounding and

now

killing

sniffed at this sense-

to cold-blooded murder', said

chief of Guatemalan operations.

would have done

on

out for revenge and the company

nately into workers' sleeping quarters,

less slaughter. It

one of

off without fear of retribution from the

group of Jamaicans

was

community were

had alarmed them. They protested to the

national authorities.

It

United

that the perpetrators could have killed every

them and made

plantation

a point.

day-rate system.

the plantations the company's white

company

A

its

It

wasn't

how United

its

Fruit

it.

a threatening

world and United

President Wilson's ability to handle

it

Fruit's

confidence in

was limited. From the

company's point of view he took an absurdly moralistic stance

83

BANANAS on

international

enemies and United

Among them of the

On

finest

In such matters, Wilson had his staunch

affairs.

Fruit

were the

its

likes

firm friends in the

US

Congress.

of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,

Boston stock and an authority on foreign

the whole,

was Cabot Lodge s opinion that the outside

it

world was best

policy.

left

alone.

Be Demons'. The Panama Canal

was

It

like the old

maps had

said:

'There

rode

a

US

plan for

claimed

this

was

a

finally

opened

in

1914 but Wilson over-

boats to pass through

matter of fairness and

it

free

US

of charge.

treaty obligations

But what about the good money

to other powers.

have to be paid by

US

ships?

He

would

that

United Fruit used the canal more

than most.

The ments. for a

making high-flown

state-

condemned Dollar Diplomacy and

called

president appeared prone to

He

more

publicly

sensitive attitude towards the small nations

America and the Caribbean. Things went for

United Fruit

in Costa

Rica

particularly

after a dictator,

Tinoco, seized power in 1917.

He

of Central

wrong

General Federico

did so with the company's

support but not that of President Wilson.

Now

Wilson had

into his second term. President

secretary of state,

Robert Lansing. When Lansing

to private practice, he

would

act as

Minor

later

a

new

returned

Keith's legal counsel.

For the time being Lansing was intent on advancing the career

of

his

who

nephew, John Foster DuUes, an up-and-coming lawyer

harboured

good

political ambitions. Dulles

access to President Wilson.

He

Rica, ostensibly on an assignment for the that

employed him, but had

enjoyed remarkably

had been down to Costa

also taken

New York

time to

law firm

do some

surveil-

lance work: general ears-to-the-ground stuff and quiet engage-

ment of those

'in

the know'.

84

TAMING THE ENCLAVE Dulles reported back to his uncle and to the president: these

were uncertain times; revolution was

at large; across

the US's

southern border, Mexico's revolution had been going on for seven years; what of the unrest in Russia, the rise of the

what might the wider

Bolsheviks, and 'backyard'? tion, fresh

that

Wilson was aware of the

from

his bit

issues. Dulles's

Dulles's uncle

however, ignored

imposed fell,

a trade

side

of the

dictatorship. Strangely, this argued the line

of none other than United Fruit. Reports

which

presenta-

of Central American spying, advocated

Washington should come down firmly on the

new Costa Rican to

be in the US's

effects

this

differ

Robert agreed or

on the extent

disagreed. Wilson,

junior lawyer's counsel.

The

president

ban on Costa Rica and the Tinoco regime

succeeded by one with more democratic

Wilson's critics saw

domestic and overseas

him

as a fanatical

ideas.

do-gooder on both

He announced more

issues.

laws and powers to police big business. His

anti-trust

programme included

an eight-hour working day and cuts in child labour hours. As

Wilson carried

He late,

took the

his idealism abroad, so

US

into the First

it

became more

World War. The

US

grandiose.

had arrived

three years into the conflict in 1917, a factor that reflected

the large

body of domestic opinion

Old World

out of

entirely.

affairs

that the

No

US

should keep

sooner had the war

finished in 1918, thanks to the US's decisive intervention, than

Wilson was proposing the nothing

less

US

maintain the peace, and through

than world government. This was to be his 'League

of Nations'.

The

First World

War had

of course, been the distant reached closer to home.

deeply shocked the US. There had, loss

of

life

but the threat had also

German U-boats had

psychological wire that the

US 85

penetrated the

had put up around

itself

and

BANANAS the Americas and had attacked shipping. the Caribbean had, for example, In July 1918, as the

activity in

but killed the banana trade.

war approached

was inspired to headline the steamer for

all

Submarine

arrival

its

end, the Boston Globe

of the

first

United Fruit

very long while, which was carrying twenty

a

thousand stems from Colombia.

However,

was the intangible elements among the war's

it

legacy to the world that were the most worrying.The Bolshevik

more violence in Russia and The problem with the revolution's much dangerous ideas was that you couldn't see them. They blew in on the wind and burrowed up from beneath. They came in revolution had been followed by

discontent beyond.

form of

the

'agitators'.

United Fruit became increasingly paranoid were everywhere. Like the

disease that attacked

that agitators its

plantations,

they arose for no reason but to destroy. Strikes in Bocas del

Toro in Panama arrests,

spiralled

out of control.

The company made

burned the Hving quarters of workers and rooted up

their small plots

of land. Several workers died, others

fled into

the foothills. Unrest spread along the Atlantic coast from to

Limon

work

in Costa Rica,

with reports of Jamaicans forced to

the point of a bayonet. The

at

Panama

company agreed

to

medi-

ation by one of the Jamaicans' church ministers, then had arrested.

up

a

The Jamaicans appealed

to the British,

who

him

had

set

consul in Limon. United Fruit reluctantly agreed to accept

the consul

company without

United

a

as

that this

Fruit.

it

mediator.

Its

judgement only convinced the

should have done things

outside intervention.

He

The

own way and

noted that in the four years since 1914, wages

had frozen and prices in the company agitators have

its

British consul chided

most splendid

material'.

86

stores doubled: 'your

TAMING THE ENCLAVE Colombia

In 1918 United Fruit's banana workers in

went on

strike

- and with

wanted an eight-hour

day, the

also

of demands. They

a familiar array

kind of thing President Wilson

had been proposing in the US. United

on the other

Fruit,

hand, stood for the view that such nonsense could not be

allowed to prevail abroad, in the remote periphery where

was battling to keep capitalism

alive.

week and

also

wanted

the

employment terms of white

agitators

a six-day

could have

The

plantation workers

health provisions. These were plantation managers; only

come up with such demands. to know what it was talking

United Fruit reckoned After

Minor Keith had taken over Colombia's

the late nineteenth century, there were not in the Santa

towns

as

Marta region

to

fill

it

about.

plantations in

enough

local

workers

the available jobs. Such small

Cienaga and Aracataca saw their population swell

with migrants from other areas of the country and abroad.

They weren't

universally liked, especiaUy those

throwing around their wages to

drew suspicions

attract local girls,

come from

among them. United

Colombia was

After the First

Fruit's

and ItaHans had anar-

response to the 1918 strike

to stand firm, effectively

World War, markets needed

and the company

many

overseas and United Fruit's

spies said that especially the Spaniards

in

but

go

for other reasons. Syrians, Lebanese, Italians,

Spaniards and others had

chists

who would

left fruit

to rot

on the

by doing nothing. a

while to pick up

plantations.

Its

labourers

eventually trailed back to work.

In Washington the death-blow was delivered to President

Wilson's supreme plan for a League of Nations. Senator

Cabot Lodge

rose to

do the deed

in his capacity as

of the Senate foreign relations committee. Establishment and from one of

87

its

Pillar

Henry

chairman

of the Boston

enduring dynasties, Cabot

BANANAS Lodge viewed the world Sometimes there was

in the

just

way of his hometown company.

no deaUng with those

cause trouble, other than to ignore

who would

them or remove them from

mind. President Wilson had shunned advice to keep out of the First World War and

from

his

to

be firmly dissuaded

nostrums for peace. Cabot Lodge raised

obstacles, the idea.

now would have

At the end of 1919 Wilson had suffered from

to observe

a series

of

'Lodge reservations', to the League of Nations

his sick

bed

paralysis

and had

big plan failed to win the

as his

necessary votes in the Congress.

The US withdrew from United

own

its

of the world and,

bit

experience, there was quite

Fruit's

going on with

to police

there.

US

naval patrols had

enough

to

be

been stepped up

along Central America's Atlantic Coast. In 1920, General Estrada

Cabrera was thrown out of power in Guatemala, where he

had served the company well since he had invited years before.

discomfort

as rioters

ransacked

its

ently Bolshevik ideas.

workers went on

at

When

strike in the

stores.

United

Fruit's

activists

of appar-

Guatemalan dock-

company's Atlantic port of Puerto

They demanded an end

monopoly of Guatemala's

a

worse

to the dictator. Far

was not for the usual pay demands or cheaper prices

company

ical;

twenty

plantation offices and turned

was the disturbing emergence among the

it

in

As an old friend United Fruit endured some

up evidence of company favours

Barrios,

it

to

United

Fruit's

railway and ports. This was polit-

someone, something must be behind

it

and

it

called for

concerted response.

Robert Lansing, the former private law practice

behalf

through

and doing

old

secretary of state sterling

contacts

at

was back in

work on Minor

the

State

Keith's

Department.

Guatemala's revolt simmered and threatened until 1923

88

when

TAMING THE ENCLAVE it

was ended by resort to old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy.

The moment saw

the reappearance of the

man-of-war involved

Docking

before.

Honduran

in the

Tacoma, the

invasion a dozen years

on

in Puerto Barrios

USS

a 'routine visit', the

Tacoma s captain and a detachment of armed

men

took Keith's

railway to Guatemala City to express goodwill to the military

regime.

The

strike collapsed as

its

leaders

were arrested and

shipped south to Bluefields, Nicaragua.

In October 1928 thirty-two thousand United Fruit plantation

workers in Santa Marta, Colombia, resuscitated the eight-hour day,

week and

a six-day

which had been unsuccessful ten on

wages in

strike for

the

company

homes of

store,

free

years earlier.

cash, rather than scrip

and functioning

They

also

an

went

exchangeable

at

enjoyed in the

toilets as

plantation overseers. These were

call for

medical treatment

boom

banana market and economies in general. United

times for the

Fruit's

workers

reckoned not to have received their due share of the benefits.

The company

communists and

anarchists

Marta banana zone In the

family,

the

work of

and had troops occupy the Santa

to return to Boston.

the death of President

He

had come

to the

Warren Harding its

in

1

leave

White

923 and

quieter periods of occu-

He was originally from the Vermont side of the Coolidge though had moved

and shared the

man

as

to maintain order.

was about to complete one of pancy.

demands

US, President Calvin Coolidge would soon

Washington

House on

dismissed their

city

to

Boston

in his early political career

Brahmins' passion for the understated.

A

of very few words, he proudly lived up to the Coolidges'

reputation for being 'scions of silence'. Political

speechmaking required Coolidge 89

at

times to

BANANAS depart from form and inevitably opened the

way

for trouble.

Union

History would judge critically his fmal State of the

on December

address delivered

United that

States has

which

that at

met with

more

a

pleasing prospect than

appears at the present time,' he had said, adding

home

the

US

was enjoying

and contentment. The 'Roaring

1928: 'no Congress of the

4,

US

and the

'20s'

a

period of tranquillity

had been living through the Age', so 'tranquillity' was

'Jazz

stretching the point, but Coolidge's thoughts

remembered ten

would be mainly

for failing to spot signs of the Wall Street Crash

months away.

Few

how

noticed

Coolidge got

it

the foreign

'in

field',

as

he called

immediately wrong. Here there was peace and

'goodwill that comes from mutual understanding'. this

claim on the

There was in the

it,

work of Frank

actually limited peace

1920s, with civil

war

He

based

Kellogg, his secretary of

and goodwill

world

in the

in Russia, the coUapse

state.

of the

German economy and putsches by the extremes of European left and right. The secretary had travelled the globe, postwar

however, collecting signatures on nine countries joined

on

agreeing

this

the need to

The resonance of

his

KeUogg Peace

wage

the State

Coolidge's words had hardly faded

deepening

had

'the

capital

Bogota,

Department crisis

honor

in

its

US

when

embassy in the

consulate in Santa Marta and

Washington were relaying

in the banana zone.

details

of

Such communications

to report' this, or asked that they

fully suggest' that,

all

peace.

messages and telegrams between the

Colombian

Pact. Sixty-

loose coalition of the wiUing,

might

'respect-

while beneath the diplomatic veneer said

there was not a lot of mutual understanding in this area of

United

Fruit's

world.

90

TAMING THE ENCLAVE Additional troops were being drafted into the Santa Marta

banana zone to protect that

was being kept

it

United

An

The embassy

interests.

indicated

informed of developments by

fully

Fruit. The character

a subversive element.

stores

US

had changed

to display

attacked and burned

company

of the

Mobs had

strike

and management quarters on two United Fruit farms.

engineer,

Erasmo Coronel, had been

lived in the area

had had

killed. Americans

who

to defend themselves for six hours

before escaping the banana zone.

The

US

Santa Marta consulate requested a

off shore.

warship to stand

Colombian sources reported the boat had

arrived

and some thought they spotted two. Yet Kellogg had refused the request, indicating gunboats were unnecessary because the

Colombians were handling matters well enough. After Sunday mass

on

banana town of Cienaga,

the night of strikers,

December 6

members of

in the small

their families

and

other supporters gathered to demonstrate in the main plaza, located

on the

near the railway station. Troops set up machine-guns

of the low buildings

at

minute warning given to the crowd by an

A

ofiicer,

began

firing.

telegram fi-om the embassy to Kellogg said the military had

orders fi-om their

commanders not

had

fifty strikers.

killed

about

revised the estimate to

of

roofs

the corners of the square and after a five-

between

to spare the

Later in the five

and

six

ammunition and

month

the embassy

hundred. The number

was one. A despatch in mid-January

929

fi-om

number of strikers

killed

by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand. This

latest

soldiers killed

the embassy to Kellogg reported that the

headcount came fi-om the United Fruit

The US embassy remarked

at

the

Company Colombian

unusual zeal in dealing with the problem. efiicient

quelhng of the Santa Marta

91

1

It

authorities'

had led to the

strike, events stirred

up

BANANAS by communist ideas and

activities,

and given way to

a state

of

calm and tranquillity throughout the country. But the embassy

was concerned the Colombian press might the popular mind' the idea that the

unduly hasty in protecting the

The company was

in

government had been

interests

no doubt

try to 'inculcate in

of United

what

that

it

Santa Marta was a 'revolution' of the like seen in

Fruit.

had faced in

Mexico and

Russia. Yet within a few days United Fruit employees were

back on the

site at

company

targets,

the plantations calmly taking photographs for record.

Company

had been inevitable

stores

with corrugated roofs torn down,

charred in the remains and

and engineers' quarters

a safe

sacked and burned.

also lay

graph shows Erasmo Coronel's grave with

and

a felt hat laid

upon

a cash register left

broken open. Some

its

freshly

A

offices

photo-

dug earth

it.

The US gunboat remained an enigma. The Colombian authorities maintained their shore.

The army

Hne

that a boat

had appeared off

therefore had had to act against the strikers

to spare the humiliation of having

US

marines land to violate

the nation's sovereignty. Critics observed that even supposing

the gunboat's presence, there was Hmited glory in the sover-

eign republic murdering

its

The number of people known. Discussion of

company grew up cars to

or by the that

own

people.

killed in Cienaga's plaza

their fate

Colombian

authorities.

United Fruit carried

unmarked

was never

was not encouraged by the

The popular

belief

their bodies off in railroad

graves in the forest or threw

them

into the

sea.

The

story

would be

told

the massacre, Gabriel Garcia

and

retold.

A

few months before

Marquez had been born

in nearby

Aracataca. His father was a migrant worker and had not got

92

TAMING THE ENCLAVE on with

his in-laws.

moved away

Garcia Marquez's parents

from town and he was brought up by

maternal grand-

his

parents.

His grandfather was

had fought the

in the

a retired

Thousand Days War. He was

Colombian congress and

a stinging

With

Colombian

up the

it

member of

a

Bogota

in

make

to

authorities

made concerted

efforts

affair.

from the

lessons

father provided

dictionary, Garcia Marquez's grand-

some of

took him to see the circus stifling

travelled to

denunciation of the events of Cienaga while United

Fruit and the to cover

who

and respected colonel

the boy's education.

when

it

came

to

The

town

old

man

and, in the

heat of the Santa Marta region, to the United Fruit

company

of

store to see the 'miracle

was the

storyteller,

stitions

and

recounting

tales

ice'.

His grandmother

of the enclave, of

its

super-

ghosts in a deadpan style and as irrefutable

its

truth.

Whatever the that

it

behind

details

had happened nor contain belief on it.

A

protest six

despatch from the it

said, for

tors

of the massacre, nothing could conceal

the

US

months

embassy.

number of

condemning

the

later in

The

who

a

occasion was conspicuous,

inscriptions carried

by demonstra-

government and the army

the Santa Marta strike had been put

had been

Bogota prompted

down, and

it

for the

way

noted, 'skele-

tons and skulls adorned with bunches of bananas were freely displayed'.

93

7

Banana Republics It

was

late

1929 and eighteen years since United Fruit and

Sam Zemurray had

worked together

successfully

Man

of Honduras. The Banana

their invasion

in

mounting

had been

little

but trouble since. Boston Wasps didn't take to Jews in busi-

anywhere,

ness, or

really,

and Zemurray didn't take

to

them.

In the years leading up to the First World War, he and United

had gone

Fruit

frontier

war over

to

their lands that crossed a disputed

between Honduras and Guatemala. Or

prevailed

upon

the

two countries

to

on

the Guatemalan.

The

Washington had

hostilities

The

He

press

and

analysts

in Central

when he

in his favoured guise as the small

Economic

ence

as

experts liked

a pitch as

they

America.

affairs liked

got

guy pitted

him

down

it, it

Zemurray.

portrayed

him

against unfavourable

for similar reasons. His pres-

an apparently lone operator bolstered their optimistic

beliefs that the

system was not

monopolistic giants. cient

and United Fruit

had reached such

of economic

didn't seek publicity but,

odds.

side

insisted they cool things

were causing anti-US feeling

had

go to war on their behalf.

Zemurray had land on the Honduran

that

rather, they

condemned

to a

game between

The theory of 'The Machine' and

effi-

monopolies sorting out capitalism to everyone's benefit

hadn't really

won

the hearts of average people.

Boom

and bust

remained the way that the economy worked and the big companies

still

seemed

to

emerge on

95

top.

BANANAS 1923,

In

Chaim Weizmann, who was

seeking to create a

groundswell of support for Zionism and a Jewish homeland,

US

had toured the

and asked to

visit

New

Orleans and

Man

Zemurray. Weizmann described meeting the Banana

one of the highlights of

suming

simplicity'.

A

dation of the state of to visit

his trip

quarter of a century Israel,

the

Zemurray would be

Andrew

and was struck by later,

as

his 'unas-

on the foun-

wisdom of Weizmann's

decision

seen.

Preston had died in 1924. While he and

Minor

Keith were the principal architects of United Fruit, Preston's

main

task

had been to run

the banana business as railway cars to the a

it

a tight

domestic

spread across the

ship.

US

He

had

built

in refrigerated

Midwest and beyond. While Keith had cut

swathe through Central America, Preston had tended to

Washington's growing thicket of anti-trust laws and regulations.

He made

sure his lobbyists

were

in place to argue the

company's case for freedom from the inherent repression of red tape and other obstacles to ambitious purpose.

the

state, its

He

had been

largely successful.

Old photographs show

a

portly Preston, bewhiskered and

dressed in Victorian sobriety, alongside his wife in their horse-

drawn

carriage.

They were

the understated celebrities

of

Swampscott, just along the north shore from Boston. From

humble

fruit

brought

in the

had

risen

built

or

importer on Boston's Long Wharf, first full

and 'made

it'.

who

had

shipload of 'Yellows' in 1871, Preston

He had had

a

number of

fine houses

remodelled that were the grandest around. Yet

Swampscott wasn't quite Marblehead, the nearby home of old money. As much lies,

their

as

Preston

hobnobbed with

the Cabots, Lodges and the

rest, in

the best fami-

the Algonquin and

other sombre clubs, the invisible inner sanctum of

96

BANANA REPUBLICS Brahmins was

United

full.

eminence but without

president had

Fruit's

his family quite

United Fruit had extended

a

becoming 'the

fizz

business was only

slump of the early 1920s. Coca-

owners had even wondered whether the company was

Cola's

worth keeping

new

after the latest

Prestons'.

helping hand to Coca-Cola.

Based in provincial Atlanta, the brown

chugging along

died in

frontier.

before the step was taken to explore a

alive

United Fruit

started bottling

Coca-Cola

in

Guatemala where there was no better place for the sugary

The

drink than the draining humidity of the plantations.

company handed

it

out to

Coca-Cola went on

workers and got them hooked.

its

sale in

United

Fruit's stores,

towns and

beyond, and more joint ventures followed. From bashful enclave beginnings, Coca-Cola

The

pressing issue

The one-time jungle headed

little

man

made

its

way

into the world.

became Minor Keith and colossus

was

with the eyes of

his railways.

in his eighties: 'an applea fanatic',

quite friendly business source. Keith finally

according to one

wanted to

retire

and, if there was one thing he and United Fruit had long been fanatical

about

it

was keeping the banana and railway

sides

of

things separate in strict legal terms. Different companies ran

each side of the business. Everyone

knew

they were one and

the same, yet technically they were not. With the driving force

of Keith around,

it

was

belonging to anyone

else.

risk

difficult

to

imagine the railways

With him gone, they would be

at

of takeover. Vultures circled from Britain and Germany,

keen railway nations.

United Fruit had decided

monopoly

to absorb Keith's railroads.

The

implications were Hkely to attract anti-trust lawyers,

although they tended not to get involved greater power. This was

no mere

97

till

invoked by some

business issue, after

all,

but

BANANAS and concerning

Strategic

'interests'.

The

State

Department was

charged with the magisterial vision of the wider world and accepted the company's idea.

The department had no wish

commodity

see such a valuable

as Keith's railways fall

to

into the

hands of foreigners.

United

stock market

Fruit's

announcement of

the

advisers

new ownership

planned

a

public

It

would

arrangements.

be just the thing for market confidence and would deter foreigners with takeover notions. disagreed.

Its

members were

tion preferred. Keith's

The board of United

Announcements were kept

New York

Fruit

old money, with sensible discreto a

minimum.

lawyers took charge of the case. Robert

Lansing, his old legal counsel and former secretary of state had retired

and

and Keith engaged Lansing's nephews,John Foster Dulles

his

brother Allen Dulles. John Foster was well

known

to

United Fruit for arguing the company's case for dictatorship

Rica to President

in Costa

World War. Wilson had not

the First

had moved on.

He

and partners in

and

his

and

the time of

listened but

John Foster

and were destined for high public

about twenty years' time.

office in

at

brother Allen were successful lawyers

their firm

a talent for secrecy affairs

Woodrow Wilson

More immediately

for mastering a

complex

they had

brief.

of United Fruit and Keith's railway involved

a

The

mass of

intertwined contracts and arrangements that the Dulles brothers

came

know

to

arguably better than United Fruit and Keith

themselves.

Thus from

at

peace, in June 1929

this earth, so

Minor Keith

slipped quietly

much of which he had owned. On Broadway

he had briefly engaged in menswear, moved on to lumber, cattle

and Costa Rica, where he had kept

company

store

turtles

with limited success. Having nearly

98

and the

lost faith.

BANANA REPUBLICS he had been persuaded to

stay on,

whence he

prospered.

He

died the 'uncrowned king of Central America'.

Man

Keith had been Zemurray's mentor and the Banana

had chosen

time of leadership changes

this

rejoin battle over the lands

border.

He had

at

United Fruit

on the Honduran and Guatemalan

miscalculated. Previously

Honduras was

bastion and he had been candid about the extent to

had

its

'A mule,' he had

politicians in his pocket.

more than

a

Honduran

advice and out-manoeuvred

flow.

The

level

Congress

a

there'. In so doing,

business to secure water rights

became impossible as

he had

trailed

was

it

on

its

said, 'costs

superior cash

capital,

US

debate in the

agreeing that

finally

done 'down

him with

of bribes in the Honduran

prompted

his

which he

United Fruit had since taken

deputy.'

this

at this time,

to

just

Tegucigalpa

with

capital itself,

how

business was

United Fruit had made

it its

the disputed border. Irrigation

for

Zemurray and

up

to

Boston

his

humiliation inevitable,

to tender

United Fruit

his

apologies for causing such trouble.

United Fruit had concluded to cause trouble, however,

him

that

one way to stop The company took soundings from and

that the only

him was

to take

the State

Department on whether

over.

Zemurray would continue

this

might

tion of the anti-trust lawyers over at the

The

State

Department had indicated no need

accepted United

Fruit's idea that a

attract the atten-

Department of Justice. for

concern and

merger would be good for

peace in Central America.

Zemurray was he regarded

one of in

its

as

reluctant to get involved again with

what

the evil giant. This was until United Fruit had

chief board

members

November 1929 in a pub in the a new United Fruit, in

agreed to form

99

him City of London. They which Zemurray would

eventually catch up with

BANANAS be the main shareholder and have

would have no

The

on the board but

a place

role in the day-to-day

running of the company.

price was thirty-three million dollars, with the deal signed

over twelve bottles of Bass.

He

the tipsier of the two.

payment

him was

to

fact that the

The Banana Man was had agreed

that nearly

to be in shares in the

New York

apparently the

all

new company. The

markets had crashed just

a

few weeks

before in October seemed to have escaped his mind.

An

even larger giant was born. The

extended across three million tres.

As one observation had

planet's smallest half its

size

states

that state

was half

of

Rhode

as

it.

new United

United Fruit dwarfed

Island

again

as

the

combined

'the

US

terms,

areas

of the

dozen countries combined'. In

much

Fruit

or 12,000 square kilome-

acres,

and Delaware and marginally

less

than

of Connecticut. United Fruit had become the un-starred

on the

US

Zemurray went

flag.

On

off to tend his azaleas.

his

Tangipahoa

parish estate near

New

through the

of magnolia, cypress and gum. This was not

forest

Orleans he plotted

a trail for

them

exactly the jungle he was used to but he was tired of living in small, screened settlements along the

Mosquito Coast.

enjoyed reading and in Central America the books in

had only grown mould.

He wanted

to educate his

He

his library

two

chil-

dren in the US. In Louisiana he could walk out through the

ante-bellum columns of

his

home and

that mirrored the cast-bronze statues at a

stroll

its

around

hunting lodge in the pine woods and shot

wife he travelled to last,

he could enjoy

wealth was

fast

New York

disappearing.

100

quail.

to take in the

his wealth. It

his lake

edge. Zemurray had

was just

a

With

shows and,

shame

his at

that the

BANANA REPUBLICS United Fruit measured

annual prosperity in standard ways:

its

stems exported, bunches sold, prices on the stock market board.

What might be termed though

of thumb. In the realm of big knives.

a useful rule

United Fruit was the of

its

'machete index' was more informal

its

machete buyer

largest

in the world.

Each one

plantation labourers, mozos, 'peasants', had to have

purchased from the company

them from

the Collins

store.

United Fruit

Company of

Collinsville,

itself

bought

Connecticut,

German down-home New

the 'world's greatest machete maker'. English and

models were cheaper but United Fruit was

a

England firm. Collins three salesmen sweated 's

their

way around

the region with their heavy samples cases, jumping riverboats

and labouring along plantation

trails.

on and

In a

good

off

year,

they sold United Fruit 36,000 machetes. Yet in 1931 during the Depression, the in

demand of

company bought only 24,000,

a

reduction

a third.

Zemurray's fortune collapsed more dramatically. Shares worth thirty-three million dollars at the time of the in value to threats.

two

million.

He

Louisiana governor

in his sights.

Long was

Huey Long,

a

merger slumped

also faced other,

more

political

the 'Kingfish', had

swampland populist with

a

him

thing

He was the 'small man's' man, but not Sam's kind of man. He had swept to power after the Mississippi flood of 1927 when the grandees of New Orleans had allowed the about fascism.

deluge of poor areas of town in order to save their own.

Though

the governor had never professed

in foreign affairs, lately he

seemed

marines had engaged these

many

Central America, he

much of

to have

an interest

found one.

US

years in fighting wars in

said, for 'that

corrupt banana peddler

Zemurray'.

The Banana Man took

to pacing the

lOI

New

Orleans waterfront

BANANAS with

a

dwindling bank account and no power base.

He

spoke

more jaundiced by

the

They

sailed

up from Central America with holds half

full.

They had

to cut

back on

to captains of the Great day.

White

Fleet,

slow their journeys and risk what

oil,

cargo they had going rotten.

Zemurray wrote suggestions.

Boston

Fruit's

board, buzzing with

The Wasps ignored him. When he

for a shareholders'

to understand a

accent.

United

to

meeting the top

word he was

travelled to

table professed

not

saying because of his Russian

So he went around coDecting the proxies of other

discontented investors. In early 1933 he turned up again

HQ

company

for the next

on

finished a discussion

irrigation in

previously agreed that he

company

certificates

over.

announcing himself

down in

gentlemen have fucked

With Zemurray a

new dimension

for journalists.

mentaHty, histories

said

's

mundane

anything about

his taking

of share

graspable tones: 'You

United Fruit story acquired

The Banana Man was good copy

United Fruit had been stuck in

its

use. In

narrow

its

information such

of the banana and recipes for its

his collection

company up long enough.'

a sealed unit. It released

also created

at

just

the long polished oval table,

takeover, the

in colour.

had

in such

guttural yet this

It

Honduras. Everyone had

Zemurray skimmed

and votes

the board.

would not intervene

no one had

matters but

United Fruit

quorum of

as

1929

short it

had

'education department' to get teaching packs

into schools. United Fruit, whether through the Boston blue-

bloods in their clubs or the supervisors on itself

cut off until such time as

Zemurray welcomed the

it

its

plantations, kept

chose to communicate.

press attention, possibly as a

means

of deflecting the predatory tendencies of Governor Long. Eastcoast journalists

headed south

to

102

New

Orleans to absorb the

BANANA REPUBLICS atmosphere of the Big Easy: the

'greatest

banana port in the

world'. Strapping dockworkers, 'Negroes, Maltese, Italians',

worked

an

in

air

'pungent with smells from every land'. After

the scribes had journeyed with the Great

America, their impressions became

in Central

was

It

White

Fleet to arrive

sanguine.

less

tough world. Male expatriates drank whisky to

a

deter diseases of one kind or another.

been good clean boys

who had gone

Back home they had

off to learn about

manage-

ment. In Central America they carried .38s to protect them-

from

selves

Drunk

workforce.

the

on

payday,

a

machete-wielding mozo was dangerous enough but what

happened quarters seers'

if

one of those guns

fell

into his hands? Labourers'

were positioned beyond shooting distance of over-

houses. In the event of disputes there was also an

unwritten code that was not exactly the due process of law: if a

mozo

white a

man

mozo

One of

killed a

mozo he'd be moved

to another farm; if a

mozo he'd be sent

to another country; if

killed a

killed a

white

man

he'd be 'accidentally shot'.

description of a United Fruit banana division spoke

a 'vast feudal estate'

ments similar

composed of drab

to factory towns.

miserable and hot bunkhouses stood next to yards and noisy

machine shops. United

resembled

boom

rated and

moved

towns on,

marked the US's

that, as

Fruit's

smoky

lines

of

railway

company

areas

banana cultivation deterio-

became the 'decadent

industrial

settle-

artificial

Labour camps, long

villages' that

had

expansion of the nineteenth

century. So this was progress.

And

there was

no

anti-trust

thinking here. All power was centred on the 'great corporation'.

United Fruit decided everything, not

of paint on

some

called

its

least the

shade

trim business quarters: a 'malarial yellow',

it.

103

BANANAS There was

brighter side. The plantations' expatriate workers

a

had beaches and bridle

paths, pools or offshore diving bells to

Honduras, Tela was

enjoy. In

a

garden spot, with

a

new

golf

course manicured by goats. Twenty-five miles awayTrujillo had

Spanish

its

fort, against

whose

King of Nicaragua, had met

his

wall William Walker,

end

in the 1860s.

would-be

More

pleasant

was the nearby port of Puerto Castilla, United Fruits pride and joy

that

club and

had been developed from nothing.

its

own

jazz band, bow-tied

had

a

yacht

and in starched

cuffs,

It

the 'Banana Six'. Journalists' attentions

who showed them line soil

'sere,

that in

as

around wanted to

the 'seasoned talk

yellow

But what was

trees', acres

and

fi-uit

men'

about the fine alka-

of the northern Honduran coast and

susceptible to disease.

of

wandered

how it was not An expanse And was it true

that over there?

acres

of them.

Bocas del Toro in Panama the Great White Fleet wasn't

letting passengers off to

wander because of the

visible effects

of

dump

anyway.

Zemurray's experiment with the press proved to be a

disaster.

disease? Well, yes, but

United

Fruit's

Bocas del Toro was always

world was going

a

rotten. In the Central

region, banana disease had claimed a total of

thousand

acres.

Honduras had an

tion of ninety-six thousand. lent

area

American

one hundred

under banana

United Fruit had

lost the

cultiva-

equiva-

of Honduras.

United Fruit had been warned. In the

Panama from the

disease

US

had

finally arrived in

late

1920s,

when

Honduras, the people

Department of Agriculture had

also

turned up.

Their findings were no more welcome than they were.

Monoculture was not working and banana production was out of 'equilibrium'; alternative crops were needed. Honduras

had been the

last

to

succumb

to

104

Panama

disease but in the

BANANA REPUBLICS mid- 1930s became the diseases

combined

now

vast areas

was

it

by sigatoka.The two

territory hit

and where the hfe of

to disastrous effect

turn of the century had been up to ten

a plantation at the

years,

first

than three. The

less

company departed from

and in 1935 even abandoned Puerto

The manner of United trous. Jobs,

Castilla.

Fruit's retreat was, in itself, disas-

Hvelihoods and whole communities vanished. United

Fruit ripped

up railway

and threw them into the ocean.

tracks

This was wanton destruction; what purpose could possibly be

wooden

served? Bridges were dismantled, their to rot

by the

of

sides

to keep for itself

it

rivers.

Any

materials

supports

left

United Fruit wanted

loaded on trucks and was gone.

What was it doing about What was it doing about

the people

it

behind? Nothing.

left

the diseases that had caused this

problem? Nothing. Did the company want to do anything about disease? Perhaps such advantage because

it

affliction

was to

its

commercial

would

deterred potential competitors.Why

United Fruit expend

vast

amounts on research into

disease

control if rivals stepped in to reap the reward?

United to

Fruit's

move on

to

response

new

land,

when disease had to a new country

taken hold was if

need

be,

and

to carve out another part of Central America's infinite jungle.

As the thought began

to

occur that perhaps the jungle was

not so infinite anymore, Zemurray problem.

He

found

a solution,

finally

which was

addressed the

called

'Bordeaux

Mixture' and that combined copper sulphate, water and lime.

Zemurray had

it

's

pumped on

a cocktail

in the

experts cautioned

title

him

against

its

overuse but he

the plantations in increasing quantity.

with quite

a pleasant

was

name, but the giveaway was

of those employed to spray and

pump

or for want of a better translation, 'poisoners'.

105

It

it:

veneneros,

BANANAS United

on the

annual reports and meetings did not dwell

Fruit's

negatives. Disease didn't

up

things were looking

began

to

lift.

The

'sell'.

for the

Besides, in the

company

advertising industry

as

mid-1 930s

the Depression

had helped by recently

redefining the popular symbol of household wealth. This had

previously been the

dinner

'full

pail'.

The term was thought

too closely identified with the working given

how many

symbol was

more

to

useful to

class,

and depressing

people were out of work. The

be the

'full

United

cereal bowl'

Fruit.

new

cheerier

and would prove

far

Bananas would yet burgeon in

the breakfast bowls of the nation.

America United

In Central

from

looked

disease

like a

Fruit kept moving.

Its

retreat

rampaging advance. Under Keith

and Preston, production had migrated west from the Caribbean America.

islands to Central

Now

United Fruit pointed the

banana further in the direction of the setting sun.

Guatemala the company had had land

In

on the

usual, kept

to

of the isthmus.

Pacific side it

It

for a long while

had not used

and, as

it

mainly to ward off competitors. Those that tried

compete had

either

been put out of business by the

freight

charged them on Keith's railway, or by United Fruit

rates

purchasing the favours of whichever dictator was in power.

The

latest

was General Jorge Ubico,

pride and bearing.

nose and

He compared

aflfected a

he despised Hitler

Bonaparte

as

the

hairstyle. In the

as a lower-class upstart

of Mussolini. Anyone people

who

who

Italians,

was

tion

the railways run

from the

centre.

man of

world of ideas

and was

a disciple

could bring discipline to such

a

he contended, had lessons for the

Guatemalans. In United Fruit, General Ubico had

made

a

himself to Napoleon, had his

a party that

on time while he applied firm

The

direc-

fortunate few Guatemalan children

1

06

BANANA REPUBLICS

who

attended school were clad in military uniform.

symphony

the music for the national

on speaking

tours of the country

Most of those coerced Guatemala's

had no

idea,

orchestra and progressed

accompanied by piped bands.

nor cared, what he

did not speak Spanish and

listen to the pleas

complex of plantations on the

state

of the banana-art with the

technology, above

Bordeaux Mixture

all

the

from

his oligarchy to

company

Pacific at Tiquisate.

latest in irrigation

set It

up was

and other

powerful pumps that delivered

volume thought

in the

were

said.

stop United Fruit's spread to the Pacific: the its

chose

into the nation's plazas to listen

Mayan majority who

Ubico would not

He

In the Pacific coastal lowlands,

no

less

necessary.

hot than those on

the Atlantic, Tiquisate had well-appointed expat housing

concrete pylons to allow the flow of

air

and

on

to guarantee the

continuing flow of young Americans coming for purposes of

'New

character reinforcement.

Bump'

read the caption

on

employee's home: Engineer

the proud

company photo of one

such two-storey structure to be used by young engineer Almyr

Bump,

A

recently arrived in Tiquisate from the

cartoon appeared in

of United

Fruit.

It

a local

US.

magazine to mark the

showed the isthmus

straddled by a grin-

ning tentacled monster. From Atlantic to Pacific

its

everywhere and United Fruit would never shake off of El Pulpo,

arrival

reach was this

image

'the octopus'.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites 1935 as the year when the term 'banana republic' first came into use. A fictional tale

in the July issue

of Esquire magazine had included

conversation between two of

its

characters and a retired mili-

tary figure, an ancient-mariner type

107

a

who had

grabbed their

BANANAS attention: 'We strung along

aspects of

war

with Major Brown on the inhuman

banana repubUcs.'

in the

O. Henry's Cabbages and Kings had actually beaten Esquire by thirty-odd years but a

new meaning. The

it

was

by

fair to say that

now

the term had

repubHcs of Central America were

less

the

cheery haunts of O. Henry, Lee Christmas and Machine-gun

Molony

than the benighted locales of United Fruit.

In the depths of Depression in the

first

half of the 1930s,

new level of dependency on borrowed money from the company

Central America had sunk to a

United

Fruit.

The

states

keep national budgets

to

reduced

where palm

its

Meanwhile, the company

afloat.

dependence on them. United Fruit looked

to diversify

and

in Africa, for example,

for the manufacture

of palm

grew African

it

oil.

Banana republics became characterised

as places

wars and dictatorships, which was not altogether truth, but

for

now

else-

of inhuman far

from the

the term implicitly disparaged their inhabitants

succumbing. Conversely the protagonists came out of

rather well.

from

a

Commentary from

the

US,

if

made

at

all,

it

came

position of assumed superiority.

At home, United Fruit inspired awe. the strings in

all

Central American

Its

'contact

man' pulled

wrote Fortune

capitals,

magazine: 'If the finance minister were to overdraw

his

account,

or the archbishop wanted six nuns transported from Germany; if

the president's wife wanted her gallstones removed, or the

minister's wife liked fresh celery

president if

New

from

wanted three blooded cows served by

anyone wants almost anything, then United

man"

is

Also

new

Orleans, or the

the one

who

at this time,

can quickly get

the

OED

made

turn of phrase: 'going bananas'.

io8

a

blooded

Fruit's

bull;

"contact

it.'

its

It

reference to another

meant

a

developing

BANANA REPUBLICS of derangement and was peculiarly in tune with what

State

had been happening.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted

US

US

out of Depression, a band of

picked up on United

New

Roosevelt's

wackier

Fruit's

business moguls had

They objected

ideas.

programme

Deal. His

to pull the

to

entailed a lot of

expensive plans to build bridges across San Francisco Bay

and other such schemes to

theory that you alone, too.

It

the weakest

unemployed

US

citizens

well alone; for that matter, you

left

would cure

back

left 'bad'

In the ways of the jungle, able survived, leaving

Roosevelt's ideas, they were costing

off. As for

of taxpayers'

lot

itself.

went under and the most

everyone better a

to get

work. The moguls believed in the prevailing economic

money and

since

more of

taxpayers were out of a job

many

so

the burden

ordinary

fell

on the

moguls and big companies. Some of them had resolved put

man more

a

They

own

to their

liking in the

to

White House.

did not conspire to throw Roosevelt out completely,

but to have their

might see

man work

Their plan was to make

had chosen along' with

alongside

him

in order that

he

sense.

their

own

a

banana republic of the US. They

'Major Brown' figure and he 'strung

them for a while. He was Brigadier General Smedley

D. Butler and he had the right credentials.

marine with thirty-three Alas for the plotters, he

He

was

years' service in Central

knew

too

much

a retired

America.

about the inhuman

aspects of Central America's wars. 'For the benefit of Wall Street,'

he wrote in

his

book, War

is

a Racket,

'I

helped in the

rape of half a dozen Central American republics.' Butler turned state's

and

evidence, claiming a cabal of

industrialists

wanted

to

bond

salesmen, bankers

overthrow the president and take

109

BANANAS the

us

He

to war.

alleged the involvement of

among them J. P. Morgan, the

bankers, but

many

famous names, others besides.

House of

Butler took his claims to Washington and the

Un-American

Representatives'

accepted

was

his story.

committee's co-chair later recalled.

blew over and before long few people would

affair

remember

it

at

all.

The

plotters dismissed Butler's claims as

fanciful madness: 'moonshine'. President Roosevelt,

knew it

that if his

would require

Roosevelt was

It

'There was no doubt that General Butler

telling the truth,' the

Yet the

Committee.

Activities

New

a deal

also at

meanwhile,

Deal was to get the money

with big business. As

later events

odds with what he saw

needed

it

showed,

as Butler's

anti-war isolationism. The brigadier general died a

little

looney before

Pearl Harbour, consigned quietly to history as having indeed

'gone bananas'. In the build-up to the

engaged in

his

own

Second World War, Sam Zemurray

opposition to Roosevelt. The Banana

Man

did not agree with the president's wishes for Central America. In overseas affairs Roosevelt had his

'Good Neighbor' policy

designed to develop good relations between the two halves of the

American continent. The idea was

more of

that the

US would

buy

Latin America's raw materials, bananas included. In

return, Central

buy more

US

America and Latin America

in general

would

manufactured goods. This mutual arrangement

would promote economic

recovery.

To swing the process along, the northern

half of the

Americas imported Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian song and dance

star.

Though

scantily clad

by the standards of the north,

she was hardly raw talent. She

opulent

tutti-frutti hat

and for

rather well.

no

a

wowed

the

crowd

in her

while things seemed to go

BANANA REPUBLICS Sight for sore eyes that

Carmen Miranda was

had endured so many depressing

United

whom Over

Fruit's view.

to

do

who

for those

didn't

with

fit

There were other 'Good Neighbors' with were

business, although they

a Httle

further

away

Germany was vigorously re-arming Germans were getting wealthier and were

in Europe, Hitler's

and industriaHsing. a

years, she

very good market for bananas. The Nazis would only pay in

bonds exchangeable for German manufactured goods, so United Fruit

needed Central America

ucts as possible.

With

more expensive than

it

many of

those prod-

transport costs, however, they might be similar

United Fruit decided

by

to take as

goods from the US.

to see

what

it

could do. In Guatemala

controlled the rates charged to have goods sent as freight rail.

These

rates

went through curious contortions, such

German goods proved remarkably cheap compared with

their counterparts

Fruit's business

with Hitler boomed.

m

the market place

from the nearby US. United

President Roosevelt was furious. Rather than

helpmg the

US's economic recovery. United Fruit had chosen to

Germany's enter the

revival

under the Nazis. As the

Second World War,

power and

a

it

that

US

assist

prepared to

viewed United Fruit

as a hostile

second Roosevelt put anti-trust investigators on

the company's case.

Ill

8

On United Fruit worked the family and the

the Inside its

affairs

way of

into the heart of

state and,

when

it

US

Hfe, into

mattered most,

into the State Department.

1929 United

Since

engaged in grabbing

maps

for school

colour.

Its

education department had

Fruit's

its

audience while

it

was young.

sent

geography lessons and pictures for kids to

'home economics department' supplied

material for

It

mums. The ubiquitous

each morning became such

up believing the two

just

sliced

a feature that

came

certainly better suited to slicing

flow of

a

banana with cereal

some

that way.

kids

The

on the morning

fruit

grew was

cereal than

apples were. United Fruit also harboured hopes that banana

bread could outdo 'apple

banana bread being

far

pie'.

Here the apple held

too heavy to displace

it

firm,

in the nation's

affections.

Winking bananas on

the covers of booklets promised 'new

tempting ways' to serve them: 'bananas and bacon'. United Fruit suggested;

chunks of the

cocktail stick

were 'guaranteed

them

fashion

in

some

fruit

wrapped and served on

a

to start a conversation'; 'serve

- cooked or raw -

at all meals',

ordered

the company. This was, perhaps, wishful thinking given that

hardly anyone outside the Caribbean

knew how

to

cook

bananas, and generally no one imported the type of banana suited to

cooking anyway.

113

BANANAS United

of Boy Scouts smiling round the

Fruit's pictures

campfire and throwing bananas in to be cooked gave the right impression of the order.

Its

company

one with the

as

posters had bananas

of

pillars

marching around

civil

like soldiers.

Yet United Fruit wasn't above messing with established proto-

Good mums

cols.

day

if possible

enforced the rigid routine of three meals

and with nothing between them —

a

'you'll spoil

your dinner'. But United Fruit sidled into the kitchen suggesting that the health-laden just to have

them

it

at 'all

banana was above

company

lived in a

medium of

not

wasn't all

enough

day? 'Give

'"between times".'

said,

world of

imagined, called 'Banana Land'. for the popular

why

meals' anymore;

to the kiddies', the

United Fruit

all that: it

own, both

its

real

and

made programmes about it as 'Radio Bound for

It

the day, such

Banana Land'. Magazines picked up on the idea and promoted it.

Short stories of minor intrigue were

where men

tions,

met

in high boots

Dangerous work combined with easy and inner

The

reflections

on

on banana

set

scantily clad

living,

planta-

women.

with iced bourbon

when the day was done. Maugham in the Far East,

the veranda

imperial British had Somerset

sweating in the rubber of 'Malaya'. United Fruit had Banana

Land, somewhere

A

down

in the mystical south.

fortunate few had been there.

White

Fleet

Honduran

from

New

ports were a

Orleans to little

Guatemala was the worst, with

did the people

live in their

hovels? You'd never have imagined iTiiles

inland

at

the Great

Cuba and beyond. Some Puerto Barrios in

flea-bitten. its

broken paths, ditches

sewage ebbing and flowing with the

How

They went on

tide.

Did

corrugated it

like this

Guatemalan company

HQ

full

of

it

ever go away?

tin

and cardboard

on

the radio. Forty

in Bananera, things

decidedly improved. Spic-and-span offices had well-dressed

114

ON THE INSIDE young men

at

desks and whirring

The company had

its

how United

was

you get off want

Fruit

at

to. There

the 'mulatto'

wooden

fans

on

the ceiling.

excellent hospital at Quirigua; 'there to help'.

showed

it

The company

didn't let

Almirante Bay in Panama but then, nor did you

were always those nights

in

Havana

remember:

to

women, and men, too. Such shows, such when you were back home

that you wouldn't mention

things again.

During the Second World War no one went anywhere on the Great

White

Many

Fleet's usual run.

put to service and

many were

lost.

of

its

number were

At the onset of the war

President Roosevelt had withdrawn his anti-trust people from

United

Fruit's case.

some of

its

The

company would

deal was that the

plantations to

grow

Sam Zemurray was

quinine and abaca for rope.

use

strategic materials, like rubber,

put on the

board that supervised the programme. Although United Fruit

had gone into the out of

it

a

conflict as an

enemy of

the

bloodied war hero.

Throughout the war United

Zemurray had become company's image

as

the

Fruit prepared for peace.

increasingly

'evil

concerned about the

octopus' and around the outbreak

of war he had hired Edward Bernays to improve

was the 'Father of Public Relations'. he was

a

discipline

of the First

He had

had

nephew of Sigmund Freud and adept

it.

Bernays

head

start:

in the

new

a

of psychoanalysis. In 1917 he had arranged

US

came

state, it

a

tour

for the 'Great Caruso', the Italian tenor. After the

World War, Bernays had been the US's

liaison at the Versailles

peace

talks.

In the late 1920s he

made

a real

book. Propaganda. Bernays was the

name first,

press

and radio

for himself

with

and possibly the

public relations person to be so candid about his discipline.

concern was the 'group mind'. This didn't

115

'think',

his

last, Its

he wrote,

BANANAS but instead had impulses, habits and emotions. for

some

force to harness them.

The

The key was

force was propaganda, or

and intelHgent manipulation of the organised

'the conscious

and opinions of the masses'. This process of manipula-

habits

tion was an 'unseen

use of

it

were an

mechanism of

and those

government' and the

'invisible

power of our country'.

society'

Of

made

that

'true ruling

course, by the 1940s propaganda

had long been abused by Stalin in Russia and Hitler in Germany, but Bernays was not deterred or embarrassed.

mmority' of

US

society

needed

The

'intelligent

propaganda 'continu-

to use

ously and systematically'. This, he asserted, was for the 'progress

and development of America'. Bernays stressed the importance of contacts and boasted

long

of them.

list

them,

Many were journalists,

number of

a

whom

he called

among

senior editors

friends.

a

They were

a

good

conduit for manipulating the organised opinions of the masses

and Bernays believed

in using

them continuously and system-

atically.

Zemurray had Fruit's

world

in the 1930s

Bernays, he had got reality,

a

when he

failed

changed

it,

it

invited journalists into United

and was soon convinced

and yet somehow

pedigree of commissions from

society's

it

was

among

still 'real'.

He

on had

who worked Company

those

unseen mechanism. The American Tobacco

had used him

in the

crash. American

good times leading up

Tobacco wanted more

publicly.

The problem was

of their

own homes,

spaces.

with

that,

right this time. Bernays breathed

to the late 1920s

women

they were doing

to

it

smoke more

in the privacy

or in dance halls and other enclosed

They weren't smoking enough

outside,

where

it

still

wasn't 'ladylike'. Bernays conjured a link between cigarettes

and

a rising sense

of women's confidence and ii6

liberation. In

ON THE

INSIDE

1929 he had had female models

New York's

along in

stride

Easter Parade smoking, not cigarettes but 'lights of freedom'.

For United Fruit Bernays suggested the company execute

what

modern

in

tioning'. Central

name and

home

location.

US

the

in

advertising jargon might be called 'reposi-

America, he decreed, would have both

his

own

Zemurray

name conveyed

the

America was where

it

values.

would

travels to this

in

new

would become 'Middle America'. At

and good

respectability

by

It

a

As

be.

for

the right image of

United

Bernays had been impressed

He

part of the world.

Honduras, in Tela:

Middle

Fruit,

'a

had visited

town

small seaport

a stone's

throw from the jungle'. Bernays remarked how, from the wilderness,

Zemurray had

built

what looked

Midwest community', with flowers around the

like

a

'small

pleasant frame

houses.

The company set up a 'Middle America Information Bureau'. Bernays declared that United Fruit had thereby 'opened up'

The bureau provided

to public scrutiny.

United

Fruit's

America.

A

work

to journalists

weekly publication

on

facts

and

figures

from the

US

and Latin

called Latin America Report

was

geared towards businessmen. In charge of it was William Gaudet, 'Bill'

to his friends,

who

was regarded

as a

'good friend of the

company'. This meant United Fruit and the other 'company', the

US

Central Intelligence Agency.

Philanthropy was good, Bernays advised. Zemurray had already set dollars

up

went

a children's clinic in

to

the

American' research.

women. for the It

A

city's

New

Orleans.

One

million

Tulane University for 'Middle

Harvard professorship was created for

In Honduras, the

company opened

the

first

school

advanced study of agriculture by Central Americans.

was timely, since diseased plantations were closing

117

at

such a

BANANAS rapid rate. Bernays advocated United Fruit should put

money

into Guatemala's neglected archaeological ruins.

company in

it

was

orative postage

They would

had slumped by half during the

sales

surely rise

when United

Fruit's boats

seas

The United States was

economy

the ravages of

goods:

commem-

the Second World War posed chal-

back to peaceful work on the high

boom. It

a

stamp was issued.

The approaching end of Banana

United

price.

Bernays made sure

as

The

court, an arena

had paid the ultimate

said, losers

emerged the winner

lenges.

Mayan ball-game

restored an ancient

which,

Fruit

more

war

the only world

radios, refrigerators,

to have escaped to a postwar

demand for substantial consumer

anticipated a surge in

more and newer

cars, televisions to replace

vacuum

could get

how much?

but by

and looked forward

intact

conflict.

cleaners.

How

antiquated

could United Fruit

harness this upturn?

Advertising was the treasure chest and the key was to tap into people's aspirations

concentrated on

more of be

a

and

'utility',

given product.

a ceiling

desires. Previously, advertising

namely on getting people

The drawback was

that there

might

on how many or how much they thought they

could use. Tune into their dreams and different. Utility sell

had

to 'use'

was limiting,

it

would be

desire the opposite.

bananas was by grasping the infinite

quite

The way

possibilities

of

to

desire.

By now, Carmen Miranda had been enjoying great success. She had had big hits with 'Down Argentina Way' in 1940 and 'That Night in Rio' the following year. She seemed happy to

go along with the

unofficial political role assigned her.

was everything the

US

could want from a 'Good Neighbor'.

The US was grimly engaged Asia, the small islands

She

of the

in

war on

Pacific. It

ii8

so

many

fronts:

Europe,

was comforting to

know

ON THE it

had been worth

it

INSIDE

and Miranda's

spirit

seemed

to speak for

an appreciative outside world.

United Fruit happened upon the cartoon character of Senorita Chiquita Banana. Shaped

as a

banana she danced and sang in hat.

Songs and adver-

her, sheet

music was sent to

her ruffled Latin dress and fruit-strewn tising jingles

were crafted around

schools. Radio,

cinema and

all

the

new TVs

spread the message.

day. One US US troops posted abroad voted Chiquita the 'woman' with whom

radio station played her jingles 657 times in one

most

they'd

vibrancy,

To housewives she was

to share a foxhole.

like

good

new

health and perfect teeth, quaHties for the

postwar family. Sales soared

as

Senorita Chiquita Banana captured

the exuberance and optimism of the world's sole superpower.

Sam Zemurray aimed

to

go out on

a

high note. His bananas

more.

symbolised capitalism: small luxuries that led to

far

Communism

dullest in utility

and even

promised only the

failed to deliver that. With his

world

on the path

to fortune

and fun, Zemurray decided

to retire again. In so

doing he

planned to reconcile with

No

reference books

him and it

this

his role in

way.

He wore 'no

the rabbi of the recalled. visit

US

On

New

the other

his roots

on Jewry

set

and old enemies.

in the

US

entrepreneurship.

South mentioned

Maybe he

conspicuous prominence on

preferred his sleeve,'

Orleans synagogue he attended

later

hand Zemurray had appreciated

that

by Chaim Weizmann, Zionism's missionary, twenty-five

years before.

They had shared an

interest in

mathematics and

music and, as an escapee from Russian anti-Semitism, Zemurray

had found himself inspired by Weizmann's message. So he put up the

money

would

first

take the

to

buy the

migrants to the

119

in

boat, the Exodus,

new

state

of

1

948

which

Israel.

BANANAS Zemurray had no obvious successor had never taken to Boston.

home of any of the

He

company

as

could have

He

chief.

made an

elegant

brow^nstones in the Back Bay but preferred

the long-term rental of a suite in the staidly grand Ritz-

Common. At

Carlton, overlooking the

needed

had retreated

to recover 'lost energies', he

Orleans to

v^eeks

fast for days,

such times

he'd

as

New

to

was claimed, on water alone.

it

Zemurray had never apparently sought the acceptance of the Brahmins, however, he had good sense recognising that they ran Boston and that

run United

it

right blood, he didn't

Thomas Cabot was President

John

well for one of

go for half measures; he chose a pleasant

them

enough

fellow.

His

a

Cabot.

later

Kennedy's national security adviser

F.

to

auto-

foreword from Robert McNamara,

a friendly

time of the 1962

as

he had been looking for someone of the

Fruit. If

biography had

would be

Cuban

missile crisis. Before that

at

the

McNamara

had reorganised the Ford Motor Company. Old Henry Ford had borrowed United

mass-market ideas but lingered

Fruit's

McNamara had been

too long and

Zemurray worried

hired to save the company.

that he, like Ford,

had stayed too long but

thought he saw something in Cabot that would produce success.

Cabot appeared

as

effortless

would have admired and despised with horse-riding and ground, with ries that

his side

He

travel.

old money. Scott Fitzgerald his jaunt

did have an industrial back-

of the family owning carbon-black facto-

belched smoke over rolling

had run them, not in he seemed to

United

a

manner

know some of

Fruit's

through the decades,

managers

hills

in Pennsylvania.

him exhausted but

to leave

the arts of

Cabot

management.

failed to agree.

When

Cabot took

over he did reveal some very interesting ideas. Give up Central

America, he

said,

because

it

was

120

lost to disease.

He

wasn't far

ON THE

INSIDE

wrong. Big Mike was close to extinction. Cabot suggested

United Fruit should relocate

distantly south across the

perhaps that would keep the bugs away.

New

Andes:

banana lands

were opening up in Ecuador where there would not be the

problem of workers organising themselves into unions. In Central America the unions had been getting stronger.

Cabot clashed with deep vested was the company and

virtually

interests.

all

Central America

When

knew.

it

he went

further to say he could not see the point of Bernays' PR, he

was considered to be quite out of touch with

came out of retirement

reality.

Zemurray

again and sacked him.

The postwar optimism had turned

as

Cold War had

the

frozen into uneasy stalemate in Asia and Europe.

Russians exploded their nuclear

longer the only superpower.

bomb

in

Carmen

1949 the

When the US was no

Miranda's career had

peaked in the war years with The Gang's All Here and had taken a decidedly

downward

end of the war, the

Were

US

turn. Since Roosevelt's death near the

had had enough of 'Good Neighbor'.

there any 'Good Neighbors'?

liable, as

the Russians had proved.

eastern half of

all

ment

Communism

It

were unre-

occupied the half.

Even

had voted out Winston Churchill,

people, after the war, in favour of the Labour governled

by Clement Attlee. His strange regime professed

Democracy' and what did

that

was

way

bananas?

It

at least half

Hollywood came under head of the screen Representatives' its

allies

Europe and threatened the western

Britain was under suspicion.

of

One-time

mean beyond to

a shipload

Communism,

special scrutiny.

actors' union,

'Social

if

of

not more.

Ronald Reagan, the

appeared before the House of

Un-American Activities Committee

to

confirm

worst suspicions. Communists were everywhere, agreed

Reagan, and he'd be happy to help find them. The committee

121

BANANAS expressed

grateful thanks for such cheerily forthright testi-

its

mony. From Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy took up the

anti-Communist banner and,

enemy

nation about the

United Fruit a

in the early 1950s, grilled the

within.

with 'McCarthyism'.

instinctively sided

It

was

long way from the decencies of Wisconsin in the company's

part of

Middle America where

a

was going wrong. In

lot

Guatemala General Ubico had been thrown out in 1944 and succeeded by elected governments

with United plantations at

Fruit.

Banana

disease

who

were picking arguments

had been increasing.

On

the

United Fruit had been pumping Bordeaux Mixture

an ever greater

and

rate

ship the mixture's residue in the holds.

The

result

was rotting from the

when

the bananas were loaded aboard

was combining with seeping seawater was

even the Great White Fleet

that

inside.

Costa Rica had shown signs of making republicanism.

Would

years before in

it

be

a case

of

a

break from banana

'first in, first

out'? Thirty

1919, United Fruit had warned President

Woodrow Wilson that a strong leader was needed to maintain control. He hadn't listened then, nor did he when given the same advice by John Foster Dulles, the bright young lawyer

who

had been doing, in the company's view, some good under-

cover

work

from bad

to

latest leader,

in the country. Since then Costa

worse and become

steadily

Rica had gone

more democratic.

Jose 'Pepe' Figueres, was a real conundrum.

had banned the Communist

party,

which was

as it

Its

He

should be.

Then he had abolished the army and turned its barracks into a fine arts museum. Figueres was another one who claimed to be

a Social

Fruit

knew

Democrat. This wasn't the Central America United or very

much

loved.

122

ON THE Company

anxiety rose

all

INSIDE

the

more

Guatemala leaned

as

towards more radical leaders. In 1951 the country elected

Colonel Jacobo Arbenz,

a 'military

science and history teacher at the military a student, ates.

He

moderniser'.

academy

was

a

and, as

had been one of the academy's brightest gradu-

Coming from Quezaltenango

Arbenz knew the miserable

in the Indian highlands,

living

and working conditions

of Guatemala's Mayan population very well and resolved to

improve them. His wife dominated him, or so voice was cited

as

it

was

said.

His reedy speaking

proof. Sefiora Maria Vilanova de

Arbenz was

charismatic and, possibly, another Evita Peron in the making. It

was

also suggested that she

might have been from the Lady

Macbeth mould; she was ambitious and knew something about power.

The

president's wife

was from El Salvador, Guatemala's next-

door neighbour. Minor Keith had run

Guatemalan railway to El Salvador, of

its

much no

a

branch

line

lucrative export trade in coffee but there

scope for bananas. El Salvador was on the

first

port of

call.

It

his

had not been Pacific,

Atlantic coastline and so was not the Central

banana's

from

in order to take advantage

was

a

had

American

country the

of

size

Massachusetts or Wales and grew mainly coffee, sugar and cotton.

El Salvador did have an oligarchy, a very rich one, the 'Fourteen Families'.

The

were apt to be

military,

often

a

corruptly.

fixed. El Salvador

Nicaragua: a 'banana republic' that didn't have very

Senora Arbenz was from

as

'Fourteen' shared United Fruit's

worldview and ruled with the Elections, if held,

known

was

like

many bananas. The

privileged background.

Vilanova family was one of the 'Fourteen', though she was an

acknowledged black sheep. Well educated, she had upped and

123

BANANAS gone

and was well with

well-bred Salvadorean

travelling, uncharacteristic for a

She had lived

girl.

read.

a substantial

Mexico, with

in

When

dowry,

its

revolutionary tradition,

came

she had married Arbenz, she

a plantation in

Guatemala owned by

her parents.

Arbenz had announced

he was to carry out

that

land

a

reform and the Arbenzes made their plantation part of the plan.

The reforms aim was

up

to break

a

number of

large land-

holdings and distribute small areas to landless farmers. the land United Fruit had to give

was part of

and his

up had been unused and

stock of territory kept in reserve. When Arbenz

its

purpose of breaking up large unproductive landhold-

said the

was

ings

Guatemalan economy out of

to pull the

to turn

into a

it

'modern

capitalist state',

in for

'feudalism'

United Fruit and

other enemies angrily dismissed his claims.

were

Most of

He

was going

nothing more than words and gestures, which, they

said,

Communism. The company

to cover his plot to implant

was not the only large landholder to be affected but none other

had quite the same power

base.

United Fruit prepared

for war.

From his posting in neighbouring Mexico, CIA agent Howard Hunt took a keen interest in Guatemala. He would later claim credit for the clandestine activities that led to the

Arbenz government. torship during

people died

as

as politically

It

which

fall

was replaced by decades of military scores, if

not hundreds of thousands of

dangerous.

The

death squads recruited off-duty or

ex-military people and had such

names

to

imply virtue

the Guerrillas of Christ the King.

proceeded

botched

sion of

dicta-

death squads killed or 'disappeared' anyone regarded

White Hand and

in

of the

to stage

Cuba

Washington

efforts like the

Bay of

as

the

Hunt

Pigs inva-

and, in 1972, the burglary at the Watergate hotel that

brought

down 124

the

man whose

cause

it

was

ON THE intended to enhance, the then

Hunt

wrote novels and

later

INSIDE

US

Richard Nixon.

president,

book with

also a

his boss,

Allen

Dulles, the former lawyer for

United Fruit and the head of the

CIA's undercover operations.

They

of

called their

book The

Craft

Intelligence.

Early liant'

CIA

reports

on Arbenz had

referred to

him

as 'bril-

and 'cultured'. Hunt revised the intelligence agency's study

of the Guatemalan president and declared he was of 'limited intellect'. It

would

all

help build the case that Arbenz 's wife

dominated him.

At the time, however, the

case

Arbenz did not

against

advance. United Fruit lobbyists were making in

State

in

little

impression

Washington and Hunt thought he spied the problem. The

Department had

Guatemala

nothing

who

illegal

a

gentlemanly diplomat

had reported to Washington that there was

new

Hunt complained

president was actually quite likeable.

to Allen

Dulles,

who

sympathised but

couldn't set any clandestine operation in It

ambassador

or especially worrying about what Arbenz was

doing, in fact the

Guatemala.

as

would

need

the

Department. Fed up. Hunt took

a

approval

new

motion of

against

the

State

posting in the Middle

East, in Egypt.

United Fruit was convinced the problem went to the top. President

the

all

way

Harry Truman had succeeded Roosevelt

and, in the company's view, was too preoccupied by such distant

Cold War

issues as Berlin

and Korea.

He

failed to see that

Guatemala was part of the Communists' grander Fruit

had hatched one of

its

own

Central America with the Great 'Agricultural Equipment'.

family to receive the

The

weaponry

plan.

plans to send guns

White

in Nicaragua

125

down

Fleet in boxes

intention was for the

United to

marked

Somoza

and lead an

assault

BANANAS on Guatemala. Truman and

the State

Department had blocked

the exercise.

The US

election in 1952

Dwight D. Eisenhower,

a

came

as a blessed relief.

the presidency for the Republicans.

good

administrator. In

gate. In

No

politician,

he was

war he had understood when

John Foster Dulles, presently handed the

State

affairs.

a

senator from

Department and with

it

a

to dele-

peace he would do the same, except those to

he gave the authority would make war on United

foreign

General

Second World War hero, took over

whom

Fruit's behalf.

New York, was

responsibility for

His brother Allen was in prime position

as

head

of the CIA. They were two old confidants and advocates of

United Fruit and, itself

in

its

uncanny way, the company had worked

into the inner circle.

126

9

Coup General Eisenhower, popularly

know

as 'Ike',

came

in January 1953 arguing that President Truman and

Democrats had gone

'soft

a

still

worried the

question over the president's commit-

America. Like Truman before him, he seemed

ment

to Central

more

interested in very distant events.

Ike appeared obsessed by 'Persia'. Britain

trouble in the country and asked the

Churchill was back in office in disposed to

power

on Communism'. This was most

encouraging for United Fruit but Eisenhower

company. There was

to

departing

his

come

US

had got

itself into

for help.

Winston

London and Eisenhower was

to the aid of his old

wartime comrade. The

Anglo— Iranian Oil Company's huge operations on the Persian Gulf had been seized from the British by

a

new

nationalist

government. The British contended that Communists were

behind

this

turn of events.

The young Shah of

Persia

had

fled

the capital, Tehran, and gone to Europe.

The CIA had been on a tight leash during the Truman when relations between the agency and the

administration, State

Department had been

strained.

in Washington, coordinated action

only a phone

call

Under

the

new regime

between the two required

between brothers, namely secretary of

John Foster Dulles and CIA

state

director Allen.

Allen Dulles chose Kermit 'Kim' Roosevelt to do the job in Persia.

A

grandson of former President Teddy Roosevelt

127

BANANAS and nephew of Franklin D., he was reputed

from Tehran

fitted the tales

a tank.

a playboy's life in its

name

old

the Persian nationalists were

as

Some reports said Roosevelt rode into The shah soon returned from leading

forced from power. the capital atop

one of

to be

men. Yet the description hardly

the CIA's top undercover

to

substantial share

Europe and

become known of

its

country gradually ceded

his

Iran. Britain gave

as

Iranian oil assets to the

US

up

a

in return

for the favour done.

United Fruit took heart from these faraway developments. Perhaps attention could turn to the company's advantage in

Guatemala against what

it

regarded

the renegade regime of

as

President Jacobo Arbenz and his dangerous wife Maria. If the

US, or

rather the Dulles brothers, could help the British in

the Persian Gulf they could surely back their old cHent United Fruit in

The

its

problems around the Gulf of Mexico.

Dulles brothers were contrasting characters. John Foster

lacked subtlety and was uncomfortable in company. Churchill

had likened him to with him. through.

He

No

a bull that carried his

enjoyed trouble, both making

one could doubt

that his

success, particularly as a lawyer.

Even

china shop around it

and following

methods had gained him in the Depression

1930s, his annual salaiy had averaged $370,000. brothers, Allen

was the suave one.

to his urbane manner.

He was

a

He owed much

Of of

of the

the

two

his success

popular tennis partner and good

in any social gathering. Clover, his wife,

was in the habit of

shopping for expensive jewellery, paid for by her husband

compensation for

his dalliances.

it

as

Allen Dulles usually kept an eye

out for the next chance for adventure.

To help

substantiate

its

had hired John Clements,

case in Guatemala, a

United Fruit

former marine with

128

his

own

COUP public relations company.

much

was very

sion,

at

Edward Bernays, doyen of the

work with

on the company's behalf but

his

profes-

his

own

influential contacts

list

was

liberal

by compar-

ison to that of Clements. Clements shared the views of Senator

who was continuing his Communism in all its alleged

Joseph McCarthy,

public campaign

to root out

forms. Clements

had

a

list

of 800 key thinkers of the

report that he sent to

of them.

all

It

on Guatemala' before he widened

right.

He

acquired the it

to

dashed out title

a

'Report

'Report on Central

America'.

The

Communism had

report held that

already gained a

foothold in Guatemala. Quick action was imperative

enemy

closed

was to

seize the

territory.

in.

as

the

The next objective of Arbenz and his regime Panama Canal, a vital asset on sovereign US

Thus, from Persia to Guatemala the fight against

Communism migrated from the desert to the doorstep. The CIA undertook the report's wider distribution and its findings became accepted government

The

thinking.

Dulles brothers and President Eisenhower agreed that

one advantage of

a

Guatemalan exercise would be addressing

the threat posed by Senator McCarthy.

with

his

slurs

on the

colleague, General Plan', the aid

Europe

others,

Europe between

And

to rebuild the countries

of

of accepting the postwar division of

capitalist

McCarthy was

nalists.

character of the president's wartime

Second World War. McCarthy had accused

among

swapping gossip

had outraged Ike

George Marshall, author of the 'Marshall

programme designed

after the

Marshall,

He

West and Communist

increasingly

daily in bars

becoming with

a

a

gaggle of friendly jour-

he showed no sign of stopping

the Republicans took office.

East.

victim of alcohol,

his accusations after

He would bemoan Allen 129

Dulles's

BANANAS

CIA and

no

there was

where he might

telling

Eisenhower's brother Milton was

stop. President

respected expert on Latin

a

and

who had said the US should champion reform compete with Communism for the friendship of the poor.

The

president himself appeared to be under his brother's influ-

American

affairs

ence. Ike had stated that the

America

in places like Central

the hands of people

US would

who

not

we

'unless

Communism'

'lick

can put things into

are starving to death'.

Such thoughts

were bound not to impress McCarthy, nor, for

United

An to

Fruit.

operation in Guatemala

make

a strong

whether

would enable the administration

statement about

to the country's

McCarthy and a

that matter,

position

its

on Communism,

enemies of that ideology, or to Senator

friends. Just

hold in Guatemala was

far

how

far

from

Communism

certain.

A

friend of the

president had visited the country and written to that, yes,

'not as

War

Guatemala had

many

as

a small

a signal

increase morale at

of firm

nowhere from the

fight

US

intent. If

its

with United Fruit

office

He

point

nothing

else, it

would

head above the parapet and picked at

the

was

wrong

who

Dulles called his brother Allen,

Roosevelt.

US

Communism needed

home.

Guatemala had put a

to say

San Francisco'. Nonetheless, with the Cold

apparently stuck and going

be sent

him

US

minority of Communists but

of view, the administration calculated that to

had gained

summoned

to

time.

John Foster

in turn called for

the secretary of

Kim

state's

and offered the job of overthrowing Guatemala's

government,

as

he had that of

Persia.

Roosevelt turned the

opportunity down. For further coups, he told Dulles, the

army and the people

in the places

what we want'. 130

concerned had

to 'want

COUP

He seemed

to

be saying that such conditions did not apply

He

in Guatemala.

noted the secretary of

also

what he had

unruffled by

As Roosevelt

said.

seemed

state

left

the office,

Dulles leaned back in his chair 'with a catHke grin on his face'.

On

assuming

changed

who

its

office,

Eisenhower administration soon

the

ambassador in Guatemala.

It

replaced the diplomat

had not perceived President Arbenz

a different

be

a threat

with

kind of character. John Foster Dulles appointed Jack

who

Peurifoy,

to

was hardly 'diplomatic'

at all.

He wore

a

green

Borsalino hat with a feather and favoured sports jackets and

coloured

ties.

Of medium

height and build, Peurifoy swag-

gered, sometimes with a revolver in his belt: 'pistol packing Peurifoy', wrote his wife, Betty Jane.

A

'Star-Spangled Banner

kind of guy', said the ambassador of himself.

He

was United

Fruit's

kind of ambassador. At

a 'strong personality' in the embassy,

This was in tions

on

book The

his

a life in

to his time

pubhc

last,

there was

wrote Edward Bernays.

Biography of an Idea, his later reflec-

relations in

which he devoted

a

chapter

working with the United Fruit Company.

Dulles appointed Peurifoy

as

one way of keeping McCarthy

off the State Department's back. In the late 1940s Peurifoy

had slipped

files

on

State

Department employees

to the

House

of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee to help its

deliberations

had

won

on Communist

infiltration.

Among

others, this

the admiration of one of the committee's most active

members

at

the time, Richard Nixon,

now

Eisenhower's vice-

president.

Peurifoy was from a small rural

and

his parents

community

had died when he was young.

tary ambitions until

in

South Carolina

He

had had mili-

he had to drop out of West Point through

131

BANANAS ill

health.

him with him

A

bout of pneumonia had, in the

military's terms, left

deficient lung-power. In his civilian

life it

never held

back. Peurifoy's voice could be plainly heard in any room.

He

had pulled himself up from the bottom. In Washington

snow from where

in the Depression he cleared

Hved

in

Georgetown.

He became

Entering the bureaucracy

and joined the

State

a Hft

as a clerk,

the rich people

operator in the Senate.

he made quick progress

Department. After the Second World War,

Peurifoy helped organise the San Francisco conference that

founded the United Nations (UN), gentler work than

which he was

suited.

monarchists in the

He

civil

was soon sent

war

a

photo of the Greek

Now was

first

Greece to

rally the

Communists and won

against the

the tag of the 'butcher of Athens'.

to

that to

On

desk he

his

still

kept

royal family.

in his mid-forties, Peurifoy

had been aghast when he

offered the ambassador's post in Honduras. Tegucigalpa

was stuck out of the way and Honduras

a

backwater.

It

was

not good form to decline the post of ambassador but he did.

He demanded Guatemala and got it. He came at the problem directly. When was to 'stop being a bridgehead for

of members of the government risen

oak

from the dusty

trees

Communism?' he demanded as

village streets

and Spanish moss.

He

soon

to retire to

had its

some delaying for

tactics

two months. When

was over dinner. Their wives remained in

attendance throughout, since

one

He

basics.

After arriving, Peurifoy did employ

it

he arrived.

spoke no Spanish and possessed

and avoided meeting President Arbenz

came

as

of the old south with

no knowledge of Guatemala beyond

the time

Guatemala going

exchange

Mrs Arbenz was apparendy not

dress patterns or

banana

ambassador was shocked by her forthrightness.

132

recipes.

When

The

he had

COUP asked

why Guatemala had

Stalin's

was

a

been

decreed a day of mourning

after

death in 1953, she had replied that the Soviet leader

war hero

like

Roosevelt and Churchill.

in power, Roosevelt

would have had

Had

her husband

day

a similar

when

he died.

As the evening wore on Peurifoy became incredulous

at

President Arbenz's persistence in talking about United Fruit's failure to

was

do much

a small

for the

company

in

Guatemalan economy. United Fruit

US

terms, Peurifoy answered, in the

manner of one who wasn't

there to discuss small business.

His concern was the conspiracy of the Communists to grab

power.

The awkward dinner Arbenz gave Peurifoy

would never use

it.

party broke

his direct

The

up

at

two

in the

morning.

telephone number. Peurifoy

candle was burning 'slowly and surely',

he reported back to John Foster Dulles.

It

was only

of time in Guatemala 'before large American be forced out completely

if

a

matter

interests'

would

pre-emptive action wasn't taken.

When asked soon after how dinner had gone with the Arbenzes, the ambassador said the couple

July invitation

To United In losing

would not be on

next 4

his

list.

Fruit, the case for a

some of

its

land

'virtual expropriation',

coup was straightforward.

had been subjected to an

it

claimed Bernays, and

ment had paid compensation

theft. The

in bonds, not cash,

act

of

govern-

which was

bad enough, but the manner in which the land had been valued was

far

worse. The government had used the land's 'book value',

namely the

figure calculated

by the company for tax purposes.

The company had under-declared years in order to save

quences,

it

on

its

taxes.

the value of the land for

Now

protested that everyone had

133

suffering the conse-

known

the land's value

BANANAS declared for tax was not the true one. ness practice. So,

why had

attitudes in

It

was accepted busi-

Guatemala changed? The

only answer was 'Communism'.

As simple it

alone.

lies, It

It

was, United Fruit did not have to argue

as its case

counted on help from some of Boston's best fami-

members of which were

in positions of great influence.

was claimed, of course, that their power went further: there

was that

toast

about the Cabots talking 'only to God'. United

Fruit did, indeed, have Cabots to rely just

on them

on

father

UN.

ambassador to the

world war and

a

the company's case in his

After the First

and namesake had not been

Nations, forerunner to the

One

would not have

for a link to the Alirdghty.

Henry Cabot Lodge championed role as

side but

its

in favour

World War

of the League of

UN, in common with

new

peace forum

his

later,

United the

Fruit.

UN

was

being used to the company's advantage. Cabot Lodge Junior's voice rang out in defence of a business from his

of Boston that had been so unfairly responded that the to

treated.

The

home

city

Union

Soviet

UN Security Council should send observers

Guatemala to look for themselves, thus giving Cabot Lodge

the opportunity to nail their devious intent: 'Keep out of this

hemisphere,' he told the Soviets, 'with your conspiracies and plans'.

John Moors Cabot was at

the State Department.

who had been

Cabot,

in the late 1940s until

in charge

He

of Latin American

affairs

was the brother of Thomas

the chief executive of United Fruit

Sam Zemurray had

sacked him.

Moors

Cabot bore no grudge and warned the Guatemalans the

US

government was assuming

responsibility

company's claims. United Fruit calculated that cheated out of compensation for

134

its

it

that

for the

was being

land to the tune of

COUP million

sixteen

Guatemala the

dollars

was Howard Hunt

It

and the State Department sent

bill.

who

intervened to take the company's

case to the highest authority.

The CIA man had come back

from Egypt, which had proved recently lost

its

a

poor posting. Egypt had

king, a British-sponsored

monarch who had

been replaced by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser was engaged in challenging Britain over

its

control of the Suez

Canal and possibly calling in the Russians. Diverted from these intriguing issues.

Hunt had

King Zog. The king had

to attend to the affairs

Hunt took

in exile in Egypt.

impounded

care of matters like reclaiming

when

Zog's imported refrigerator

of Albania's

been recently deposed and was

also

Nasser's customs

officials

it.

Hunt jumped

at

the chance of being part of the action in

Central America which he had originally advocated. Allen Dulles, his boss, made

him head of politics and propaganda

Success', the mission to

From an

air

overthrow the Guatemalan government.

base in the

trips to the interior

for 'Operation

swamp

near Miami,

Hunt made

secret

of Guatemala contacting anti-Arbenz people:

churchmen, businessmen and

others.

He

hired a retired American

actor and they prepared scripts for fictitious broadcasts

Guatemala from the Voice of Liberation radio the

CIA had

specially created.

The

station,

Hunt

women

hired Guatemalan exiles for the part and brought

exiles

on how

to present the broadcasts.

question remained, however, of what was to be done

about the Guatemalans areas

war with

onto the base to keep them company. The ex-actor

coached the

The

which

broadcasts were to convey

the impression of a country living in terror and at itself.

to

who

had no

radios. In distant rural

of Guatemala, many poor inhabitants would surely be

135

BANANAS of the plan to overthrow the government of

grateful to hear

He was

Arbenz.

almost certainly an Antichrist and,

if

he wasn't,

then his wife was. The people of rural Guatemala, by contrast,

were devout people, awaiting

Hunt approached

who

Cardinal Francis Spellman of

influences.

The

cardinal

put Hunt in touch with

Guatemala's archbishop and bishops, at

the prospect of

Communism it

they did, the

was

Bernays

United it

Fruit's

had become

had

his

long

alarmed

also

penned

planes drop

over forlorn areas whose inhabitants

word came from

ahead

were

Hunt had CIA

would otherwise not have learned of

When

who

in their country. They

a pastoral letter for the people.

thousands of copies of

New York,

chance to help stop the spread of

readily accepted the

atheist

a sign.

of

the

their

pending

liberation.

the skies.

game.

He had

drip-fed

view into the veins of public opinion since clear that

list

Arbenz would come

to

power.

He

of friendly opinion formers which included

sub-categories of those even better placed to manipulate society's 'hidden all

else

The

would

mechanism'. To take care of them meant

follow.

publishers or senior editors of newspapers were

first

to be approached. Generally they spent their professional lives

office-bound and cut off from the journalistic cutting edge.

Bernays put them on planes and United Fruit paid their expenses.

They might lodge

in

one of the pleasant rooms of the Pan-

mock colonial with windows looking out on to the hubbub of Zone One, the heart of Guatemala City. Somewhere in the middle distance pandemonium might

American

erupt.

It

hotel, elegantly

would be

far

enough away not 136

to alarm

them unduly

COUP and near enough to reach just

the

as

crowd was

dispersing.

glass, a bullet

in the

smoke

hole and perhaps a Hngering whiff of gun

File

air.

it

as a

It

broken

was the perfect foreign correspondent's story: a bit of

'Communist Outrage'.

Bernays kept up the junkets. These tropical 'fact-finding' tours generally a

whirl by

all

air to

They

coast.

headed

set

first

Bogota in Colombia and took

the Santa Marta plantations

The

the Caribbean

at

peace with the company's

tension rose as they neared Guatemala.

company men met them:

smiling, reassuring

On

men.

It

arrival,

had

to

how weU they withstood the pressure.The company

be admired

men

on

north for Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras,

of which were tranquil and

world.

introduced them to others, local people of some social

standing, to

for

though not from the government. They did

keep smiling, not

as

gamely perhaps

as

the

company men,

while they explained the nature of the rising fortuitous that

all

was

still

of war in the

that feeling

Bernays called the tive reporting'. Fruit's version

quiet, yet there

terror. It

was

was no mistaking

air.

stories that

appeared 'masterpieces of objec-

There was something

in

what he

said:

United

of events rose above the usual pettiness of news

outlets' subjective persuasions. Liberal

matter.

their best

The NewYork Times, the San

or conservative,

it

didn't

Francisco Chronicle, the

Miami

Herald, Time-Life magazines, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor

—

it

was almost unfair to

for the ride.

single

them

out.

They

the chief in-house

Company,

a

when

went along

Bernays rigorously denied any suggestion of news

manipulation and here, too, he had a point.

difficult to

all

PR man

book about

make

a

at

Thomas McCann,

An American He said it was

the time, later wrote

his days at

United

Fruit.

convincing case for manipulation of the press

the victims had proved 'so eager for the experience'.

137

BANANAS

What accounted

for this

compHcity?

Many

ently decent

and honest people. was the

to probe, there

with the

to deal

Nixon,

Among

fear that they

likes

and

those with an instinct

their editors

would have

of Senator McCarthy. Vice-president

was comparably hawkish and

too,

saw

journalists

them by appar-

their trade as reporting the 'facts' presented to

a

staunch supporter

of the Guatemalan operation. For the journaHsts there was the potential glory.

Many

World War. Guatemala promised

the Second

generations 'story of their Hves'.

fought so

Thanks

distantly, this

could even be seen

at

technology.

It

with 'Radio

at least

Fleet

of United

its

for

war had been

closer to

Fruit, the conflict

visual side, in line it

home.

Panama Canal. it.

with advancing

had mastered the airwaves,

Banana Land'.

It

produced

a film,

Banana Land. 'Travel with us on the Great White

to

and meet your neighbours

opening

last

flown them over

was some time since

Bound

the

be the next

to

the very lock gates of the

company had

United Fruit expanded

Journey

Where

one threatened much

to the sharp-eyed attentions

Well, the

also

of the older scribes had reported on

titles.

Scenes

in

Middle America', read

moved from

crashing surf

its

on the

Caribbean, to volcanoes and aerial shots of Guatemala City.

Contented

natives

abounded on urban

streets

or with their

mules on company plantations. United Fruit had brought them 'greater purchasing

power' and 'twentieth-century

film ran for twenty-one minutes,

the

US

itself.

They showed

its

living'.

concluding scenes from

family meals, school cafeterias,

bananas enjoyed on cereal and in milkshakes. In 1954, the year for Guatemala,Jowmey in

US

to

The

crisis

Banana Land was in high demand

classrooms.

Apparent philanthropy remained uppermost in the company's mind.

It

took out magazine advertisements promoting the

138

Red

COUP Cross.

The

organisation was only too pleased to get the support.

So were the publishers of the magazines, because United Fruit paid well above normal advertising rates. In return, articles

appeared promoting the company's vision of 'Banana Land'. In delicate issues of diplomacy charge. In in the

March 1954

Venezuelan

John Foster Dulles led the

the secretary of state stayed two weeks

capital, Caracas, at the

conference of the

Organisation of American States (OAS). The city was in a state

of unrest because

had recently seized

a military dictatorship

power. In protest democratic Costa Rica refused to attend the conference; but Dulles seemed quite

OAS members

of

that

its

'small neighbours'.

complained that the

efforts in Latin

all

home. Some

US

America

and most toed

it

when

'positive action' against

The Guatemalan

was 'cataloguing for

'intellectual curiosity'. In other

as

with the

US

economic independence and

the tnne

came

to cast the vote for

Guatemala. Costa Rica wasn't present

position, either

happy

Dulles's suggestions that they

to

would

do

so,

rest

went along

or persuaded by

face the withdrawal

of

aid.

At the

UN, Henry

Cabot Lodge's ambassadorial

worked well. Then came that

dele-

Communism'

words, only one line was allowed

and only Mexico and Argentina abstained. The

US

cajoling

Guatemala, one of Latin America's weaker countries, posed

such a threat to gate

at

was required since several had not grasped

it

a blip as the Security

would send observers

to the region.

efforts

had

Council proposed

As members of the

Council, the British and French backed the idea. Churchill

happened

to

be visitmg Washington. President Eisenhower

resolved to talk 'cold turkey' with his British friend over this

unwarranted European intervention sphere. Britain

in the

American hemi-

and France were presently engaged in imperial

139

BANANAS wars, the British in Cyprus and the French in Vietnam.

could count on no help from the US, Ike

on taking the wrong

stance

on Guatemala.

They

they carried

said, if

Britain and France

duly withdrew their support for the idea of

UN

observers in

Guatemala and the proposal was quashed.

The

question was

who would

Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas was an enemy of Arbenz

sion.

and had been part of an had in

overthrow him.

earlier plot to

He

fled into exile and, lately, a career as a furniture salesman

Honduras. Castillo Armas was dapper, moustachioed and

had be

lead the Guatemalan inva-

'that

good Indian

Armas was

in Nicaragua,

Howard Hunt

who

a 'little prick',

responded the Somozas

in Central America,

be unwise for

a foreign

US

which they claimed could it

had

equip-

finest military

handle Arbenz's forces. Washington counselled that

easily

would

country to be such an obvious pres-

ence in the invasion. Cards had to be played fully.

He would

offered to launch the invasion. The

provided the Nicaraguan army with the

ment

reported.

the people'.

'terrific for

Castillo

face',

far

more

care-

The US accepted

the Somozas' offer of training camps

on the

Atlantic coast at Puerto Cabezas, the

and an

airfield

old pirate haven of Bragman's Bluff. Castillo

Armas was housed,

Fruit plantation

fed and watered

on the Honduran

Guatemala and awaited

side

a

United

of the border with

his call. Eventually, a straggling force

of Guatemalan

exiles crossed the frontier

on the

The CIA's Voice of

capital.

on

and began

its

march

Liberation radio station

reported an army progressing triumphantly and people flocking to join

it.

The

tered animals battles

local

mule population

dumped on

fell

sharply,

with slaugh-

the road to give the impression of

fought along the way.

140

COUP

Many

were holed up

journalists

American

Any who wanted

hotel.

of the Pan-

in the bar

go to the

to

prevented from doing so for their 'own

safety'.

were

'front'

Gun

in belt,

ambassador Peurifoy briefed reporters on another point of

He had

concern.

heard that some of them were calling what

was happening an invasion and he put them liberation. They

were only allowed

the battle was finally Indian,

showed

on the

it

to see for themselves

done and when

his face

right:

Castillo

was

a

when

Armas, the good

national palace balcony to spon-

taneous rapture from the crowd. Earlier

CIA

bombs on

planes had dropped

and in the slums of the

military bases

capital to create panic

among

the

people and uncertainty in the armed forces. President Arbenz

had had the impression

the nation, he

had broken

that security

had abandoned him. In

that his forces

blamed United Fruit

of people heard him

as

the

down and

his final broadcast to

for the invasion.

CIA worked

A

handful

jam

the trans-

Httle frustration at

not being

to

mission. In Boston, journalists at

showed

the frontline. United Fruit kept

most were happy with the United Fruit appointed

company alleged

hospitality

itself

the

headquarters, they were

victims

McCann,

there

of as

atrocities

part of

them

so well informed

and

and regular updates,

as

news agency of the war. At

shown

pictures of bodies of

by Arbenz's

United

Fruit's

forces.

PR

Thomas

machine,

later

wrote that the pictures could have been of victims from either side,

or of one of Central America's

141

many

earthquakes.

10

'Betrayal' Howard Hunt had viewed

better

as

a

faced an existential dilemma. Life was far

simple division between the guys in the

white hats and the guys in the black hats and, for he had

lost his usual clarity.

He

had, perhaps, been

moment,

a

on an

airfield

outside Guatemala City near one of the ravines at the capital's outskirts,

with gentle wisps issuing from the nearby Fuego

Though the details are vague, after a brief and vigorous bout of combat Hunt had captured a rag-tag group of fighters opposed to efforts by the CIA and the United Fruit Company to overthrow the government. Hunt had wondered whether he should shoot the members of this vanquished band or let volcano.

them

go. In victory

reflected that this

captives

he chose the path of mercy and

had been

a disastrous mistake.

One

of

his

had been Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.

It is difficult

to

know whether

this really

happened. Twenty

Richard

years later, during the administration of President

Nixon,

later

a

CIA

Hunt enjoyed

colleague said

putting out

better part of a career of

Memoirs of an American

it,

Hunt had

false reports

wrote

Guatemala regrets as

at

the time.

It

he had done so

He

the story.

made

the

the government of the day, the

which he neglected

said

was one of

much of

143

him

his autobiography. Undercover:

Secret Agent, in

mention the Guevara incident.

told

and, having

the

first

to

he had not been in

his greatest professional

groundwork

to

Communist

regime,

remove as

BANANAS Hunt viewed

it,

to

meet such

Franco's victory in the

a fate since

triumph in Guatemala, Flunt wrote, the

him

to Japan.

There

are

Of

the time of

CIA had

reassigned

course, that might not be true either.

scattered

He

Guatemala.

General Francisco

Come

1930s in Spain.

had

left

Che

of

details

Guevara's

time in

Argentina to tour Latin America and

was especially keen to see what was happening in Guatemala

under the government of Jacobo Arbenz. As Guevara wanted

Among

to get an idea

his efforts,

a

young

doctor,

of developments in healthcare.

he applied to work

of

in the hospital

United Fruit plantation but did not get the job.

A

a

short-back-

and-sides sort of company. United Fruit might not have liked

body and mind together

the cut of his beard. Guevara kept in

Guatemala with various jobs, including one

clopaedias.

The

selling

ency-

future revolutionary icon thus served in capi-

talism's frontline as a

simple door-to-door salesman.

Guevara had applied to go to the Guatemalan

'front' as the

1954 coup unfolded and the CIA's dead mule brigade had

begun turned

its

march on the

down

capital.

He

had access

to

Arbenz,

Guevara and other irregular-looking

fighters

from Guatemala

City would panic the regular army into thinking

Near the end Guevara urged Arbenz carry

on the

who

the request, suggesting that the appearance of

fight

all

to 'take to the

was

lost.

hills'

and

from the Indian Highlands. Guevara helped

organise battalions to guard the capital. Their efforts

came

to

nothing and he sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy before being granted passage out of the country. His

first

wife, Hilda, later recounted that the

Guatemala had convinced Guevara for Latin

already

that the only

America was the 'armed

coming to

this

struggle'.

coup

in

way forward Guevara was

conclusion, having observed the working

144

'betrayal' conditions in Chile's copper mines. After the deeds of United Fruit in Guatemala,

Guevara

set off

north to Mexico to join

on Cuba.

Fidel Castro's forces preparing for their assault

For some months United Fruit had heard rumours that the

US

Department of

Justice

was preparing an

against the

company, to curb

Guatemala.

The

State

its

anti-trust case

'monopolistic practices' in

Department had ordered the

Justice

Department's lawyers to hold off from formally beginning legal action during preparations for the Guatemalan coup. In United Fruit's to credit. If the

mind such

things the right way. In for the

West

was almost too absurd

a case

company monopolised anything Guatemala

against the forces

of

it

in

doing

had just fought the

battle

was

it

and won. United Fruit

evil

ruled the world.

Amid by the

the present uncertainty, the

of

attitude of the secretary

company

felt

reassured

John Foster

state,

Dulles.

Al Bump, the company's divisional chief in Guatemala, had heard that normality would soon be restored.

from being the company's tyro engineer bright airy house

worn

frontline

Guatemalan that

on

The

would work

with

a

the newTiquisate plantation, to the battleciuring the recent

Dulles had instructed the

United Fruit was

Arbenz.

had risen

in the 1930s,

manager of the company

crisis.

Bump

to get

back

secretary of state didn't out, the

its

US

ambassador

lands confiscated by

mention

company would have

that, as things

far

more taken

away by Washington.

CIA time. a

agents descended

The

on Guatemala

rationale for the

'bridgehead for

in

coup had been

Communism'.

Now

number, openly that

this

Guatemala was

the evidence of Russian

involvement could be uncovered. Many thousands of documents

145

BANANAS had

CIAs

fallen into the

hands.

the secret links and reveal, buried.

as it

Its

were, where the bodies were

Here was the agency's chance

tions to turn

Guatemala into

would unearth

operatives

to expose Soviet inten-

a military base. The

CIA

about

set

searching through the documents.

As time dragged on, nothing

some

Moscow had

indication that

emerged. There was

substantial

attempted to build

a

bridge-

head into the minds of the nation's young. The Russians had sent teaching materials like schoolbooks.

most phant

Even some of shook

journalists covering the story

and ignored such evidence

the

their heads

in their reports or suggested

it

might have been planted. Mrs Maria Arbenz's well stocked library attracted a

good

deal of attention.

raphy of StaHn and works on in China.

The CIA

There was

Mao Tse-Tung's

biog-

a

agrarian reform

kept hunting, looking for the signs of

nascent hemispheric conspiracy: transfers of funds, networks

of couriers and correspondence with Moscow. Finally

some evidence was discovered of

clearly sympathetic

communication between Guatemala and the Kremlin. The Russians had written requesting a shipload of bananas.

Guatemalans wrote back saying the banana business and the

sorry, that

The

United Fruit ran

government had no powers

to get

the fruit to Russia. Guatemala evidently toed United Fruit's line,

not Moscow's.

United Fruit had experienced tremors earthquake came

real

to

go ahead with

as

its

the

in the past but the

Department of Justice was allowed

case against the

United Fruit had avoided such

assaults

company. Previously

one way or another,

by being out of sight and mind or beyond jurisdiction, by political feet.

manoeuvering or

For the

first

time, the

string pulling, or

by stamping

company was unable 146

to get

its

its

own

'betrayal' way. The Justice Department had always been called off in the

and

past

this

time someone had waved

John Foster Dulles against

through.

it

greatly regretted the judicial

his instincts but, after consideration,

all

tantly agreed to

it.

United Fruit had gone too

move.

It

was

he had relucfar. It

was not

any company deed in particular, more the context of the

many

desperate times. There were too

yet undiscovered, like Guevara, using

The US had observed

their cause.

Latin

America

after the

Castros and others as

United Fruit to

justify

the widespread protests across

Guatemalan coup. Though most of

those taking part in such demonstrations might be gullible and misled,

it

would

them along in

its

be necessary to educate them and lead

the right path. This

manifestation

The

A

still

would be

as 'octopus',

better than a that

it

Communist, and

was

a traitor

suffered in the past.

was not blocking the way

Generally

it

was being treated

possibly worse.

The

as little

implication

was, however, similar to those

officially

had managed

controlled

it

United Fruit had often strayed

between what was

who

Fruit,

and was losing America the Cold War.

The company's problem line

United

extent of this 'betrayal' was staggering to United Fruit.

crusader in the Western cause,

was

easier if

regarded

as right

to retreat in time

society's

and

it

had

across the

and wrong.

to rejoin those

'unseen mechanism',

as

Edward

Bernays, the company's venerable propaganda adviser, had put it.

United Fruit was being characterised again

as a 'nasty trust',

though not because anyone on high had suddenly discovered it

had been mistreating the poor and dispossessed.

wandered out of the realm of normal get

away with an awful

more

likely to

could

retaliate.

business,

where

where

It it

had

could

actions

were

be noticed and cause offence to those

who

lot,

into an area

147

its

BANANAS The company had Roosevelt over time, in the

its

decade of the twentieth century, United Fruit

first

stood in the to build the

previously angered the two presidents

interference in 'strategic' matters. In Teddy's

way of

his hiring the

Jamaican labour he wanted

Panama Canal and had

to take action to divert

the attentions of the president's anti-trust people. several

companies, in which

it

had bought

It

had sold

a controlling interest,

Sam 'Banana Man' Zemurray. Another company was that owned by some Italian families and which, though only small, had been named Standard Fruit. Thirty years later, the Second World War had back to the original owners, including

diverted President Franklin D. Roosevelt from having his antitrust lawyers act against the

on

company

after

Now

Germany.

trade with Nazi

administration had returned to focusing activities for fear

it

dog-eared contact

who a

had been so keen

on United

Fruit's

was inciting revolution.

Edward Bernays knew his

it

President Eisenhower's

responded with

a

precisely

list.

what

He made

a

to

few

do and reached calls

for

to old friends

number of newspaper articles

suggesting

coincidence between what Communists had failed to do in

Guatemala and what Washington was doing now. In the best style

of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the

Communists remained were as

still

United

impHed

that

of government and

a national institution

Fruit.

Enthused by to

on bringing down such

intent

articles

in deeper recesses

its

earlier

move

into film-making with Journey

Banana Land, United Fruit produced another contribution

to the genre. This twelve-and-a-half-minute film quickly to the point that liberty.

United Fruit was fighting

for the

West and

The company propaganda department gave much

tion to the film

and

carefully chose

148

its title

of

Why

came

the

atten-

Kremlin

'betrayal'

Hates Bananas.

Hke

frame showed three bananas arriving

title

Its

tourists at the walls

of the Kremlin, whose cupolas were

transformed into the anguished faces of the Soviet Cabinet, or Politburo.

It

was imaginative and for

esteem within the company,

United Fruit

to the outside world.

while held in high

a

not high enough to be released

if

soon sensed

itself

was

it

embarrassing and eventually, in Kremlin-like mode, would destroy the prints.

The hopes of Bernays and

the

by Senator McCarthys public success of

United Fruit

overthrown played

its

company had been stymied

fall

from

in having the

grace. Ironically, the

Guatemalan government

part. Shortly before the

CIA

had accused Allen Dulles's

coup,

of being

McCarthy by

infiltrated

Communists, whereupon the agency had immediately been able to it

show

that any accusations

McCarthy had made

against

and the Eisenhower administration must have been absurd.

The

senator trailed away to continue ruining his

three years later and

moment

isolated

usually

is

remembered

when

in history

in the

the country

died

liver,

US

went

as

an

a little

haywire. In arguing

the

company

by the tions

its

case against the

called

it.

fact that there

who knew

its

were people

of the

its

'Injustice', as

high government posi-

company

it

in days

when

it

The company continued

trust case for several years

as

The

control

to dispute the anti-

but mainly ran up against Washington's

wish to be seen behaving in with Guatemala

did.

had been quietly

monopoly hold on Guatemala through

railroad.

The US

in

business as well as the

Dulles brothers had advised increasing

Department of

United Fruit was somewhat restrained

a different

way

in Latin America,

an example.

plan was both to ditch Arbenz's land reform and

149

BANANAS ditch United Fruit's monopoly. Washington's rationale appeared to

be that Guatemala's multitude of peasant farmers, contrary

to

what they

capitalism.

therefore, to be

uted

among

need more

land.

They

Guatemalan

assets

were,

certainly believed, didn't

needed more

its

United

broken up,

Fruit's

albeit quite gradually,

competitors. Quite a lot of

and

distrib-

them went

to the

Standard Fruit Company, United Fruit's one-time insignificant rival,

among

others in the international banana trade.

In Costa Rica, United Fruit's oldest country of operation,

leader Pepe Figueres had other ideas. Figueres had previ-

its

ously decided that the best tics

was to abolish

it

Next he planned Rican

to

and turn

reflected a

that

he was

a

mix of these

he

army out of

poli-

one of the US's,

Massachusetts Institute of

influences; a Social

hospitals

said. It

at

Swedish wife. His plan for Costa

and

a capitalist

needed more schools,

his

quarters into an art gallery

finest institutions, the

Pdca

state,

its

keep

had been educated

Technology, and he had

welfare

to

do some wider remodelling of Costa

society. Figueres

and Boston's,

way

he proudly pronounced

Democrat. Costa Rica

and other demonstrations of

would be extremely

a

rare for Latin

America, he added, but fortunately Costa Rica had the means to pay for

it.

For

this,

he looked to United

Fruit, a loyal friend

and an integral member of Costa Rican society for some eighty years.

cent of

its

He

ordered the company to cough up 60 per

profits.

Figueres got away with

government, ordered

life

a

on

its

Costa Rica called

When a

it.

Hereafter, with

its

elected

European-style welfare system and relatively mesa, the country's high central plateau,

itself

the 'Switzerland of Central America'.

Figueres devised his scheme, the

position to oppose

it.

It

had the

150

US

company was not Justice

in

Department

'betrayal'

to fight

and anyway, so soon

after

Guatemala wasn't the best

The US government came to Vice-president Richard Nixon was

time for another coup.

same conclusion.

down and

to

check on

Fruit plantation.

A

The

Nixon and

his

his dourly,

wife on

company

United

bananas.

kept his shirt cuffs buttoned in

the humidity and couldn't quite put his fmger

Then he went

a

around them were apparently

natives

smiling Figueres fed his guests

Nixon munched

sent

character and his country. Figueres

wife entertained

his

happy.

this

the

on the problem.

away.

Far bigger troubles were emerging. United Fruit's manip-

Guatemalan operation had

ulation of the press during the

prompted

reflected, didn't like

went

to

Cuba

to

them and

resolved

to look for Fidel Castro

now ensconced somewhere in the Sierra Maestra south-east of the island. One of them, Herbert

his forces

the

in

the Fourth Estate. Journalists

what had been done

'never again'. Several

and

among

reaction

a

Matthews,

managed

to get

through to Castro

at his

camp.

Castro kept Matthews confined to the camp, for the journalist's

'own

safety' in this

of President Fulgencio to

dangerous habitat where the troops

government were attempting

Batista's

hunt Castro down. Castro had

from the camp, were

far

firing

his

randomly

more of them than

own men roam

resolve. Previous

regime and

its

to give the impression there

the

US

government, had

were nothing more than

a

said

few bandits

in

hills.

Castro was a son of United Fruit. The his

Castro's character

emanating from the Cuban

reports,

supporters in the

that Castro's forces

distance

there were. In his dispatches,

Matthews expressed himself impressed by and

at

upbringing and education

as

151

company had financed

well as that of his brother

BANANAS Raul. Their father was

Cuban who had

wealthy

a relatively

from United Fruit and sold the sugar he grew

leased land

some

the company. Fidel Castro spoke

educated and mixed with company people

and other

Fidel

and Raul had been such good

Castro walked into

Day fell

at

The regime of

1959.

enjoyed favourable

US

its

men

so wrong.

lads.

and

Batista

New Year's US

support from the

its

in the streets and, for a while,

opinion.

Guantanamo, pointedly near

tained

gone

all

Havana and into power on

away Castro was acclaimed

also

had

it

garden parties

at

United Fruit

social occasions. Years later old

would reminisce and wonder how

to

English, was Jesuit-

He

to the

gave a major speech

US

base that had main-

presence on the island. Castro spoke of Cuba's past,

present and future without exciting great alarm in the US,

though some sober mention was made in the

press

he had to say about the United Fruit Company.

He

it

a 'grave social

trying to it

dump

had called

problem'.

United Fruit was involved in

than

of what

the banana.

of

a betrayal

The

fruit

was

its

own.

It

was

far less profitable

had been due to disease-related expense. Ever more

land clearances and chemical treatments meant bananas cost

$2,500 an acre to produce,

five

times

more than they had

in

the 1930s. Experts in the field spoke of a 'reversal in banana

economies'.

markets

Once upon

expanding;

time, costs had

a

now

markets

were

been static

stable

and

and costs

exploding.

Big Mike was exploding add weight and Fertilisers also

profit,

it

too.

Pumped

fuU of fertiHsers to

was today more

like 'Fat

Mike'.

caused banana plants to grow taUer and more

vulnerable to hurricanes. 'Thus acts of

152

God

have not been

'betrayal'

wholly

unsolicited,'

wrote one journalistic

hurricane in Guatemala blew

down

sceptic. In

1958

a

80 per cent of theTiquisate

plantation.

United Fruit moved on manfully, seeking long-standing partner that had lost

new keynote of

was the

themselves

its

Renaissance men, not one-trick dullards.

as

in the past but risk

modern

tation

and metals,

A

mark of solidity

United Fruit wanted to

portfolios.

'conglomerate' like others that were so

of the scene and venture into profitable for oil

a

corporations spread the load, cut the

and mastered varied a

abandon the

business and chief executives fancied

company producing one item may have been

become

to

looks. 'Diversification'

new

entirely

much

fields. It

a part

prospected

experiences for an old plan-

company. Clearly cursed with bad luck,

it

failed to strike

it

rich.

it

should have diversified earHer.The end of the Second World

Its

managers claimed that the company's problem was that

War would

have been the time for

United Fruit

At

to build anew.

people had been in

to

thrall

a

change of plan and for however, so

that stage,

Carmen Miranda,

Neighbor' from the south, with her provocative

many

the

'Good

eyes,

dance

rhythms and songs that captivated her audience. Miranda did not make

a

penny out of

it

and had died aged forty-six

1955. For her pains, she had been criticised herself

made it

at

in

home for allowing

and Latin America to be patronised. United Fruit had

millions out of Senorita Chiquita

was too

Banana but now found

late to adapt.

The company could not a familiar reconciliation.

It

the banana into something

offload

would

more

its

try to

change and remould

excitingly diverse. Dessicated

banana chips and banana essence for

153

old sidekick and tried

ice

cream became the

BANANAS next big items on the agenda and quite failed to spark interest in the marketplace.

United was

Fruit's

A

to turn next.

It

hands of some of the best and oldest famiHes of

in the

Boston.

know where

board did not

Jefferson Coolidge had lately retired as chairman

and been succeeded by

a

Peabody Gardner.

No

bunch of

bananas was better connected. As to the future, what were

United

m

Fruit's plans

the face of disease and such severe

disappointments?

Someone

asked Al

Bump, head honcho during

the hard

now back in Boston as vice-president An engineer with twenty years in the

times in Guatemala and for tropical operations. field,

he would know: 'Grow more bananas,' said Bump.

'Something' had to be done about Cuba, and that something

was to be an there its

act

of

had gone up

historical infamy.

in flames.

Its

United

Fruit's

properties had

cane

been

fields

seized,

plantation managers beaten and chased away, even murdered.

The government of

Fidel Castro regarded

United Fruit

as

one

of the companies that had represented yanqui imperialism for as

long

as

itself as

most people could remember. United Fruit regarded

the respectable face of

US

business

on

the island.

A whole historic industry disappeared in smoke. The company had

its

large sugar estates in the north-east of the island

around

Minor Keith had

built a

such towns

as

Preston and Banes.

throbbing infrastructure of railway Hnes serving the plantations. In United Fruit's heyday, locomotives from the great age of

steam had burst from their sheds with broad, bowed cowcatchers

up

front.

They

ran through United Fruit's expansive pastures

where thousands of head of

cattle grazed. Yet the

always maintained an aloofness from

i54

Cuban

Hfe.

company had

'betrayal'

Castro

Fidel

had

put

more

things

when,

starkly

Guantanamo, he had spoken of United Fruit

as a

at

grave social

problem. The company grew huge amounts of sugar but

much from

neglected to buy very

who

were small farmers

Many

the islands producers.

could have used the patronage. Castro's

father had been one of the lucky ones. United Fruit had

of the business, or

failed to realise the potential

company had done was the fibrous mass

on

run

cars

was

known

wallboard.

it

little

and, although

it.

The

had, the

residue of sugar cane

One day Brazil would no one knew about that yet, bagasse

known

as bagasse.

to convert quite easily into saleable newsprint

Mixed with

had to feed

its

was

a

herds of

connection, while half

and

molasses, bagasse also acted as a binder

for cattle food. Molasses

Fruit

about

if it

also

a

by-product of sugar and United cattle. It

had

failed to

make

dozen Cuban companies with

far

the

more on

limited resources were building bagasse-processing plants

the island.

about United

company

Fruit's

penchant for

routinely undervalued

shipped abroad and away. Fruit's

PR

its

Che

knew accounting fiddles. The

Castro and his national bank president,

profits,

Guevara,

which were

just

Thomas McCann, formerly of United

department, in recording his thoughts about

life

in

Cuba noted that the company contrived to have very little money left each year for investment in the island. It was hardly enough

the Cuban manager's yacht'. may have been a son of the local much of a man for yachts. He was

'to float

Fidel Castro

but he wasn't

who had done away the casinos in

this

a martinet,

with the brothels and the sex shows and

Cuba run by Meyer Lansky and

ness friends in 'the

bourgeoisie

his generic busi-

Mob'. United Fruit was not

crackdown on the

island's leisure

155

so

damaged by

and entertainment

sector,

BANANAS since

had stopped

it

its

on the Great White

cruises

couple of years before. Other, and erated and people were

losses as a result

The thetic

specialist, cruise

anymore

inclined

of the revolution

Unes prolif-

to travel second-

company

banana. In Cuba, nonetheless, the

class to a its

less

Fleet a

estimated

$60 million.

at

of the company's fortunes remained under sympa-

state

observation by Hov^ard Hunt.

The CIA had

seen

Operation Success work well in Guatemala in 1954 and it

could be put into action again in Cuba.

It

felt

would be dusted

off for reuse and renamed. 'Operation Zapata' struck the right optimistic note.

It

sula in the

Hunt's

was audacious enough to announce where

Cuba was

the invasion of

which was the Zapata penin-

to be,

south-west of the island

CIA

boss, Allen Dulles,

Eisenhower was

idea. President

commanders

agonised that

was

it

nearly served

two

White

such action was necessary yet he

said

his

watch, however, since Ike had

at

the 1960 elections

Conceivably,

making

a

In the

Cubans

as

rail.

Even

imminent Cuban

Americans went to

if that

the Great

would have been

make two of

fled the island

boats

it

started.

run by Castro swaggered

around Miami with chequebooks and promises of

156

its

exercise.

US, the mission had succeeded before

who had

his

would be much

Nixon imagined one of

too fanciful. United Fruit did

available for the

of

triumphant return to Havana harbour

with him waving from the a little

RJchard

that the chances

by Cuba returning to the fold

Fleet

the

He gave his approval because

presidential terms. Vice-president

landing the presidency

cast their votes.

Pigs.

more worried about

Nixon, on the other hand, dreamed

assisted

Bay of

could be 'our Black Hole of Calcutta'. This

no longer

effectively

the

was perfectly happy with the far

prospects for intervention in Cuba. his field

at

how

easy

'betrayal'

it

would soon be

ined

a

re-run of the Guatemalan invasion, with the arrival of

of

a 'liberation force' streets.

exiles

and the crowds cheering in the

Castro was a tyrant and he would just have to be toppled

for the

Cuban people

Guatemala was cally

go back and throw him out. They imag-

to

failed

up

to rise

logically

in joy

chosen

and

relief.

launch pad but

as a

illogi-

meet expectations. Although the army had

to

accepted United

Fruit's

coup of 1954, many junior

objected to the use of their territory for an attack

officers

on another

country. Guatemala was being used like a banana republic, they

complained. In Nicaragua, the Somoza family remained ever faithful.

They put Puerto Cabezas and other

Mosquito Coast

at

the disposal of the

CIA

of the

areas

for training

and

the launching of air strikes.

The planning

fell

behind and during the

US

election

campaign there was no sign of the operation's launch. John

F.

Kennedy, the Democratic candidate, taunted Nixon, saying the Republicans talked

a

big

game

in the

Cold War about Berlin

and other remote locations while they did nothing about Castro's Cuba, which was ninety miles away and nine minutes by

Nixon was

frustrated because, like

many

people, he

the plan to overthrow Castro but could not talk about

remained an

official secret.

The

jet.

knew of what

delays continued until after the

when Kennedy, not Nixon, was in the White House. The new president could hardly call off the operation, having

election

himself urged that action be taken. In April 1961, two ships lent

by United

Fruit's

that sailed to the

onto the

The fire,

Great White Fleet were

Bay of

reefs that

Pigs.

The

no one seemed

invasion force of exiled

they

waded

among

the seven

boats almost steamed right to have realised

Cubans soon

were

did, as,

across the coral, feet unprotected, boots

157

there.

under around

BANANAS their necks, rifles raised

above the waves. Those

shot in the surf were shot face

down on

ran across

the sand.

Members of

back,

weren't

swimming through

laid

Castro's defence force

some of them dragging chainsaws.

taneously rose in support of the exiles. it

who

on the beaches or captured and

No

Some

towns spon-

survivors

made

the shark-infested waters to the

boats off shore. Operation Zapata was an abject failure.

158

Decline and The Kennedy

administration blamed the

Pigs debacle and Allen Dulles,

of intelligence '.Those

'failure

Fall

its

CIA

for the

who had lost

their assets in

since Fidel Castro's takeover blamed President John for not allowing a sufficient

The two

the invasion.

Bay of

director, resigned for this

number of

F.

air strikes to

sides to the debate

Cuba

Kennedy support

evaded the point of

whether the invasion should have ever taken place and whether it

had been

more

far

Sam Zemurray

characteristic

of

bygone world.

a

died, aged eighty-four, in

in retirement in Louisiana. Fifty years earlier

the invasion of a result

of

Fruit, the

Honduras and boasted

this latest exercise in military

a

November

1961,

he had launched

stunning success. As

intervention by United

company had been humiHated.

That did not prevent the company still making an impact. The Guatemalan coup of 1954 had led to the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, as a result of

allowed, the Soviet island.

Union

which

Fidel Castro invited, or

to place nuclear missiles

This provoked the 1962

Cuban

on the

missile crisis, the

Cold

War incident thought to have been the nearest mankind has come to the end of the world. No one would have remotely imagined

it

As for the

had anything to do with bananas. assassination of President

United

Fruit,

with

its

in November many and varied.

Kennedy

1963, the conspiracy theories have been

famously ubiquitous tentacles, might

159

BANANAS find

its

part in them. Boston's Wasps

United Fruit had reason

erty,

Many of

New

featured

its

Of those who

had not always got along.

Kennedy.

and

Catholic Kennedys

had

Cuban prop-

lost

to feel as betrayed as

the stories of a plot to

kill

Orleans, the company's old southern capital.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin-to-be, had an

Mart building

city's

International Trade

'Bill',

the magazine editor associated with

propaganda

any by

the president

Edward Bernays'early

company and

efforts for the

Oswald and Gaudet appeared

office in the

did William Gaudet,

as

friend of the

CIA.

Mexico

to have travelled to

together. This was a short while before the assassination in Dallas, north across the

Mexican-US

border.

Howard Hunt,

asked in 2004 by Slate.com whether he had been in Dallas on

Nothing can be construed,

the day, answered 'no comment'.

of course, and

all

such 'evidence'

may only show how

easy

it is

is

at best circumstantial. It

to construct the skeleton

of

a

conspiracy theory.

The Gros Michel, Big Mike, had At great a

cost

United Fruit tore down

new banana throughout

succumbed

finally its

plantations

to disease.

and planted

Central America. This was

the

Cavendish, whose origins lay in the soon- to-be-defoliated forests

of Vietnam, or possibly

happened upon nurtured

it

in Derbyshire.

Mike and to

be

its

in

this

the days of the Raj, taken

greenhouse of

The Cavendish

his stately

wasn't

as fat

it

new

It

variety

back and

home of Chatsworth and long

key virtue in commercial terms was that

disease resistant.

market rival

it

in the

Lord Cavendish had

India. England's

was not United Fruit

as it

the Big

was

said

that delivered to

and potential saviour of the

business.

Its

Standard Fruit had done most of the development work,

implying United Fruit was not the power of

1

60

old.

DECLINE AND FALL Belatedly United Fruit had started producing in Ecuador.

Thomas Cabot had been sacked

suggested the idea in the 1940s and had

for his pains

by Sam Zemurray. Cabot had

also

pointed out that the labour unions were not very strong in Ecuador.

When United

fore, there

hospitals tals

was no pressure from the

and

Now

had

first

wondered whether

first

workforce to build

attract

built

hospi-

its

people from the

should bother.

it

many people were

The term had only

and second

respectively, the free

mount. Each

third

living

recently been coined.

world was the West and the second the East

by the Soviet Union. The

The

local

could

it

'Third World' in which

attractions.

its

The

it

new

This

in the country, there-

United Fruit had always

schools.

and schools to make sure

US.

up shop

Fruit set

as

run

was the impoverished remainder.

sides in the

market or

equation vied over whether,

should be para-

social welfare

tried to resist the other but the

first

world had

absorbed some of the influences of welfare and the people of the second wanted

more

free market. In the

people thought themselves lucky to have

United Fruit

also

had the revelatory idea of giving people

their

own

tions.

The company had been under pressure

land.

These were

more independence would

all

been

had not

until

now been

company of being

They would be 'El Pulpo'.

less

Also they

banana and the problems of running the busi-

the criticism

as

planta-

turned over plantations to the

occurred to United Fruit

ness. It

whole

to allow producers

to take responsibility for themselves, the diseases

that afflicted the

for

it

stop their complaining.

inclined to accuse the

would have

substantial pieces,

for years but

struck by the advantages. If locals, this

Third World most

a job.

much

it

that, for all these years

had received about exploitation,

it

and had

a welfare organisation as a proper business.

i6i

It

BANANAS had taken care of people's bugs

in

hospitals and, at vast

its

expense, those of the banana in the company's purpose-built laboratories.

Now

to the local people.

passed the

it

could

It

of the plantation over

affairs

as easily

maintain control of them

further along the business chain, in shipping and marketing.

The

nev^^

'independent' producers

needed

still

to

get their

bananas shipped and sold and wouldn't be able to do so without

United

Fruit.

There were, however, more disturbing

company not being what Puritan stock, a

company

proudly got

it

that its

was

a

had been.

Of

firm believer in the

had always engaged

'hands dirty'.

ulator than a producer

One

it

It

in

hints here

old

New

work

ethic. It

independent producer

it

its

early 1960s offered to

buy United

was someone

who

manip-

did not want around was

Greek shipping magnate,

He

a

old self-esteem.

Aristotle Onassis, the

tations.

was

production and that

was becoming more of

and losing

of the

England

as a

Fruit's

who

in the

Panamanian plan-

producer could take care

of himself and wouldn't need to be dependent on United Fruit. a

He may

have wanted to buy the plantations to build

bridgehead in Panama in order to take over the Panama

Canal.

The US,

the canal's owner, might just have agreed.

The waterway was becoming

obsolete for

and Onassis, with

had the resources

in business

to

upgrade

would have been happy, except

his rivals

his billions,

the canal. Everyone

who would

to get their ships

have had to pay extortionate rates

through the canal while

was an idea worthy of Minor Keith, United

who

modern shipping

had maintained such

a

grip

his

went

free. It

Fruit's old leader

on Central America's

rail-

ways. United Fruit was alive to this and turned Onassis

down. 162

DECLINE AND FALL

The company

front of the pack.

which was

stay in

generic term except in the world of

a

ranching. Brands such

cattle

had the powers to

it

took an important step in 'branding',

It

not

still

thought

still

Rolls-Royce, Hoover and

as

Coca-Cola emerged by commercial osmosis. United

method was more akin aimed

at

to that of a

rump of

the

cowhand with

Fruit's

hot iron

a

a steer. It stuck small labels

on

bananas with the image of Senorita Chiquita Banana.

company of

all

the

first

had

its

consumers

who

saw and liked her bought

The new

bananas they put their hands on.

them

to help

as

labels

differentiate theirs

The

had gyrated for the benefit

realised that for years she

producers,

its

from the

idea was

United Fruit

rest.

put on every third banana, upwards of two billion

stickers a year.

United Fruit was 'playing God' and laying claim

to a thing

of nature. That seemed appropriate enough, given that the

company had

created the

modern banana.

In

reality, this

of branding was not entirely original. Californian

had shipped products with colourful

United Fruit had

also

marriage with Fyffes,

growers

labels since the

adapted the idea from a case

fruit

form

1880s.

long-term

its

of something borrowed, some-

thing blue. Fyffes had introduced

its

blue label

as

long ago

as

1929. Senorita Chiquita's image on their bananas provided an exciting

branding.

by

a

new It

impetus to the as-yet-underdeveloped

was more

lowly paid worker

represented a first

a

mark of

like

alchemy than

art.

rivals

label applied

quality in the marketplace

jumped and

introducing their

did.

163

and was

gave the

renewed edge over the competition, though

soon

of

many hundreds of miles away somehow

great success. Sales

nothing to stop

A

art

own

briefly.

labels,

at

company There was

which they

BANANAS United Fruit missed

a

opening

great

in the

decade had started promisingly enough

as

US

in Jamaica,

singer

who

had been brought up

which United

the calypso conjured was one with

have loved to have been associated,

workers sang

A

after a full night

and had become

movement. He was

a

had

his

Fruit

big that

would

contented

tired yet

humping stems

into a ship's hold.

had

reassessed his

leading activist in the

a link to the

on board, the

stars

its

as

Httle further into the 1960s, Belafonte

earlier lyrics

The

Harry Belafonte, the

The Caribbean world

with 'The Banana Boat Song'.

hit

1960s.

white middle

civil rights

and puUed

class

already estabHshed Pete Seeger

and the

emerging Bob Dylan and Joan Baez among them. Civil

rights

when attacked in town where Sam Zemurray

marches and demonstrations turned violent such places

had

Selma, Alabama, the

as

settled after leaving the anti-Semitism

Protests quickly acquired an

Guatemalan

crisis

of Russia.

added edge. At the time of the Eisenhower had warned

in 1954, President

the French to back off from involvement in Central

diplomacy that was being acted out

at

Dien Bien Phu

year,

UN. He had said expect no US help in

at

that if they didn't, then they could

Vietnam. The same

the

France had suffered the military defeat

that led

it

to leave

French, the CIA, emboldened by

Vietnam. In place of the

success in

its

Guatemala had

stepped up clandestine involvement in Vietnam.

1960s

it

was the

Within the

US

at

became

US

that

political

American

By

the mid-

was embroiled.

turmoil and anti-war protests in the

the time, a peculiar thing happened. United Fruit

The most notorious of capitalist an edge of radical chic. The banana was

fashionable.

constructs acquired

the heart of

it

and crowds began

to call out

its

na-na!' they chanted at a large rally (or Be-in),

164

name: 'Ba-

on Easter

DECLINE AND FALL Sunday, 1967 in

New York's

Central Park. In Bernays' day

company would have relished the PR. Members of the assembled mass in New York carried large banana effigies. What did this symbolise - peace, innocence, disrespect? the

The crowd looked the 'alternative' type, slovenly dressed and with many of its number in T-shirts. Worse, many of the T-shirts bore United Fruit's Sefiorita Chiquita logo.

This was blatant theft of someone it

else's

image. Furthermore

was being pilfered by these demonstrators for quite the

wrong but

purposes. These people weren't United Fruit people President Richard

'agitators'.

Nixon would soon have

another word for them. Nixon was to return from the political wilderness to

win the presidency

in

1968 and he

called this class of person 'bums'.

United Fruit panicked when

were

also using the

they were smoking ered the

it.

'Banana heads' were said to have discovfor

producing an hallucinogenic high.

Bananas, that had once been pushed for the

working

classes,

was touted

as a

an alternative for meat

as

now were being promoted

to relax the discontented children fruit

discovered that dissidents

banana for another inappropriate purpose:

gift

fruit's

it

cheap and

substance

as a

of the middle-class. The

legal alternative to

LSD.

When the company's distinguished forbears had driven prices down and

created the mass market this was hardly

would have imagined.Whether or not,

it

of highs was

which was becoming quite popular

mainstream, printed recipes for

your own.

this talk

hokum

swept across the market from coast to coast.

alternative press, as

all

what they

No

department had ever been compost, some

how

to scrape, boil

recipe from United Fruit's

said,

like

but proved

far

165

that.

more

The

as

The well

and bake

home economics result

tasted like

successful than

United

BANANAS Fruit's

former

boom'

registered

Ashbury

to

line in

A

bananas and bacon.

'banana-buying

from San Francisco to Boston, from Haight-

Harvard Square.

The banana

slipped into popular culture.There was

Andy Warhol produced

singing 'Mellow Yellow'.

Donovan

his

album

cover for The Velvet Underground and Nico portraying a banana

with

a zip that

good fun

you could

for the

modern

pull back. This

breed, though any oldsters that might

have been tempted to take for a surprise. Pulling

was considered very

a closer

look would have been in

back the zip did not reveal an inno-

cently pale piece of fruit but something pink. Fruit's perspective the

type of people

who

From United

played this kind of

prank were disgusting.

It

United Fruit

didn't get the joke

countered

allegations that

all

it

'peace and love' with dull detail.

government and the case that the

It

allied to the

cited reports

cause of

from the

nation's best universities in defence

of

its

banana had no dangerous neuro-chemical qual-

FaiHng to embrace the time, in the counter-culture the

ities.

company saw only fast

and missed the moment. was

the

wrong people when,

in fact, they

were

turning into the right people: articulate, intelligent and

with prospects. Theirs was becoming the established way of thinking and the view that these

new

thinkers

moved

demanded

to be listened to.

As

towards joining those controlling

the inner mechanism, United Fruit was being pushed to the

margins.

The members of the United Fruit board met Eli Black on their territory. They repaired to the Algonquin Club on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue. It was among the brownstone town houses in the Back Bay adjacent to the Charles River. The i66

DECLINE AND FALL building stood out with

and

a 'cut above'

grey masonry, managing to be

its flat

solidly conservative. In the library, w^ith

dark panelled ceilings

and graveside

sobriety,

hung

its

portraits

of

old club presidents.

The Wasps

man

New York,

himself

as

Hke:

'can-do'

a

He had

called

to

Boston

was understatedly

polite.

proud company its

morning

that

to

announce

for the past

few

days.

He would

fly

that afternoon.

Black was not fazed by

uphold

up

the mystery buyer of a large block of shares they

had been worrying about

a

probably loud and

looking to muscle in on a world accustomed to the gentle

passage of ships.

up

knew what Black would be

suspected they

he'd be hyperactive

his

He

surroundings and, like his hosts,

understood that United Fruit was

fiercely protective

of

its

tradition.

Would he

values in the future? After dinner the board

still

worried that he wouldn't.

United Fruit looked It

thought

for other suitors

possible names.

PR

it

trusted.

parties

New

reached the point of discussing

United Fruit paid good money to one of the

operations that were springing up everywhere and

trading in matters of corporate image.

up with

those

had found one in Textron, an established

it

England conglomerate.The

modern

among

several titles for the

proposed

Its

representatives

new company,

came

such

as

Panomega, Metromega and Corporad, none of which quite fitted the bill.

partners also

The

made

deal itself

into the banana business the

and associated first.

came

to nothing.

their excuses. The

costs. It

had

Other

more they learned about all

potential

more some of them delved its

diseases

looked very straightforward

at

'What's the big deal?' said one would-be suitor. 'So you

have dinner once

a year

with the president of Honduras.' Finally

Black was the only one in the

race.

167

BANANAS Black had retired into the background the salesman, he had

up and

let

made

and

his pitch

at this point.

how

the other side agonise over

was time

it

Ever

to shut

to respond.

Amid

the market speculation about his bid, the price of the shares

He would make money

he had bought went up and up. even

United Fruit turned him down, although

if

passed

became

it

clear

would

it

He

was

banana plant from

a

who would

had mismanaged

that for years

sort things out.

United

into old

life

thrusting 'asset manager'

company

a

would a

a

not. Wall Street relished the

new

thought of Black breathing

time

as

Fruit.

take hold of

Black

assets.

its

'whether he knows

As one expert

said,

potted palm

largely irrelevant'.

is

Amid

the excitement. Wall Street brushed aside rumours that there

had been something remiss about Black's mass purchase of the company's shares.

The

press

modern of

age,

backed the idea of the company entering the

some reminiscing about

old. Slave traders

the 'nasty' United Fruit

and exploiters had founded

it

when,

after

the Civil War, looking for other outlets for their dubious talents

they had happened ness

'wildest

a

bananas.

and greediest

browser in

list

a

men

of

sins

pioneers of the busi-

in history', said

Times Square bookstore'. itself into a

the largest employer in Central hospitals

and schools for

One worry United

its

it

Fortune

however,

distinguished giant, that built

people.

was

had appeared

row over

Lately,

America and the one

that received attention

Fruit's past,

bitter anti-trust

New York's

'would hold even the prurient eye

United Fruit had transformed

in

The

had been no better than 'conquistadors' and among the

magazine. Their

of

upon

its

affairs in

of which lands had been redistributed

i68

that,

in court.

not so It

Guatemala,

among

its

far

had had

back that

as a result

rivals

and

its

DECLINE AND FALL

monopoly over Minor Keith's with

this

was

that

United

further difficulties, and that

railroad taken away. The

Fruit's file

name was

would

likely

'on

problem

file'.

Any

be re-opened.

It

was the way of law enforcement agencies to haul in the usual suspects

and United Fruit would be an especially good one

for them.

It

was old and

tired

and had plenty

in

its

past for

the regulators, the hyenas of the jungle, to return to and scav-

enge.

The

politicians, press

and public would not care

real offenders escaped, just as

was brought to

long

as

if

the

someone, or something,

book. Then everyone would

forget about

it:

case closed.

Under off to a

Eli Black's leadership,

good

start.

As

United Fruit appeared

a sideline to its

America, the company had business

to get

operations in Central

interests in the

US,

in

California for example, growing other agricultural products like lettuce.

Cesar Chavez, the union leader of the Mexicans

who worked the fields, demanded new paid and generally

would agree

much

abused labour force. Black said he

to the contracts,

management and

contracts for this under-

much

to the chagrin

to the surprise

of

his

own

of other big companies in

the

mucky world of

less

amazed observers wondered whether they were witnessing

a

agribusiness.

new enlightened United Fruit. The company still had some of

In

More

its

appreciative and

more

no

traditional touch.

1969 the so-called 'Football War' broke out between

Honduras and El Salvador. The two countries had longstanding frontier disputes that erupted after an especially fiery

soccer game. El Salvador invaded United Fruit's old ally

Honduras, in the process taking the trouble to installations the

ping.

company used

to supervise

The Salvadorean government made 169

seize its

some

radio

Pacific ship-

fleeting

propaganda

BANANAS from

its

confronting the imperial majesty of United Fruit.

In response, the

company made

few

a

calls

on behalf of

itself

and Honduras and before long the Organisation of American States

had arranged

a truce.

With

Black,

it

seemed, some of

the former glory might have returned.

Black saw himself

He

books.

took some pride in

doubtful that he was

normally had

little

an intellectual and

as a scholar,

much of

a

a

man

of

however,

his library. It was,

reader since chief executives

time for such

activities.

may

In 1970, he

have missed, therefore, the publication, in translation, of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's

One Hundred Years

United Fruit next,

as

it

of Solitude. Whsit overtook

moved towards

its last

and

years

might have come from the pages of the book, with lence, It

war and

its

days, pesti-

biblical winds.

began with an earthquake. In the middle of the night,

two days before Christmas Nicaragua, was destroyed.

in 1972,

Managua, the

The earthquake ruined

handful of the buildings in the centre of the

city,

capital all

of

but a

including

the cathedral. Black quickly spotted the disaster's potential for

United

Fruit.

He

might not have known

that

he was contin-

uing in the tradition of the company's philanthropy, but saw that food, shelter, water, medicines life

and the general

were urgently needed. Black instructed

from United

Fruit's

civil

basics

of

engineers

other Central American areas to go to

the disaster area straightaway. Advertisments appeared in

US

newspapers and on radio and television networks appealing for funds for the

NEED. The

Nicaraguan Earthquake Emergency Drive,

advertisements identified

NEED's munificent

corporate sponsor.

United Fruit revived neglected since

Why

the

its skills

as a

film-maker, somewhat

Kremlin Hates Bananas. The

170

company

DECLINE AND FALL crafted a short

movie

Fruit's relief efforts in

starring Eli Black portraying

Managua. The Nicaraguan

the company's response to

were central

it

disaster

features of

and

United

The company had done good

next annual report.

Fruit's

United

was an example

works and should be proud

to say so.

It

other big companies that,

they only

made

if

to

the effort, they

could break out of the constricting confmes of the narrow

commercial world. United Fruit trumpeted 'Our Social Responsibility'.

Soon

the chain of events began that led to Black's suicide.

1973 sounded the death knell for United Fruit

named

black sigatoka hit plantations. This

as

the ominously

new

variant of

banana disease had no known antidote. In the same year

company morale plunged when, sales fell

the sonorous

as

The Middle

OPEC

time,

East

war

the

in

own

its

banana

Fruit, later

Dole Corporation.

autumn of 1973 prompted and the banana-producing

to raise oil prices sharply

countries to set up their set

first

behind that of another company, Standard

known

better

for the

cartel,

UPEB.As

Central America

about exacting revenge on United Fruit for the abuses of

of nature rejoined the

history, the forces

spring

With

when Hurricane

Fifi

battle the following

devastated Honduras's plantations.

Black's fortunes failing, Wall Street returned to the ques-

tion of his share deals at the time of his takeover of the

company, suggesting that circulated that the press to the

Honduran

effort to sort

and for what would be labelled it

Word

his bribes

his outra-

out.

Looking through the winter's

trading had been involved.

military junta. Black faced disgrace both for

his business failure

geous

illicit

had got hold of the story of

glass

of

his office

dawn. Black smashed into

171

it

with

window

his

at a dull

leaden briefcase.

BANANAS

He

had

filled

it

with books from

briefcase out, climbed onto the

United

Fruit's

therefore,

world,

came down

its

his library.

window

He

threw the

ledge and jumped.

century of conspiracies and plans,

to the final act

172

of one deranged man.

i2

Old and Dark Forces The tumultuous

events of the

West and capitalism and

who

affairs

in

first

half of the 1970s

the

need of redemption. What went on

was involved could not be

of loveable rogues.

and big companies was

left

An

alliance

easily dismissed as the

of corrupt government Central America but

a familiar tale in

not in the large and powerful countries that fought in freedom's

name.

had turned into what looked

It

world out there and

it

like a

was United Fruit

'United Fruit'

itself that

was going

to have to go.

What became known mid- 1972 and led grace two years

as

the Watergate scandal began in

to President

later.

It

would have done United

Richard Nixon's

exit

from

entailed a story of intrigue that Fruit

proud and out of

it,

once

emerged Howard Hunt, the company's old CIA

again,

comrade.

Hunt had done and not

at all so

well for the

company

well in 1961 at the

in

1954

Bay of

in

Guatemala

Pigs in Cuba.

Out of that crisis, he inherited the loyalty of a number of Cuban exiles that were fugitives from the regime of Fidel Castro. They needed work and took whatever Hunt gave them in the enduring fight against Communism. He had them break into Washington's Watergate Hotel, suites of

used

as

coming

which were being

the Democratic Party's headquarters for the forthelections.

Nixon, the Republican incumbent was hotly

173

BANANAS favoured to win but people working on his behalf wanted to increase his chances by listening in to the Democrats' busi-

The Cubans were caught red-handed and, in a sense, redheaded, too. A red wig was found among the burglars' kit, which no one made any sense of at the time. The Cubans ness.

went

had concocted the robbery alone and

to jail saying they

for their

own

otherwise,

payment.

reasons of 'anti-Communism'. service for

a

He would

also

They kept

quiet

which Hunt had promised them end up behind

bars.

Nixon, who had not when he did fmd out, had tried to cover up his staff's involvement. The president's nemesis was the US press, in particular Bob Woodward and

The known

investigation eventually led to

of the burglary but,

initially

Carl Bernstein, reporters employed by the Washington Post,

who

led a formidable

the same time,

to

hunt down the

was the culmination of

it

motion eighteen

campaign

years before

company's assiduous

by United

efforts to

time of the Guatemalan

crisis in

story.

a process set in Fruit.

While the

manipulate the press

1954 had paid

had had strong repercussions, with

a

At

off,

at

the

they later

subsequent generation

of journalists disinclined to believe anything that smacked of an

official line.

Favourable

US

press

comment had helped

Fidel Castro shed his image as a simple

power

in 1959.

Now over a decade

hill

bandit and take

on, the media had

highly critical of the US's war in Vietnam, and

anyone they were inclined to be

man

directing

it,

sceptical

it

was

told.

the period following the cabal hunting

there was it

was the

Richard Nixon, 'Tricky Dick'. The

dent hailed from the days of deception

wrote what

if

about

become

when

Nixon had made

his

Second World War

as

Communists

in places that

174

a

presi-

cowed

press

reputation in

one of

a small

most people hadn't

OLD AND DARK FORCES imagined they could possibly be. In the times of 1970s' dissent

Vietnam War, the Watergate burglary imphed

against the

a

return to the old paranoia and that Nixon's Republican party

had spied

'agitators' again in the

vised address to the nation,

The

proceeded

press

Democratic

Nixon

claimed,

'I

party. In a tele-

am

many

to prove that in

not

a crook.'

mmds

people's

he was and he resigned in August 1974. It

was through the good

&

Telephone

of Central America had by to Chile.

this

time introduced themselves

Hundreds of miles away

on not being

society prided itself

and

Chile

chaotic.

most

South America, the

in

country had not been part of United

corrupt

of the International

offices

Telegraph Corporation (ITT) that certain ways

Fruit's

had

a

parts

and

temperate,

in

cratic tradition, until

suddenly succumbed

of

a

a

healthy

m

banana republic. General Pinochet strode

throw the government of Salvacior Allende, elected in 1970.

announced. it

Thousands were

Many

materialised that

Fruit.

rather

demomanner

in to over-

who

had been

and imprisoned in Pinochet

people assumed the CIA's involvement and

ITT had been more United

killed

the

of freedom and Christian values, so

defence

then

which meant

'tropical',

Mediterranean climate it

world; Chilean

As well

ITT was

part of the story, too.

successful at being a

conglomerate than

as its large stake in Chile's

national tele-

phone company, it had

international hotel, aidine and car rental

businesses. ITT's boss,

Howard Geneen,

had been

in league

winning the 1970 the picture

fall

CIA

elections.

emerged

him poring over Chile's

with the

his

or Hal to his friends,

in vain efforts to stop Allende

Geneen was an accountant and

after later hearings in the

US

Senate of

books decrying what he reckoned

into chaos and the red.

175

He

and the

to

be

CIA had

BANANAS Pinochet seize power to restore their collective idea of order

and balance.

ITT had

also

made another

scandal and in a joint role with

appearance, in the Watergate

Howard Hunt

in the case

of

Dita Beard and the 'man in the red wig'. Beard was a well-

connected Washington lobbyist working for ITT. During the Watergate investigations, she had

made

a

written statement

ITT had donated four hundred thousand dollars to Repubhcan party. Beard had stated, it seemed, that the money was a bribe to have some anti-trust charges against ITT dropped. When reports of the statement that

President Nixon's

came out Beard was taken family

ill

and disappeared from view. Close

members thought only they knew where

she was until,

when her brother visited her in hospital, he found another man at her bedside. Or, he assumed it was a man, wearing badly applied women's make-up and

a

lop-sided red wig. Dita

Beard soon withdrew her damaging statement about ITT

payments to the Republican

party,

claiming that

it

was

a gross

The character who had hastened to her bedside was Hunt. The red wig was later apprehended with the Cuban

forgery.

burglars at the Watergate hotel.

such cumulative sagas were any indication, government

If

had

lost all credibility

of control. All

it

and big business threatened to run out

needed

for mankind's return to the jungle

was for the robber barons to displace After

all,

they had tried in the

civil

authority altogether.

past, as in the case

against President Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Even

of the moguls as

long ago

the Crash of 1873, others of their kind had said that the

was 'too democratic'. Now,

war had happened and

a

century

illustrated that,

176

later,

as

US

the Middle East

while nation

states

and

OLD AND DARK FORCES their peoples wilted

under the

the big

strain,

'trusts' still

came

out of things very well.

Following the war in October 1973, big business's reputation plunged in increases in oil

not their tries

had

fault

more or

company

profits.

because the

raised the prices

The

oil

companies

said

it

was

OPEC cartel of oil-producing counand the

oil

companies had only been

won few

unwitting beneficiaries. These protestations

and sounded

huge

inverse proportion to the

less

friends

like the familiarly righteous line that the rich

were condemned to prosper and the meek blessed

in their

suffering.

In fact, the oil prices hit rich and

poor

whose dependence on the automobile Ford's 'revolutionary' line

alike. In

the

US,

Henry

traced back to

mass-produced Model Ts, the

in

population was unable to go about

its

daily business. In the

Third World, countries that were already impoverished found themselves pushed nearer to ruin. In the Social Democracies

of Western Europe, experts spoke grimly of the 'death of the welfare

state'.

Once

on budgets, they schools, hospitals

the higher price of oil had taken

would be nothing

said, there

left

its

toll

for the

and other services provided by governments

and on which people had come

to depend. Capitalism

was

a

miserable and brutal thing. In able.

its

vanguard, the major

Too strong

abuse, they withstood

matters around.

oil

companies were untouch-

to be subjected to anything but a lot of

It

it

and began their

was good

in these times

intoned their supporters, that some of our

were

in such a

rude

state

efforts

to

turn

of uncertainty,

finest institutions

of health. The banks enjoyed

similar fitness levels with profits

177

doing very well thanks to

BANANAS a

of recycled

lot

OPEC

money from

oil

and others

members of The dwindling

the Arab

the Shah of Iran.

like

legions of laissez-faire argued that this

meant things were

they should be. Formerly primitive nations, in the medi-

as

kingdoms of the

aeval

were being

desert,

heard such

found them convincing.

pleas

Someone, or something, was going United Fruit was of

assisted in their

Few who

prosperity and development.

rise to

in

no position

price rises and

oil

UPEB's

to

threats

wage war again on the company's

to have to suffer

defend

and

In the face

itself.

no one was going

to

behalf, in fact quite the

reverse.

To some extent United

Fruit brought

upon

it

itself.

was the pay-off for the impressions, half-truths and as

news

in

Guatemala twenty years before and

on the

journalists hot

news

official

wanted

for the deeper story

traded

now

had

behind any

wake of Woodward and Bernstein, every

lead. In the

journalist

trail

lies

that

Here

their 'Watergate'

scoop and every regulator,

or any other person in authority was only too anxious

to display their probity.

United Fruit was weak and no longer invisible

government

power'.

It

taken on

was its

far

that

made

more

the decisions

likely to

member of

a

as 'the

the

true ruling

be subjected to decisions

behalf. After Black died

and was found to have

dined too lavishly with the president of Honduras, there was the added attraction that

sacrificed

time. for

it

lacked in

its

old powers. It

could be

with impunity and make an impact

at

the same

still

To be done with

all

what

evoked in potent memories.

United Fruit

it

would show how the

business world,

the questions raised, was quite capable of doing the

moral and decent thing.

178

OLD AND DARK FORCES There was no conspiracy and the mystical way things had of working themselves out made United like natural selection.

The

Fruit's

demise look

stock market offloaded

shares

its

and brought the company's market price crashing. The regu-

moved

lators

in to seize

its

books and bring

to court.

it

United

Fruit was hustled off the street like a victim of the Central

American death squads

its

had done much

activities

to

encourage.

President Anastasio stand.

He

and

Somoza

his family

sat in his

bunker unable

army had kept Nicaragua and the

US

under-

had been the company's oldest friends

and for generations had fought the good

safe since the

to

fight.

They and

heart of Central

marines had pulled out in the

their

America

193()s.

Yet

here they were being sold out to the Communists. It

was 1979 and Somoza had

Managua earthquake seven

compound was the

a line

bunker

built the

years

before.

The

after the

militarised

of squat bomb-proof structures next to

Intercontinental Hotel, which was virtually the only

building to have survived the disaster.

He

had expanded

his

business interests into construction, banking and anything

through which earthquake time, he

funds could pass. At the same

had withdrawn into the bunker and himself. Managua

remained grass

relief

a city

beyond

only in name,

its

corpse

lost

his door. Little reconstruction

been carried out

in the city centre

whom

trust, as

he could

beneath the

tall

of any note had

and few people were

left

an alliance had built against him

ranging from armed guerrillas to the disenchanted rich.

The

president sat at the end of the long dark polished

table in the bunker's a

kind of patchwork

Cabinet room, behind him on the wall quilt

of the Nicaraguan eagle.

179

On

closer

BANANAS inspection,

it

was

clear that

some people previously

the table had spent time scratching their

doodles.

How

managed

they had

this

seated at

and other

initials

under the eye of the

president might have been explained by his tendency to be

transported away by the sound of his

Somoza s distant

story was familiar: a

with

selves

politics.

What

voice.

few bandits

mountain hideaways. Radical

were sadly deluded people

own

who

priests

him from

assailed

had joined

in

and

should not concern them-

they failed to grasp,

Somoza went

on, was that he had pitched himself against the greedy rich

on behalf of the poor. As

for

Jimmy

Carter, the US's present

leader,

Somoza found himself hard pushed

Under

Carter, the

White House had taken

to remain polite.

leave of

its

senses

and opened the way for Communism. Actually,

from what

Somoza were

I

understood, the guerrillas fighting

capable of seizing important towns just a couple

of hours away north along the Pan-American Highway. As for radical elled

members of

the church,

I

had presumably

trav-

with two of them from Tegucigalpa in Honduras, elderly

nuns from the

US

their jeep. They

had given up one version of Middle America

for this

one where

Midwest who had offered

their

me

a ride in

works among the poor were more

greatly needed. Somoza's reference to the greedy rich

may

have been accurate with the proviso that their main gripe was that since the earthquake

US, meanwhile,

opportunities. In the

policy principle was the Soviet

Union

he had hogged

human

first

rights,

and then

at

all

the best business

Carter's

main foreign

which he had aimed

such regimes

In the old days. United Fruit could have

made

at

Somoza's.

as

a

few

calls

and help would have materialised. After the company's departure

from Central America, along with i8o

its

brand of

US

influ-

OLD AND DARK FORCES ence, other forces had filled the

had

certainly neither

much

vacuum. Conventional wisdom

were the extremes of

that these

it

and right and

left

United Fruit nor the United

States

had done

of moderation. But the

in the past to nurture the forces

opposition to several of the present Central American govern-

ments went from the customary armed

men and women

in

bandanas to the elderly and, hitherto, conservative Archbishop

of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. Lately, the archbishop's sermons

from the cathedral and more

critical

New

his country's

become US

Carter had

form of

in El Salvador's capital

of

had become more

government and army.

president in 1977 proposing

He had Omar Torrijos,

Deal for Latin America.

with Panama's leader. General

a

signed treaties for the

US

to

hand over control of the Panama Canal by the end of the century. Torrijos had taken a strident line

and United Fruit

as

on both the

America. The Panamanian leader had played death throes of the

company by being

of the

UPEB

money

out of the company.

When

banana

cartel

and

its

and

region

as

the

guerrilla activity spread

the

a role in

main organiser

efforts to extract

President Carter stopped military aid to

American regimes the bigger trouble riots

canal

symbols of yanqui imperialism in Latin

more

some Central

started. Dissidence, street

from Nicaragua

across the

opposition groups sought to rid themselves of their

hard-line regimes. In El Salvador, the 'Fourteen Families' and their

army came under

sustained attack.

Some towns of

the

Indian Highlands in Guatemala were under army occupation

of guerrillas by night. Honduras remained

by day and

that

tively quiet,

although an old United Fruit plantation

rela-

had

visited

In Washington the talk was of the 'domino effect', a

theme

was

now

being run

as a

I

workers' co-operative.

i8i

BANANAS that

had

much

exercised strategic minds during the recent wars

when Vietnam, Cambodia and

in South-East Asia,

Laos had in

turn been drawn into war. Central America, however, wasn't

some

distant part

Somoza

made

1979 in Nicaragua, the

in July

fell

their

of the world.

way out of

the mountains in force and to

along the Pan-American Highway.

Somoza

the country and, thus, departed from republic that

fled his

power

having

Managua

bunker and banana

in the

grew few bananas. The new government

about

set

revolution to change the country's image to the accompa-

a

nying din of alarm

Among his fate a

guerrillas

bells

Somoza's

ringing in Washington.

words

final

as

he

vague claim, aimed

at

had unsettled matters

was

for exile

anyone fromTorrijos

in Latin

provided arms to

him, like-thinking souls were

Ronald Reagan came

Panama,

who Somoza

enemies. Although

his

in

that

was

It

who

America by wanting sovereignty

over the Panama Canal, to China,

tions

left

had been sealed by 'Communist intervention'.

it

said

was too

had

late for

listening.

White House

to the

after the elec-

of 1980. His view was that Communists and agitators

were again on the march and, though were united

in

confirming that the

their causes varied, they

US

had

lost its

way.

Fundamentalist Muslims in Iran had forced the shah from

power

early in

1979.

By

the end of the year, the Soviet

Union had grown sufficiently paranoid about fundamentalism in its own Muslim regions. Consequently, the Soviet Union had invaded and occupied its neighbour Afghanistan, on grounds

that

it

was harbouring

throw in Nicaragua in

Guatemala

both

as a

fell

problem

in

its

own

Somoza's over-

between the two

neatly

in 1954, Central

fanatics.

events.

America had presented

right

182

and

as a

As

itself

potential solu-

OLD AND DARK FORCES tion to the wider question of

power

return to being a

For

its

the

US

was to

signal

its

in the world.

treachery, Nicaragua

lution curbed.

how

had

Reagan expressed

to

be isolated and

this in his

Nicaragua must be forced to concede, he

own

said,

revo-

its

folksy terms:

and

'say uncle'.

A number of CathoHc priests had taken posts in the Nicaraguan government. The Vatican, most notably Pope John Paul

II,

brought pressure to bear, insisting that they had no role to play in politics.

To Nicaragua's north. President Reagan increased aid to address the plight

which was

of the Fourteen Families in El Salvador,

in a state of war. Early in

squad had claimed the

been shot

military

life

1980 an army death

who

of Archbishop Romero,

had

at his altar.

In Guatemala, the

US was

restricted to giving

moral support

to the regime. The

Guatemalans would not accept other forms

of aid because

military leaders since the 1954

remained

its

sensitive to the slurs that they

coup had

were symbolic of

a

banana republic. The army, however, rampaged through the Indian Highlands, killing the population

when

it

could not

locate guerrillas, while the death squads concentrated

matters.

up

When international protests were made, Reagan spoke

for Guatemala's leadership:

said,

on human

it

was taking

a

'bum

To Nicaragua's south, Costa Rica came under

army

again.

case,

The Costa Ricans

stay neutral.

its

to set

he

US up

pressure a

proper

rejected the idea and said they

no fan of anything

United Fruit world. Whatever his

and even

Panama might have proved

leader, Torrijos,

1981 with

rap',

rights.

to play a bigger part in the region

would

on urban

threat

more

tricky

of

a

he posed disappeared in

death in a timely plane crash.

183

a

that hinted

BANANAS President Reagan's opportunity for a

came

1983

in

southern

in

show of direct

US

force

the Caribbean island of Grenada. In the

Windward

near Trinidad and the coast of

Islands,

Venezuela, Grenada had once been a United Fruit territory.

had not been so dependent on bananas

as

company

other

It

areas

and, with a diversified agricultural economy, was a paradise by

comparison. Lately aUst,

its

leader,

had been murdered

Maurice Bishop, a left-wing nation-

after

members of

his

Cabinet kicked

him out of power claiming he was not left-wing enough.

US

airborne troops dropped in on Grenada to rectify the situation.

This was not an invasion,

'pre-dawn

as its

PR

tactical insertion'. In fact

liberation, as the

pointed out, but a

appeared to be

Grenadian people greeted the US's

cheers and jubilation In Central

officers it

on

the

a

genuine

arrival

with

streets.

America one piece

still

needed

to

be manipulated

into place for the job to be done. Honduras, Nicaragua's north-

eastern neighbour,

had to be involved.

quil backwater, Tegucigalpa,

its

capital

high on the central plateau. Since sion in 1911, ally All that

see

it

as

It

had always been

without

Sam

the

a railway,

a tran-

stranded

Banana Man's inva-

Honduras had been United

Fruit's

was needed was to find an ambassador

most

pliant

who would

an exciting posting.

Appointed by the Reagan administration, ambassador John

Negroponte arrived with an impressive record and reputation for work.

He

had served

in

some tough

a solid

posts in

South-East Asia, which suggested he was not coming to Central America for

phone. When

I

called

a

quiet time.

it

was

He

also

answered

US Thanksgiving, which me

in for a chat,

working

in the

day.

He

invited

hadn't

marine guard

and he was the only person except embassy that

I

own

a

realised,

which turned

his

into an hour of the ambassador taking the

184

OLD AND DARK FORCES

US

Opportunity to address recent claims in the

press that

he

was turning Honduras into an 'armed camp'.

He

insisted that there

sional diplomat

and

a

were no such

plans.

He

not the belligerent character portrayed in the

much

press. It

was an

way of hard

trust.

Negroponte

to a successful diplomatic career, the State

Department

but overall

went on

me

meant he was

in the

interesting interview, containing not detail,

a profes-

family man, he pointed out, leaving

the connection, though assuming he

lost for

was

took the ambassador on

I

even pulling him out of retirement two decades

US

time of the Iraq invasion to be the

UN. He

later at the

ambassador to the

proceeded to take charge of the occupied country

for a while afterwards, before returning to

Washington amid

the recriminations about undetectable 'Weapons of Mass

all

Destruction'. 'failure

He came

of intelligence'.

back to investigate the Iraq invasion's

My

failure at the

time of the Central

American intervention of 1983 had been open mind about of

his

that

had kept an

I

claim that Honduras would keep

its

air

tranquillity.

Areas of Honduras were turned into armed camps, notably those along the distant Mosquito Coast that had been prime locations for

US

adventure since the days of

and Sam Zemurray and other

much

earlier pirates.

revolutionary forces, the Contras, were take

on Nicaragua's

dissident

Minor Keith

assigned to organise the bizarre 'Iran-Contra' plan.

administration secretly agreed to

By

Iran,

to

government. The world learned of

the exploits of Colonel Oliver North, the enterprising

regime in

Counter-

armed and tramed

sell

US officer

The Reagan

arms to an apparently

with Iran channelling

its

hostile

payments to the Contras.

such means the screw was turned on Nicaragua and, in the

late 1980s, its

revolution brought to

185

its

knees.

BANANAS With

its

intervention in Central America, Washington not

only defeated the threat posed by seeking to cast off

its

signals to the larger

nant

role.

United

The

Fruit's

a small agricultural

but also sent

status as a client state,

enemy

last battle

that the

US

was back in

its

domi-

its

of the Cold War had been fought on

old Central American territory.

After the end of the

Cold War, the banana-trading Wild Bunch

prospered. As the Berlin Wall

came down and

marched chanting and singing

to

East Berliners

Banana Land, the markets of

Eastern Europe opened and for the

many in new

time in

first

the world's leading banana companies invested tations. Also, court cases against

dust and spray from the pesticide

country

them

mounting

rose.

plan-

Workers covered of

quantities

complained of ailments from

years

fertiliser

in

and

fertility loss to cancer.

The companies strode forward regardless and their next move was to take legal action of their own in a landmark case. The world was

the limit

now

could spread across the globe.

new

term, was apparently set

fair.

Even

few barriers and

a

Communist urged on by their

the likes of

China and bureaucratic India would join

a

won and

course of 'globalisation',

in,

highly entrepreneurial diasporas. Elsewhere

of removing

had

that capitalism

The

to this

it

was just

a

matter

end the Wild Bunch

led the fight.

Back Fruit's

in the late 1970s, the case brought against

owner. United Brands, over

been quietly

closed.

A

misdeeds had

token fine of fifteen thousand dollars

suggested that the offence was not inally

Eli Black's

United

as

serious as

it

had orig-

been portrayed and was due recognition of the

company's

sacrificial services to the

settled, a chastened, leaner

system.

Its

debt to society

United Brands eventually i86

left

town

OLD AND DARK FORCES

New York

name. From the hothouse of

and changed

its

moved

Midwest and Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati was

a

to the

quiet, hard-working town.

away the canals.

Its

German forefathers had turned had

railroad because, they pointed out, they already

Chicago had taken the railway

Cincinnati

lines instead, leaving

Tegucigalpa in

a little like

it

its

way.

had

also

It

a

touch of spice because for some reason, no one was quite sure why, Cincinnati cuisine specialised in chilli. at

War, United Brands restyled

Chiquita, a

itself

With

name

its

Cold

the end of the

renewed confidence and affluence

pleas-

antly resonant of the past.

In the mid-1990s Chiquita and the

Washington. Such

As

skilled practice

to the banana's genes, they

their

its

demand

system of which

more

outlets.

ment agreed

it

part,

though

But the Bunch,

like the

in the

way and

the

US

govern-

banana companies' case to the recently

founded supreme court of Organisation

well,

genes.

had to keep growing and needed

Something stood to take the

company

world public that was

to a

for the fruit.

was

in the

were not doing too

unknown

problems remained

increasing

was

Wild Bunch lobbied

globalisation, the

World Trade

(WTO).

Their problem was with Europe, not Eastern Europe, the

former enemy, but Western Europe and in the Social Democracies.

US

1917, the year the

capitalism's false friends

They had been

had entered the

allies

First

of

sorts since

World War and

the Bolshevik revolution had occurred. Yet even

now

persisted in their belief that they did not have

to

between

Communism

their fool's paradise their stubbornness

of

and capitalism and could a

middle way.

be broken

It

down and

'say uncle'.

187

they

choose

stay living in

was imperative that that they

be made to

BANANAS

What

infuriated

Europeans had

were

set

up

the

Wild Bunch was

a

market that excluded

also fixing prices,

tion. The protected

such crimes

as

the West

that rivals

and they

were beyond redemp-

market was for former European colonies,

some of them Caribbean

islands.

The West Europeans were

paying the producers prices that were higher than those on the free market, in order, so they said, to help their ex-colonies

develop.

The

fruit

involved they called 'Fair Trade' bananas.

This was fundamentally wrong, from the Wild Bunch's view. Its

members

hailed

from

a distinguished tradition

of

free trade,

nurtured and guarded throughout the years by United Fruit in

its

sides'

enclave.

Hence,

as

the storm clouds gathered and both

bananas were put on

from the Americas

a state

of

alert,

the big companies

styled their fruit 'Free Trade' bananas.

The 'Free Traders' saw

their case as unchallengeable because

the prices they charged consumers, and those they paid their

workers for their labour, were decided by the rigorous conditions of freedom. Certainly, their workers'

wages seemed

to

have fallen drastically of late. Costa Rican plantation workers'

pay in the 1990s had declined from about three dollars day to two dollars

fifty,

the difference of

Costa Rican plantation worker.

lot to a

fifty

cents being a

Then

were two important things to remember about that such

would

a

again, there this: firstly,

workers were glad of the work - otherwise they

exercise their choice not to report to the plantation

gate; secondly, that

hand made the There was

a

was

how

the free market was. The hidden

decisions, not

phrase that

some

summed

interfering it

human

agency.

up: 'nothing personal,

only business'.

There were other things wrong with the tion, as

viewed by liberated

spirits

i88

Fair Trade posi-

pitched against them. 'Fair

OLD AND DARK FORCES Traders' professed benevolence yet, in claiming to be kind,

were only being subjects

grow

denied, and

peoples

it

cruel.

up.

They were not

was

It

a

jungle out there,

was getting to be more

would never be

former

letting their

so.

couldn't be

it

The former

subject

able to fend for themselves without

throwing off the yolk of empire. The

fact that they hadn't,

furthermore, was only because of an historical anomaly.

Monroe Doctrine of

out of the Americas and they chose.

and

a

manner

peoples develop in the

few imperial

now was

They should understand this

let its

On sufferance

in the region

The

1823, had mstructed foreigners to keep

vestiges

had remained

the chance to drive

that they

them

out.

were no longer welcome:

was the enclave.

Strangely enough, the Grenada invasion

before in 1983 had

made

a

a similar point.

had dropped in on their pre-dawn

dozen or so years

As the

tactical insertion

the island quickly under their control,

US

troops

and brought

Mrs Margaret Thatcher

had complained to her friend President Ronald Reagan. This was

Britain's sphere

politely ignored her

part

of influence, she had

and carried on

said.

regardless.

The

president

Grenada was

a

of the world that Britain had only shared with United

Fruit.

In the 1990s the real

War'

at

first a

war.

the

war broke

WTO. The US

out, the so-called 'Banana

fought the case and what was

at

small skirmish over bananas escalated into general trade

The US and Europe imposed

bans and

tariffs

on hundreds

of goods traded between them from bananas to coffee to

semen. The Europeans blinked

first

at

the

dawn of

a

bulls'

new

millennium and in the face of what had been impressed upon

them

as

the global

realities.

They

retreated

and agreed

out preferential treatment for their old colonies.

189

to phase

BANANAS The companies

that

had assumed the

United Fruit had won, having waged war

had always claimed peoples.

The

it

did: in the

historical as

mantle of

the old

name of

company

the freedom of

Central American producer countries had

little

choice in their actions. They needed jobs for their people and

had backed Chiquita and the

The Europeans

US

did not back

down without

rancour.

government, they suggested, had allowed

manipulated by narrow a

rest.

higher cause.

someone among

It

interests

masquerading

would not have been

the

as

itself

The

to

be

beacons for

first

time, and

the Europeans referred to the 'old and dark

forces'.

They might have detected old

company was shaking

that

from behind the scenes the

the curtain and laughing.

190

Epilogue

United Fruit World United Fruit never to

a

left us. It

souls

might go to endure

its call

to heaven.

company, United Fruit was an idea and

was different things. to

form of limbo, exiled

was put there to spare the system's

It

further embarrassment and await a

into a

where

place of suspension

neither joy nor misery.

went

combat the

More

at different

than

times

it

functions ranged from being a force

Its

distant frontier to a

machine

that

would bring

the anarchy of capitalism under control. Lately United Fruit's spirit has

revived as a

means of taking

capitalism into areas as

yet unconquered.

Liberal capitalism in a purified

dawned upon

globalisation

us.

form made

its

comeback

as

Since the latter stages of the

nineteenth century capitaHsm had suffered from hostile public opinion, laws to control welfare like

states.

United

its

In that time

Fruit's

that

we

was kept

alive in isolated

Central American enclave where

adherents stayed loyal to

Now

behaviour and taxes to help finance it

its

live in a

pockets

its

sturdy

dictates.

boundless world,

a

strong

body of

opinion argues that the vehicle to drive globalisation across it

is

logically the multi-national corporation.

are regarded as near useless in this process, are

by their

territorial boundaries.

Only

191

as

states

they

the multi-national

has the global culture, runs this argument, only

language'.

Nation

confined

it

'speaks the

BANANAS United Fruit pioneered the multi-national debatable whether those that have followed

burden of communication the talking and nies

come up with

on

is

Spanish.

The

others, as they have to

do

compa-

the terms to keep the big

As United Fruit showed when dealing with

there.

Guatemala over national

falls

it

'speak the

it

more than Minor Keith mastered

language' any

but

spirit

its

railway a

company can

hundred

years ago, the multi-

always leave.

Today's world of the multi-national looks remarkably like the old

one of United

company more

Fruit.

say that in order to prosper

streamlined.

laws that hold

it

It

must have

How

Advocates of the philosopher,

it

who wondered

cite

Government what America must have

Columbus. Locke imagined interfering kings

Minor Keith Rican

as

to fashion. Locke's

he looked

view was

down on

discovery in the

contrive to take Keith's view to

They argue

that

it

Treatises

of to

like

and

taxes

of

and

similar to that

a

of

the valleys of the Costa

and saw

his future

wonder whether we

face

earthly extent.

The

Fruit's enclave

writ large.

can go yet further. With the

multi-national enterprise possibilities.

Two

looked

manner of Locke, while they

its

of globalisation amounts to United

of

his

first

interior in the late nineteenth century

new moment of

low regula-

tax,

for.

their laws

stretched before him. Today's visionaries a

China and India?

a primitive paradise, a jungle free

and dynasties with

whole new world

it

John Locke, the English

1690 in

in

they ask, can

low

a

always fought

new world

and troublesome

else,

forces,

United Fruit would have relished such That was what

must be leaner and

it

taxes cut

its

back removed.

compete with the new and thrusting

tion world.

modern

Supporters of the big

mankind can enter

a

new

process

spirit

of

universe

Harnessing the powers of molecular science,

192

world

epilogue: united fruit

would enable

for example, in height, a

new

ever was wanted. time,

it

which

singing voice with

Man

worth

is

individuals to acquire extra inches

could go beyond

recalling

his genes.

what happened

out onto Costa Rica's verdant and pristine

what-

to soar, or

At the same

Keith looked

after

He

valleys.

carved

out huge plantations of bananas and before long they were

wracked with

disease.

One

of their problems was their deep

malaise in being unable to procreate. prospects currently being

been

has never

able to

Whatever the enormous

mapped out

go beyond

its

mankind, the banana

for

genes.

United Fruit scared so many people

drummed from

eventually

blown

trouble had

over,

it

to death that

the scene. Until,

as

it

it

was

were, the

was not talked about, for

of

fear

provoking the wrong type of impressions of what big compa-

up

nies could get

You can gauge

to.

this

period of purdah by looking

at

the

website of Chiquita, the surviving remnant of United Fruit that

went off

Chiquita

is

to Cincinnati for a

new

life

and

a

new name.

not the United Fruit of bygone times, though

bravely faces

up

to the past.

It

refers to

it

as

it

'Our Complex

History', the use of 'complex' conveying a sense of pain and

anguish and also some of the old company's

Chiquita do not appear complex to events like the Santa

'Colombian army Balance

is

kills

Short references are

at all.

Marta massacre of the

Great White Fleet was represented a reference to

at

when nothing

the

when United Bay of

'United Fruit

bananas to Japan'. Matters are even

1975 and 1990

late 1920s:

undetermined number of employees.'

applied to the events of 1961,

of Cuba, with

of the under-

of the chronology presented by

stated. Actually, several aspects

made

art

less

Pigs invasion

initiates sales

of

complicated between

appears to have happened

193

Fruit's

at all.

BANANAS from

In the fifteen years

Chiquita announces

new name,

as

1990, which

Black's death to

Eli

the year in

which

it

acquired

its

bright

everything went quiet. However, the good and

open times when everyone could

upbeat terms

start talking in

about multi-national corporations were just beginning. This

was the year

Wall came

after the Berlin

United Fruit It

remains

is

a lost

to find in

its

not yet regarded

Sam Zemurray stems,

take

I'll

trading

fifty!'

No New York

his

end and no

on

the

in 1871.

to

quietly

statue

to celebrate.

commemorates

Orleans waterfront: a large

commemorate

area. Gentrification

'Fifty

hoarding

the arrival of

first

banana boat

removed the hoarding,

the 1970s in the early stages of smartening

harbour

in

especially hard

it

Preston and Captain Lorenzo Baker's

Someone

all,

Banana Land.

memorial marks the

United Fruit once put up

on the Boston Long Wharf

Andrew

New

to

something

Leviathan with evidence of

homeland.

where Black met

spot

as

down and we

march

the East and West, joined our collective

possibly in

up the Boston

and the proletarian banana have

not always been easy partners. The Massachusetts tourism authorities

report

some

interest in reviving the old

They point out how,

to

much

to get tourism

and

to

Cod and

to trace the old

company's legacy

America. Hundreds of thousands

of people died in the wars of the 1980s and

of

illegal

homeless. This caused

migrants to the

US

a million

a large increase in

and contributed

the

to the

or so

number

mounting

among the poorer communities of such cities Los Angeles. The social disruption among those left at home

social as

left

Jamaica and

under way in both.

go elsewhere

in particular to Central

were

retired

run matters from the Caribbean,

Captain Baker opened hotels in Cape

You have

when he

in the very early days

from the hubbub of Boston

did

company's memory.

problems

194

epilogue: united fruit

world

includes generally sharp rises in crime and such a particular

phenomenon

as

the violent, often murderous street gangs of

San Salvador, membership of which includes children in their early teens.

Although did

little

to

this

was not

United

subverted them to create an atmosphere in

military regimes ruled

what had

the

streets.

late

1970s in Guatemala,

President civilian

In

Jimmy

handed

hours,

I

Carter

government

me

and

interviewed Manuel it

as

was

roamed

their death squads

promised to be

briefly

Democrat who,

a Social

company

Fruit's fault, the

encourage the forces of moderation and democ-

racy. It persistently

which

all

said,

a respite, in the

Colom Argueta,

had been favoured by

the potential leader of a future

in Guatemala.

He

spoke for

a

couple of

copies of notes from his doctoral thesis

the troubled history of land ownership in Guatemala, in

United Fruit had obviously featured, and gave

from

his office to the centre

of town. Being

was

a

and

Colom Argueta was murdered

by

dangerous occupation in

a death

squad twelve days

Aside from the

me

a Social

a

on

which

lift

back

Democrat

United Fruit world, however,

a

in his car in

broad daylight

later.

difficulties in

building political stability from

the rubble of such a past,

economic and monetary dependency

remain features of United

Fruit's

a

old domain. The banana enjoys

high rate of success in having those

convert to using the dollar since used the

the

economic

attract,

US

as their

currency in

its

who come

currency.

under

Panama

its

sway

has long

day-to-day transactions. Ainid

insecurity that the banana uncannily seems to

Ecuador and El Salvador have recently abandoned

national currencies and Guatemala has considered doing

United Fruit had imagined

America having such

its

own memorial

their so.

in Central

original features as building the railway

195

BANANAS in

Rum,

C'ost.i

dnuniiiL!; the

street lighting to the capital,

nodtling b.mana general

[tlants,

and the

stc^res

Yet so often

Limon and bringing

ot

San Jose. By romantic expanses of

built

company towns, brought

jobs,

electricity tor the Saturday night dance.

left

it

it

swamps

and the sense of

devastation

large

a

uncaring force that had swept through. While hurricanes were an iHCupational hazard. United Fruit was

own

wa\'.

dead

It

a

hurricane in

its

tramped on from dead plantation to soon-to-be lea\ing

[plantation.

abandoned

bridges and,

railroads,

according to one description, 'highlands of weeds'. Old company

towns

Honduras, remained, but

like Tela, in

'living in

Macondo'. Former company

retain a feeling

of

offices in clapboard are

often tattler than they were and could use another coat of malarial \ellow.

Even the

C\^sta

Rican

down tain

and

state

difficult to

abandoned run

in the

Minor Keith s

Cniatemala, for example, have fallen into

America follows broadly the

model w hereby the better-otf

travel

by

US

air

public trans-

and the poorer

all.

Poor communication lefl

expensive to main-

expenditure. Cither expanses of

railroad, in

bus, if at

b\-

w^as

old blue locomotives stand rusting in

Its

disrepair. C\Mitral

port

from the central plateau

Railwa\s can pro\e remarkablv

absence of

former

line

Limon

to the Atlantic coast at

sidings.

began the history of

railroad that

United Fruit has been closed. The

in general

is

part of

w

hat the compain-

behind. Central America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts

still

common

tend not to talk to each other. English

is

among

Rica, Nicaragua and

Atlantic

communities

in

C\^sta

relatively

Guatemala, and Spanish predominates elsewhere. If I'nited Fi

from the

L^S.

iiir

helped 'export' sla\e-like conditions of work

w here

thev were no longer tolerated,

190

it

subse-

epilogue: united fruit quently played

part in creating practices and routines

its

would become acceptable the Central

American

summoned

workers

and night.

down

When

until

world

for importing

the

and

plantations

as ships

back into the US. at

On

the dockside sirens

arrived at any hour of the day

work was done,

summoned

which

again.

labourers were stood

Such methods

being tried

are

today in some industries in developed countries - fast-food outlets, for

example - and

requirements for

Following put away for today can

still

its

a

are usually described as

modern

among

the

flexible workforce.

disappearance, the story of United Fruit was

safe

keeping and forgotten. Part of

memorial

its

be found locked up in the vaults of the Harvard

Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where an excellent collection

s

is

kept by the school's Baker

From the comprehensive photographic

Library.

Fruit

of photographs

works through many years of

company enjoyed

the old

its

power

in high boots stride the plantations

record of United

you can sense how

its life,

America.

in Central

from Belize

to

Men

Colombia.

Waistcoated overseers supervise the gangs loading stems of

bananas into railroad

been saved

Even the Banana Six

with their slicked

and collection of instruments, in

sleeves

shortly before the

Puerto

company abandoned

later, a

Among

leaves. In the

jazz

band has

cufflinked long

photograph taken

a

Honduran port of one photo taken

a

collection of alternative products

banana are lined up on display for

Boston.

hair,

the

Castilla to disease in the 1930s. In

quarter of a century to the

cars.

for posterity,

visiting chiefs

the various fruits and plants

is

a spray

from

of coca

1960s United Fruit battled frantically against the

idea of the banana having any hallucinogenic qualities, yet at

one

stage

had thought of going into the cocaine

rethought and stuck with monoculture.

197

business.

It

BANANAS way

In the meticulous

been compiled, United

has

it

photographic collection shows that the company to

be remembered.

with

would be

It

churlish

now

Fruit's

wanted

itself

not to comply

wishes.

its

United Fruit fought wars from the Honduran invasion of 1911 to

Guatemala

in

Colombia

in 1954, or

it

had others do

it

on

behalf, as

its

1928. In the 1930s, General Smedley Butler

in

cited the 'rape' of the Central

American

he and the marines were involved. business interests had

Its

republics, in

which

narrow pursuit of

huge international repercussions. The

attempt to repeat the Guatemalan exercise of 1954

of Pigs in 1961 led to the Cuban missile

at

the

of the Bay of Pigs received

Iraq forty years later. for the Iraq invasion

The

were

Bay

of 1962. The

crisis

thinking behind the idea that Fidel Castro would topple result

its

as a

run in the case of

a repeat

anticipated cheers and celebrations also

echoes from the US's successful

intervention in United Fruit's old Caribbean territory of

Grenada in 1983. As United Fruit went about expanding it

did not always have to bludgeon

countries might

worked

its

way

slip

into

its

its

way

dependency on

into the fabric of Costa

society by invitation because

empire, however,

in. It

showed how

large companies.

Rican and Guatemalan

had the resources

it

It

that these

countries lacked.

Like multi-national companies today. United Fruit alliances

when and where

it

could to survive.

malleable elements: politicians with

and presidents-in-exile awaiting

their call to

United Fruit might even help find that as

long

as

it

whom

it

It

sought out

could cut

sail

made a deal

back to power.

a boat. Its efforts

showed

did not unduly offend the contemporary

198

world

epilogue: united fruit

mores of

much

overseas.

prompt

did

home

its

base, then

Its levels

of bribery in Honduras in the 1920s

US

debate in the

a

could probably get away with

it

Congress, which concluded

was the way business was done in such parts of the

that that

world.

United

remain

Fruit's practices

much

valued in today's busi-

term used quite so

ness world. 'Propaganda' tends not to be a

bluntly as

was by United

it

own

but his

alternative, 'public

been its

banana has for

example of 'packaging':

a first-rate

wrapping while being diseased

natural

nicely

suffices

relations',

specialities. The

company

Edward Bernays,

demand and primacy of form over

Advertising, the creation of

content were

guru,

Fruit's spin

a

century

exudes health in

it

to

its

roots.

United

Fruit took the primitive art of 'branding' to a higher stage

when

it

stuck

Senorita Chiquita label

its

on

bananas in the

its

1950s.

United Fruit championed the theory of before the term

made

as it

way

its

1954 were

work

its

from them.

into use.

late as

It

The company had all

Fruit

was

film-making

efforts in

still

sending educational

its

in

kits

making money

time in trying to encourage

their strict

them feed bananas

'graze

way

it

to break

times'.

day' habit

and minds'

propaganda back-up to the coup in 1969,

was well ahead of

routine by having

A

Its

'hearts

out to 'get 'em young'

set

into classrooms and, at $4 a time,

American mothers

the

It

into schools.

effective

Guatemala. As

on

came

three-meals-a-day

to their children 'between

disappeared from view before the

became

norm

the

but

it

had helped pave

for others to take full advantage.

formidable force in the

knew

to

make

trated influence'.

art

of poHtical lobbying. United

a beeline for the 'purveyors

Then

it

went

further,

199

of concen-

by making sure

it

was

BANANAS on the

'inside'

and connected

to the top people in govern-

ment. Others have continued the practice into modern times.

The late Kenneth

Lay,

head of Enron, the large energy company,

was 'Kenny' to President George W. Bush, though he was

dumped in 2001 when he and Enron fell into disgrace. The key legacy of United Fruit is that we worry about multi-national corporations. What is the role of large US defence contractors in Iraq or the

We

oil

companies

in Nigeria?

assume that corporations would not engineer coups and

United Fruit

invasions as

coup

in Equatorial

did.

Guinea

Then we

in 2003,

learn of the aborted

where individual adven-

attempted to seize power in the small, oil-rich West

turers

African country imagining that governments and other interests

would back them when presented with

This was side

m

much

the same with

Sam

a fait

accompli.

Zemurray's exploits along-

Lee Christmas and 'Machine-gun' Molony's in Honduras

1911.

As

a

prime example of

a 'nasty trust',

United Fruit

is

the

reason behind laws regulating the behaviour of large compa-

argument

nies. This

sceptical. Life has

riles

business people

changed, they

say,

who

improved and today's multi-national bosses

But then

in

a

downturn

ment of and

its

in

us.

economic fortunes

the virtue of the times. is

happened with

when

there has

that leads to a reassess-

One company

or another

charged with an outrage that

no one has quite foreseen and, It

unduly

are decent people.

This often comes

highly regarded boss

deceived.

it is

an imaginative world, suddenly something

happens that shocks

been

say

corporate standards have

Eli

Enron's Kenneth Lay.

200

as

a

Black

result, as it

everyone

feels

happened with

world

epilogue: united fruit Black had jumped in the nick of time.

When

he died other

way of

big companies had been acting in the abusive

the old

robber barons and of the old United Fruit. There was a great deal of concern in the mid-197()s about

look

like if big

and there

companies continued to

was much

discussion of

reassert

control

on behalf of nation

suggesting the need to 'seize the

manner

act in this

what action should be taken

makers wondered whether

to curb them. Policy

to

what the world would

states,

commanding

was time

it

some even

heights' of their

economies.

The

road to redemption for the big companies would take

some while

to

complete yet their journey began almost imme-

The international oil companies were at the forefront. By midway through 1975 the oil price rises from the Middle diately

East

war two

years before

had caused general

proportions. Inflation at that time in the

reached 25 per cent, out

more

UK,

Economic

theorists

change in poHcy. In

for example,

appropriate, as was pointed

concluded that

it

was time for

would have

particular, costs

to

a

dramatic

be cut

in

spending on schools, hospitals and other areas of the

welfare

state.

Such thinking was

with the theory of

in line

monetarism, devised by Professor Milton Friedman in the fied

crisis

the time, to a banana republic.

at

state

a level

of

inflation

academic

enclave

of

the

of

University

Monetarism was extremely unpopular

at

first

rari-

Chicago.

and to put

into practice required conditions of tight security that

it

United

would have envied on its Central American plantations. They were provided by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile Fruit

who came

to

power

United Fruit had a laboratory for

in his

in Central

United

Fruit-style

America, turned

an exercise in

capitalist

201

his

coup and,

as

country into

economics.

BANANAS Monetarism gained it

democratic respectability of sorts

a

was picked up by Mrs Margaret Thatcher

though

in Britain in 1979,

needed

still

it

her election

after

a

when

war

to boost

chances of survival. Mrs Thatcher would probably have

UK

the next

election had

it

not been for her comprehensive

victory against Argentina in the Falklands

of

result

it,

she also

its

lost

became

war of 1982. As

a

with Argentina's

closely allied

neighbour and enemy, Chile's General Pinochet. In 1981 President

Reagan had come

away had formed

close

a

to the

White House and

Thatcher.

By

with

market thinking ascendant.

free

the end of the decade the

There were the

economy

still

some

moments

tricky

in another

of

Cold War was won

for

to endure. With

it

slumps, George

its

Reagan's successor, tried to boost familiar tactic:

straight-

working relationship with Mrs

his

Bush

Senior,

domestic support by a

he invaded old United Fruit territory in Central

America. His successful

1988 to remove the rene-

efforts in

gade regime of General Manuel Noriega in Panama, however, did not

win him

White House arguing stupid'

and

that

came

the next election. Bill Clinton

problem was

that the

economy,

should be put under review.

capitalism

Something was required

'the

to the

to address the system's anarchic

way

of moving between booms and slumps, he suggested, some

form of planning, perhaps. Clinton perceiving the need to get the

when

later

abandoned the

economy moving

planning just promised to be laborious. The

world, therefore, went for the

namely

full

capitalist

effort,

quickly again

US

and the

anarchy option,

globalisation.

At the new millennium the banana

marked the moment of triumph with Fair Trade

Europeans

at

the

WTO. 202

With

industry's

Wild Bunch

their victory over the

supporters of the

new

world

epilogue: united fruit

way

enraptured, the multi-national corporation was perceived

as the star that

would guide the world

might never have known

problem

as

that

it

to globalisation.

had ever been much of

capitalism's pariah to apparent saviour

With

states will give

way

welfare state will disappear alongside

and interferences

'market

state', a

is

its

it is

The

old

protections, guaran-

gaining strong support

One

of the

that

is

supremely competitive entity within which

the multi-national will be unleashed to achieve and,

supporters

its

forms.

the free market mechanism.

in

potential successor that

new

to

had gone

it

of the system.

the multi-national in steering position,

imagine nation

tees

a

the multi-national, as an institution, completed a

remarkable transformation. In twenty-five years,

from

You

its full

powers

claimed, mankind's potential.

By current standards, this is not an One of its leading US proponents,

extreme way of thinking. Philip Bobbitt, has

been

an adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations alike. In his

book The

Shield of Achilles he addresses the

enveloping question of

The broad answer

how

the world

appears to be by the

US

and

companies. As the nearest thing in the world to state',

the

US

is

all

to be governed.

is

ahead of the pack and must turn

its

thinking to making the decisions that will boost

'market

a

its

large

strategic

its

multi-

nationals.

Central Americans already have an instinctive grasp of what this

free

could mean. In United

market has been given

period than anywhere

else.

antee the wellbeing of

its

Fruit's old part its

head over

The market

state

of the globe, the a

more

would not guar-

people because that would be up

to them.

The new

one

would 'maximise the opportunities of

that

sustained

order would be the undeniably exciting

203

societies

and

BANANAS individuals'.

The

stodgy welfare society, in

would be replaced by an 'opportunity It is

all

its

mediocrity,

society'.

would be sched-

in this context that the multi-nationals

uled to get their tax cuts and have the regulations that bind their

freedom of action removed. As

iour, that

we

regulation. In fact, lest

worry,

enlightenment,

it

comes

this

among

in place. Established practice

new

behav-

to their future

would not be guarded by laws but by mature

in the

mechanism

self-

already

is

multi-nationals of the

form of the doctrine of

'Corporate Social Responsibility'. This

is

the buzz phrase of the age and everyone

corporately anyone into

billions

is

doing

it.

Bill

charitable work. Starbucks

farmers in Kenya. Chiquita, which has

One of the most won praise in the

other esteemed media for

its

interesting cases Financial Times

work with

On

drawn

that if a

is

ground can

the face of

it,

New York

one conclusion

company with United

is

and

the Rainforest

cated to protecting the environment through practice.

is

helping coffee

is

group based in

Alliance, the conservation

who

Gates pours his Microsoft

good

that could

Fruit in

practise responsible business, then

dedi-

business

its

be

back-

any company

can and probably does. This

is

not necessarily

so.

Only

a small

and

visible

minority

of companies have 'signed up' to the contemporary code of best behaviour.

The

majority carry on

as

before in a United

Fruit way, particularly in developing countries. scandals unfold isation

do we become aware. A

from the

through rubbish

US

that reveal the slave-

who

lent his or her

diligent labour organ-

might have gone down

tips in

Honduras

wage

name

Only when to

scrabble

to unearth the pay slips

realities.

A

distressed celebrity

to the T-shirt or trainers appears

204

world

epilogue: united fruit

in a press conference to express mortification at learning that the disgraced

item has been manufactured under sweat-

shop conditions.

The

truth

is

even

that

good

the

Corporate

Social

While

Responsibility companies are acting like United Fruit. their intentions

may be honourable

they follow in a long tradi-

down by none other than United Fruit itself. From Mayan ruins of Quirigua to the rubble of Managua, the

tion laid

the

company

acted

as a philanthropist. It

women

advancement of

gave

endowments

for the

the protection of chil-

at university,

facilities for

the higher education of Central American

agriculturalists. After

providing relief to victims of the 1972

dren and

Nicaraguan earthquake,

it

He

Social Responsibility'.

was

Eli

Black

who

'Our

referred to

almost coined the very term that

is

so popular today.

United Fruit

also

made

point of engaging the services of

a

the best people. These included lies,

some of Boston's

finest

ambassadors to the United Nations, heads of the

gence

services,

John Foster

fami-

intelli-

high-ranking churchmen and secretaries of state.

Dulles, to

name but

one, was one of the most

esteemed international statesmen of

his

age and would not

have allied himself with an entity so readily dismissed nasty trust. In

its

as

a

time United Fruit embodied Corporate Social

Responsibility and by to have invented

it.

its

actions

None of

might reasonably have claimed

that

was

a

guarantee against

its

abuses.

We continually put ourselves in a position to be surprised. We assume the best, elevate people to pedestals and celebrate their friendship with presidents. We are shocked when it is revealed that rassed

and

we

have been

try to forget, as

'sold' a lie.

we

Then we

get embar-

did with United Fruit.

205

BANANAS Those

may not

that argue the case for the unleashed multi-national

intend to but would have us

forces over

whom

minimal influence

'say uncle' to

huge global

we'd have no control, except through our as individuals in

the market place.

We

would

have to trust those forces to behave in line with vague notions

of Corporate Social Responsibility, of which United Fruit always claimed to be a principled practitioner. Today's advocates of multi-national

Costa Rica

power would have

the case of

is

who

American neighbours

canism and tried to escape

from doing

us

all as

banana repubHcs.

one

that

had

fallen into

it

knows. Other Central banana republi-

have been violently prevented

Guatemala and Nicaragua were

so.

cases in point.

Costa Rica successfully fled banana republicanism by establishing

its

welfare state only to find

it is

being pulled back by

the forces of globalisation.

Since the 1950s Costa Rica has transformed

haven from the rigours of It

has reduced the

a half to a fifth

duced better

of

life

number of people its

itself into a

elsewhere in Central America. living in poverty

population of four million.

schools, health care

and laws

It

from

has intro-

to aid the security

of workers. The number of people able to read and write rose to

96 per cent,

a rate

than compares favourably with that of

richer countries. Life expectancy

is

seventy-eight years, one

higher than in the US. Pressures to

compete

change over recent diture

on

on

facilities like

social equality

is

in the global

years. The state has

by

less

than

its

expen-

public hospitals. Costa Rica's emphasis

breaking down, with incomes of the richest

people doubling since the rising

market have brought

had to reduce

a

late

tenth.

1980s and those of the poorest

Begging 206

is

a feature

of Central

epilogue: united fruit

world

America but not of Costa Rica. The number of beggars on the streets has been noticeably increasing, titutes.

GambHng

known

for

its

is

on the

as

has that of pros-

Costa Rica

is

perhaps best

eco-paradise of forests, national parks and wildlife

Such protected

refuges.

rise.

amount

areas

to about a quarter

of

national territory. Environmentalists are concerned about the

extent to

which

may

these

yet be subjected to 'rational'

economic development. Costa Ricans worry especially about one pivotal aspect of civic life they

of their

had come

politicians.

to take for granted, the incorruptibility

There have been

number of cases of alleged

a

corruption of late involving leading figures. rapidly for Switzerland

is

it,

and

the country

a multi-national.

not the Costa Rica of recent generations and the

prospects for the country that took Fruit

left

and others have faced charges of embez-

zlement and accepting bribes from This

One

won

on the leviathan of United

look daunting. As one local commentator put

'we are returning to Central America.'

The

fate

of the product that United Fruit gave the world

the final testament to the company's the banana suffers tion and

burden.

its

work and

ways. As a clone,

extreme genetic weakness. Mass produc-

monoculture have proved too much of an added

The huge

plantations of the past century have enabled

disease to take hold over

one variety

to

wide

chew through,

areas

new and

and sweep on. With only

the banana's pathogenic enemies

have been able to get on with their adapt to

is

work without having

to

dififerent challenges.

The banana companies gave up experimenting to find new some twenty years ago. They concentrated on

types of banana

fighting the banana's adversaries with intensified chemical

207

BANANAS warfare.

was too

It

and expensive to find enough

difficult

decent seeds in bananas to engender

new

ones, they argued,

because they had to compete in the world and keep their prices

down. The

ailing

banana had

itself

become

a welfare

issue too far.

enterprise pushed the

Private

fruit's

fate

back onto the

states. The scientists skilled in genetic summoned and only too pleased to be

resources of impoverished

modification were

More

invited.

for seeds

recently the companies have

and new breeds

in the collective

disease-resistant variety can

emerged of

The

issue

a

be found

resumed the quest

hope

this time.

that a truly

No word

has

banana breakthrough.

with the

fruit

is

not whether

'Free Trade' or 'Fair Trade' but

how much

it

should be sold

longer

it

will

be

all.

In our case, the world's progress indicates that those

in charge

of the unseen mechanism have mapped out our

sold at

path. Strangely,

back to

its

it is

similar to that

origins in the forest, so

Land and our United

of the banana. As

we

are

bound

for

it

Banana

Fruit world of jungle capitalism.

208

heads

Select Bibliography Adams, Frederick Upham. Conquest of Conducted by

the Creative Enterprises

Doubleday, Page

&

Company,

Amory, Cleveland. The

New York,

the

United Fruit Company.

New York,

1914

Proper Bostonians. E.P.

Dutton

&

Co.,

1947

Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: Press,

The Story of

the Tropics:

A

Revolutionary

Life.

Bantam

1997

Asturias

Miguel Angel.

Tlie

Green Pope. Delacorte,

New York,

1971. Origmally pubHshed 1954

Bakan,

Joel.

The Corporation: The

and Power. Constable

&

Pathological Pursuit of Profit

Robinson, 2004

Baker, Ernest H. 'United Fruit'. Fortune,

Bernays,

Edward L. Biography of an

New York, Bernays,

Idea.

March 1933 Simon and

Schuster,

1965

Edward

L. Propaganda. Liveright,

New York,

1928

Bobbit, Philip. The Shield of Achilles; War, Peace and the Course of History. Penguin, 2003

211

BANANAS Bourgois, Philippe. Ethicity

American

Banana

WorkiDivided Labour on a Central

at

Johns

Plantation.

Hopkins

University,

Baltimore, 1989

Bucheli, Marcelo. United Fruit

Colombia

1900-1970. Draft

Company and

for

Local Politics in

Comments: Department of

History, Stanford University, 1997

Butler,

Smedley D. War

is

a Racket. Feral

House, Los Angeles,

2003. Origmally published in 1935

Cabot, Thomas. Beggar on Horseback. David R. Godine, Boston,

1979

Crowther, Samuel.

The Romance and Rise of

the

Tropics.

Doubleday and Duran, Nev^^York, 1929

Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its

Operations in Guatemala,

1952— 5 4.With afterword by Piero

Gleijeses. Stanford University,

Deutsch, Christmas.

Hermann

1999

B. The Incredible Yanqui: The Career of Lee

Longmans, Green and Co, London,

Dosal, Paul J. Doing Business with the Dictators: of United Fruit in

New York,

A

Political

1931

History

Guatemala, 1899-1944. Scholarly Resources,

Wilmington, Delaware, 1993

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel.

One HundredYears

1972. Originally published in 1967

212

of Solitude. Penguin,

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Halberstam, David. The

Fifties.

Fawcett,

New York,

1994

Henry, O. Cabbages and Kings. Penguin, 1993. Originally published in 1904

Hunt, E. Howard. Undercover: Memoirs of an American

Secret

Agent. Berkley Publishing, 1974

Immerman, Richard H. The CIA

in

Guatemala: The Foreign

PoUcy of Intervention. University of Texas Press, 1982

Jenkins,

Virginia

Scott.

Smithsonian Institution

Karnes, Stanley Steamship

Tropical

Company

in

Bananas:

Press,

An

American

History.

2000

Enterprise:

The Standard

Fruit

and

Latin America. Louisiana State University,

1938

Kepner, Charles, and Soothill,

Jay.

Study of Banana Imperialism. Russell

The Banana Empire:

A

Case

& Russell, New York, 1963.

Originally published in 1935

Kinzer, Stephen. 'The Trouble with Costa Rica'. The

New York

Review, ]unQ 8, 2006

Kobler, John. 'Sam the Banana Man'.

Life,

February, 1951

Litvin, Daniel. Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest and Corporate Responsibility

TEXEP^,

London,

213

New York,

2003

BANANAS McCann, Thomas. An American Company: The Tragedy Fruit. Crown Publishers, 1976 McCullough, David. the

Tlie Path

of United

Between the Seas: The Creation of

Panama Canal. Simon and Schuster, 1977

McQueen, Humphrey.

Tlie Essence of Capitalism. Profile,

MelviUe, John H. The Great Wliite

Fleet.

Vantage,

2001

New York,

1979

Munro, Dana.

Intervention

and Dollar Diplomacy

in the

Caribbean,

1900-1921. Prmceton University, 1964

Niedergang, Marcel. The Twenty Latin Americas (Volume

1).

Penguin, 1971

Pearce, Fred. 'Going Bananas'.

Pringle, Henry. 'A

New

Scientist,

JsnmsLry 18,

2003

Jonah Who Swallowed the Whale'. American

Magazine, September 1933

Schlesinger, Stephen, of the American

Coup

and Kinzer, Stephen. in

Bitter Fruit :The Story

Guatemala. Harvard University, 1999

Solow, Herbert. 'The Ripe Problems of United Fruit'. Fortune,

March 1959 Soluri, John.

Banana

Cultures: Agriculture,

Environmental

Change

in

Honduras and

University of Texas Press, 2005

214

the

Consumption United

&

States.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY United Fruit Historical

Warner, Marina.

M) Go

Society, www.unitedfmit.org

the

Bogeyman:

Scaring, Lulling

and Making

Mock. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998

The Career of Samuel March 1984

Whitfield, Stephen. 'Strange Fruit:

Zemurray'. American Jewish History,

Wilson, Charles Morrow. Empire of the American Banana Trade.

in

Green and Gold: The Story

Greenwood,

Originally published in 1947

215

New

York, 1968.

6

Index Adams, Frederick Upham 36, 51 Afro-American workers 76 agricultural workers 3, 169 see also

Grenada 184 Guatemala 55, 79, 106, 107, 145, 153, 195 Honduras 4, 60-1, 67-8, 74, 104, 171, 181

workers/plantations

Iceland 13

Algonquin Club, Boston 166 AUende, Salvador

6,

Israel

175

Almirante Bay (Panama) 47, 53, 115

An

137

American Indians 33-4 American Tobacco Company

Company

62

Panama

23, 38, 47, 49, 62, 67, 162

workers

see

workers/plantations

1,

5-6, 68, 107-08, 206

Banana Six (jazz band) 104, 197 banana war 189-90, 198

127

bananas advertising 15, 113-14, 118-19, 163, 199

anti-trust offensives see trusts

and health 14-15, 45, 60, 114 drug 15, 165 botany 13-14, 19, 20, 22-3, 208 comedy of/jokes 15-16, 17, 119

'Apple' (banana variety) 19

Aracataca (Colombia) 87

as

Arbenz, Colonel Jacobo, president, Guatemala

123-125, 128, 144

land reforms 124

104-05, 122, 160, 207-08

diseases 2, 22-3,

meeting with Ambassador Peurifoy 132—3 overthrow 6, 125-6, 128-41, 147 Arbenz, Senora Maria Vilanova de 123-4, 128,

Panama

see also

'fair trade'

fertilisers

Argentina 139

188-90, 204, 208

152, 186

for children (1945)

Argueta, Manuel

Colom

disease; sigatoka

etymology 20

132, 146

195

'free trade'

Armas, Colonel Carlos Castillo 140, 141 Asturias, Miguel Angel 9, 58 Atlantida (Honduras) 61 Attlee,

6,

banana repubhcs

1 1

anti-Semitism 59, 60, 95, 119

xiii,

66

43, 49,

,

Banana Republic clothes chain 6

anarchists 87, 89

Anglo-Iranian Oil

1

Nicaragua

American Banana Company 67 American Company,

4-5, 13

Jamaica

17-18

188-90, 203, 208

future threatened

22-3

genetics 22-3, 208

going bananas 108-09

Clement 17-18, 121

hallucinogenic 15, 165, 197 harvesting 14

'backers' 14

how

bagasse 155

in literature 3, 8-9, 58,

Baker,

Captam Lorenzo 37-8,

43, 194

8, 16, 43, 53, 61, 122,

37

in popular culture 13,

'Banana Boat Song, The' 16, 164

banana boats

to eat 16,

68-9, 107-08, 114

15—16, 164—6

labelling 163

157-8

leaves for clothing 17

passengers 53-4, 104, 114-15, 156

markets

Banana Buyers Protective Association 80, 81

Europe 18-19, 20, 186 UK 17-18

'banana heads' 165

USA

Banana Land 114 Banana Man see Zemurray, Sam(uel) banana plantations 19, 103-04, 105, 107 Canary Islands 66

20, 21, 36-7, 37-8, 43, 80-1

nutritional qualities

14— 15, 45, 60, 114

producers' cartel 2, 9, 171, 178, 181

product diversification 153

Caribbean 49, 66 Colombia 1, 46-7, 49, 87, 89, 137 Costa Rica 30, 37. 40, 49, 62, 82, 188 Cuba 1, 43, 49, 66, 152

sales 17, 40, 86,

Ecuador

sayings/idioms 15, 107, 108-09

1,

production costs 152 recipes 113, 165

ripening 13

121, 161

2l6

118, 163, 165-6, 171

5

INDEX CaUfornia 169

sexual innuendo 15-16

Cameroon 20 canals see Panama Canal

symbol of the West 18

202-03

trade wars 52-3, 188-90,

varieties 19, 23, 37, 38, 51,

Canary

160

'Big Mikes' 19, 20, 23, 51, 121,

trade

Cuba

Batista, Fulgencio, president

151

Pigs (1961) 3, 6, 124, 156-8, 159, 173,

193, 198

Caribbean 49, 66, 188 workers 76 cartels 6, 9, 45, 47-8

Beard, Dita (lobbyist) 176

OPEC; UPEB;

see also

Jimmy

Belafonte, Harry 16, 164

Carter,

Belize

Caruso, Enrico

1

Tomas de 20—1 Bernays, Edward xiii, 115-17,

UFC

xiv,

price fixing; trusts

180, 181, 195

1 1

Castro Dofia Pacifica Fernandez de 25, 40

Berlanga,

propagandist for

66

capitalism 7, 45-6, 173, 177-8, 191 see also free

152,160

Bananera (Guatemala) 114

Bay of

Islands

Canto General (Neruda) 8

131, 199

117-18, 121, 129,

Castro Fernandez, Cristina Castro,

Dr

xii,

40, 41

,

47

Jose Maria, president Costa Kica

'Big Mikes' (banana variety) 19, 20, 23, 51,

Castro, Fidel

xi, xiv, 3,

145, 151-2, 154-7, 158,

159, 173, 174, 198

121, 152, 160

Raul 151-2

Biography of an Idea, The 131

Castro,

Bishop, Maurice, leader Grenada 184

'Cavendish' (banana variety) 23, 160

black rights 80, 164

Cavendish, Lord 160

Black sigatoka

Central America 13, 117, 120-1, 194-6

Black,

Eh

see sigatoka

XI, 1,

2-3, 166-70, 178, 200

170-1, 205

social responsibihty 169, 1, 2, 3,

10,

Central Intelligence

Agency

171-2

Chicago, University of 201 28, 145, 175-6, 202

Chile 6,

Bobbitt, Phihp 203

China 186, 192

Bocas delToro (Panama) 47, 86, 104 Bolsheviks 85, 86, 88

Chinese workers 75-6 Brands Chiquita Banana, Seiiorita 119, 153, 163, 165

65, 70, 72, 73

Chiriqui Lagoon (Panama) 47, 53

Bordeaux Mixture 105, 107, 122 Boston 50, 194

Christmas, Lee

banana imports 38, 43, 194 'Brahmins/Wasps' 50, 89, 96-7, 120, 160, 167

Churchill,

CIA

Honduras

Company

xiii,

69-70, 72, 81

Winston 121, 127, 139

126, 127, 149

and United Fruit Company Chile 175-6

Boston Fruit Company 43, 47 Bragman's Bluff (Nicaragua) 38, 140 Brahmins 50, 89, 97, 120 Brazil coffee trade 54 bribery see United Fruit Company /bribery British

8,

Chiquita 187, 193-4, 204 previously United

Manuel, president Honduras

British East India

Cuban

assassination

160

127-8

Vietnam 164

Bump,Alniyr (UFC engineer) 107, 145, 154 Bush, George, president USA 202 Butler, Brigadier General Smedley D xiii, 109-10

Cienaga (Colombia) 87, 91, 92 cigarette smoking 116—17 Cincinnati 187, 193

movement 80, 164 Clements, John (PR man) 128-9

civil rights

Cleveland, Grover, president Cabbages and Kings 68-9, 108

Clinton,

Cabot family Boston 50, 134 Cabot Lodge, Henry 84, 87-8, 134, 139 Cabot, John Moors 134

Coca-Cola

Cabrera, General 56, 83, 88

117

invasion 156, 157

Kennedy Persia

1

Thomas 120-1,

7,

Guatemala (Arbenz overthrow) 124—6, 129, 135-6, 141, 144, 145-6

7

Bryan, William Jennings 81

Cabot,

CIA

Chavez, Cesar (union leader) 169

Bluefields (Nicaragua) 38, 65

Bonilla, General

see

Chatsworth 160

2-3, 10, 171, 186

illicit activities

suicide

xii,

25, 26, 40, 41

133, 13f^7, 148

xii,

president

USA

USA

45, 53

202

33, 97, 163

cocaine production 197 coffee production 26, 54, 57, 123,

Cold War

134, 161

Manuel Estrada

Bill,

204

18, 121, 125, 130, 147, 157, 159,

186, 202

54, 55,

Collins

217

Company

(machete makers) 101

5

BANANAS Dominican Republic Donovan 15, 166

Colombia 62 banana plantations

1,

46-7, 49, 87, 89, 137

massacre of farm workers Columbus, Christopher 26

Communism

3,

90-2, 93

Drako,

Drew, Danu

130, 139, 187

Cuban

35

,v(,

125, 126, 127-8, 149, 159

')S,

iin .iMDii

I

56

Guatemalan coup 129, 130, 131, 135 John Foster xhi, 84-5, 122, 126, 128, 205 and United Fruit Company 98, 147, 149 Guatemalan coup 129, 130, 131, 133, 139,

Greece 132

Dulles,

Guatemala 88, 124, 125, 129-130, 132-34, 136, 145-6 Nicaragua 179, 182 Persia 127

USA

l

Dulles, Allen xui,

Colombia 89 Eastern Europe 121

20, 35, 43, 49

fiaiKis 38, 49

Sii

145

121-2, 130, 139, 148-149, 174-5,

180-1

earthquakes 3-4, 170-1

Conquest of the

Tropics: Tlie Story of

United Fruit

.

.

.

Germany 18-19

East

the

Company 51-2

Eastman, George 33

Ecuador

Conrad, Joseph 64 Coolidge, Calvm, president

USA

89-90

Edison,

21-2, 121, 161, 195

1,

Thomas

33, 80

Cooper Union 80

Egypt 135

copyright 34, 165

Eisenhower, Dwight D, president

George H (engineer) 32, 52 Coronel, Erasmo (engineer) 91 8,

26-7, 122, 183, 206-07

'El

Pulpo'

107, 115, 147, 161

8,

El Salvador 123, 169-70, 181, 183, 195

Enron 200

banana trade war 53

Esquire magazine

border disputes with Panama 67

Europe

OAS

145-49

anti-trust offensives

banana plantations 30, 37, 40, 49, 62, 82, 188

boycotts

126,

Eisenhower, Milton 130

corporations see multi-national corporations

Costa Rica

USA

127, 129, 139-40, 156

Corliss,

107—08

war with Europe, eastern 18-19

conference 139

canal plan 28

trade

USA

187-90, 202

Exodus (boat) 119

coup (1917) 84, 85 finances 40, 48 flag 25,

Falklands war 202

railways 25-31, 37, 39, 40, 43-4, 75-6, 196

under Figueres 122, 150-1 cotton production 123

farm workers

xi, xiv, 8,

156

35, 50, 53, 62, 66 1,

fertilisers

Rica

xiv,

122, 150-1

198 Fiji

First

invasion (1961) 3, 6, 124, 156-8, 173,

198

(banana disease) 22

Fisk,

(banana variety) 37 in

152, 186

Figueres, Jose 'Pepe', leader Costa

43, 49, 66, 152

USA

reds'

workers/planta-

Fernandez, Cristina Castro 40, 41, 47

under Castro 145, 151-2, 154-5

'Cuban

see also

56

missile crisis 120, 159,

Cubans' role

169

Farquahar, Percival (United Fruit employee)

cruises (banana boats) 53-4, 104, 114-15,

banana plantations

3,

tions

Crowther, Samuel 51

Cuba

bananas 188-91, 202, 208

'Fair Trade'

26

Watergate 173—4

World War 85-6 James 34—5

Florida 13

food

USA

39-40

'FootbaO War' 169-70

Company

Death of a Salesman 61—2 death squads, Guatemala 124, 195

Ford Motor

deaths (accident/disease) 31, 55, 186

France 140, 164

see also killings; lynchings;

massacres

Frank, Gustav (banana grower) 38

Depression 101, 102, 106, 108, 109, 128, 132

free trade 161,

Dien Bien Phu 164 diet 39-40

Freud,

diseases

(human) 39, 78, 186

bananas

see

bananas/diseases

dock workers 78-9, 82-3, 88 Dole Corporation 171

20, 120

'Fourteen families' El Salvador 181, 183

188-90, 192, 202, 203, 208

Sigmund

1 1

Friedman, Milton 201 fi-uits

and health 14-15, 39, 45, 60, 114

fungicides 23, 105, 107, 122 Fyffes 21, 66, 163

2l8

INDEX Hawaii 53 health and bananas 14-15, 45, 60, 114 Henry, xii, 68-9, 108 Hispaniola 20

Gang's All Here, The 15

204 Gaudet, William 117, 160 Geneen, Howard (ITT) 175-6 genetic modification 208 Gates, BiU

Germany 18-19,

Hollywood 121 Honduras 102, 117, 185

33, 56, 97, 111, 186

globalisation 186, 187, 191, 203, see also

O

and USA 71, 73, 185 banana plantations 4, 60-1, 67-8, 74, 104,

206

multi-national corporations

'going bananas' 15, 108—09

171, 181

gold rush 26, 28, 37

corruption

gold speculation 35

coup (1907) 65 coup (1911) 71-3

Gold Standard 81

finances 68, 70, 71, 73

Gould, Jay 34-5, 45 Grant, Ulysses

S,

USA 34 Exhibition USA

president

Great Centennial

199

9, 65, 99, 171,

in fiction

Knox

32—4,

35-6

68-9

Plan 71, 73

railways 4, 65—6,

68 war with El Salvador (1969) 169-70 war with Guatemala (1906-7) 95 war with Nicaragua (1907) 65 Hornet (yacht) 72

Great Depression 101, 102, 106, 108

Great White Fleet

8, 16, 43, 53, 61, 122,

156-7 passengers 53-4, 104, 114-15, 156

Greece 132

hospitals, 8,

Green Pope, The

9,

115

Howells, William

58

Dean

32, 33, 34, 37

Hunt, E Howard (CIA agent)

Grenada 184, 189 'Gros Michel' (banana variety) 19

143, 144

guano industry 28 Guardia, General Tomas, president Costa Rica

Cuban

xiv,

124, 135,

invasion 156 Guatemalan coup (Arbenz overthrow)

xii, 25, 27, 39, 75 Guatemala 54, 55, 106-07 122, 195 and United Fruit Company 55—8, 82, 83, 106 and USA 157, 183 see also Guatemala/coup

124-5, 135, 136, 140, 141, 143

Kennedy

assassination

160

Watergate scandal 173-4, 176 hurricanes 2, 9, 14, 29, 49, 66, 152-3, 171

(1954)

army

atrocities 83,

Iceland banana growing 13

183

banana plantations 55, 79, 106, 107, 145, 153, 195

India 186

church 136

Intercontinental Hotel,

Coca-Cola bottling 97

International Telephone

Indians,

Corporation (ITT)

coffee production 54, 55, 57

communism 136,

American 33-4, 76

88, 124, 125, 129-30, 132-4,

145-6

&

Telegraph

6,

175—6

Iran 127-8, 182, 185 Iraq 185,

coup (1898) 54 coup (1954) Arbenz overthrow

Managua 179

200

irrigation 99, 107 6,

125-6,

128-41, 144, 147

4-5, 13, 96, 119

Israel

Italian

workers 43-4, 60, 76, 87

death squads 124, 183, 195 35, 37, 43, 49, 66, 164, 194

ladinos 54, 76, 79, 83

Jamaica

land ownership 124, 133-4, 195

'Jamaica Yellows' 38

Mayan people or Mayan remains 8

Jamaican workers 76-7

ethnic groups 54, 123

canal building 43, 44, 63

jungle clearance 30

railways 54-5, 56-7, 63, 196 revolt (1920-3)

88-9

plantation workers 79, 86

war with Honduras (1906-07) 95 Guevara, Ernesto 'Che'

xiv, 143,

155

144—5, 147,

railway building 31, 55

Japan 193 Jefferson Coolidge dynasty 50

Guevara, Hilda 144

Jefferson Coolidge, chairman

Jews Haiti

1,

20

see

UFC

anti-Semitism

journalists see press

Harvard Business School 197

Journey

Havana

jungle clearance 30, 78

8,

56

219

to

Banana Land 138, 148

154

1

BANANAS Keith, Keith,

Henry (railway builder) 27-8, 28-9, 31 Minor 28-9, 38-9, 44, 77, 98-9, 192

machetes 101

'Macondo'

3,

1

banana plantations 37, 40, 46, 47, 55 cartel with Andrew Preston 47-8

malaria 31, 78

Costa Rica overseas debts 40, 47

market crashes 48, 90

coup Honduras (1911) 73 elimination of rivals 52-3 finances 48 in fiction 58 marriage 40-1 railways 55, 97-8

market protection

Managua

'market

state'

xi, 3, 9,

Marshall Plan 129 Marshall, General

George 129

massacres (plantation workers) 3, 83, 91-2,

43-4

93

Cuba 50

Matthews, Herbert

El Salvador 123

Mayan people Guatemala 54, Mayan rums 8, 79, 118 McCann, Thomas (PR man)

relations

with Theodore Roosevelt 63

relations

with

Sam Zemurray 60

McCormick, Cyrus

United Fruit Company foundation 49 workforce recruitment 75-7 Kellogg Peace Pact 90 Kellogg, Frank,

US

Kennedy, John kibbutz 4-5

F, president

157,

159-60

91-2, 93, 103

Knox

73

workers

labour unions

3,

secretary

of

builder)

83, 85, 92, 139, 145

Carmen

Mobile (US state 84, 85,

xi, 15,

1

10-1

1

,

1

18-19, 121,

Meyer 155

port) 59

molasses 155

Molony,

88, 98

Guy 'Machine-gun'

Latin American Report 117

200 monetarism 201-02

Kenneth, Enron 200 League of Nations 85, 87-8, 134 Lebanese workers 87

monoculture 104 monopolies see trusts Monroe Doctrine 35, 189

Lesseps, Ferdinand de 43, 44,

xiii,

70, 72, 73,

108,

Lay,

lettuce

62

Mississipi flood (1927) 101

'Lady Finger' (banana variety) 19

Lansky,

53,

Miskito Indians 38

121, 161, 169

US

34

USA

153

Ladino people Guatemala 54, 76 Lansing, Robert,

(inventor)

Middle America Information Bureau 117 Miller, Arthur 61-2 Miranda,

see

122, 129-30,

media see press; radio broadcasts Meiggs family 29 Meiggs, Henry 'Don Enrique' (railway 27, 28 'Mellow Yellow' 15, 166 Mexican workers 169

Mexico state 71,

137, 141, 155

McNamara, Robert 120

lynchings 79, 80 Plan 71, 73 Knox, Philander, US secretary of Koch, Robert 39

107, 123

xiii,

McKinley, William, president

secretary of state 90, 91

USA

(journalist) 151

McCarthy, Senator Joseph 131, 149

shipping 38

killings 3, 83, 86,

10-11, 92-3,

170

Guatemala 55, 56, 63 Honduras 68

labour

see cartels; free trade; trusts

203

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Costa Rica 27-8, 29-30, 31, 37, 39, 40,

(Nicaragua) 3, 170-1, 179, 182, 205

47

growing 169 Queen 53

Liliolukani,

Limon Number One (locomotive) 29 Limon province, Costa Rica 26—7, 196 Line-Wolf ammonia compressor 33

Moors Cabot, John 134 Morgan, J.P (bankers) 45, 71, 110 Mosquito Coast 38, 49, 100, 157, 185 multi-national corporations 7, 56, 191-2, 198,

200-03, 206 corporate responsibility

lobbying 96, 125, 129, 199

1

70-1 204-05 ,

8, 117, 155, 168,

see also

philanthropy

Locke, John 192

Lodge

reservations 88

Lodge, Henry Cabot 84, 87-8, 134, 139 logo copyright 165

Nasser,

Gamal Abdel 135

National Association for the Advancement of

Lowell family Boston 50

Coloured Peoples 80 Negroponte, John xv, 184-5 Neruda, Pablo 8 New Deal 109, 110

lynchings 79, 80

New

Long, Huey, governor Louisiana 101 Los Angeles 194

220

Orleans 30, 48, 101, 117, 160

INDEX banana trading 48-9, 52

Preston,

USA

and

Andrew

xii,

38, 43, 49, 50-1, 96-7,

194

Nicaragua 38 74, 140, 157, 185

cartel

propaganda

earthquakes 3—4, 170

see press

protectionism see

64-5

manipulation; pubhc rela-

cartels; trusts

public relations 115-18, 118-19, 201 see also

United Fruit Company/public

USA

relations

Puerto Barrios (Guatemala) 56, 88, 114 Puerto Cabezas (Nicaragua) 38, 140, 157

131, 138, 151,

156, 165

Watergate 124-5, 173-5, 176 Noriega, General

anti-trust activities 47-8,

tions

war with Honduras (1907) 65 Nicaraguan Earthquake Emergency Drive 170

Nico 166 Nixon, Richard, president

and

price fixing 6-7, 45, 111, 188 see also cartels

banana plantations 6, 62 civil war (1970s) 179-80, 182

Puerto

Humberto 202

Castilla

(Honduras) 104, 105, 197

Puerto Cortes (Honduras) 6 1 69 ,

Puerto Rico 53

North, Colonel Oliver 185 Nostromo 64

Quingua (Guatemala) oil

8, 79,

1

15

industry 67, 127, 153, 171, 177, 201 see also

OPEC

racism 60, 77, 80, 164

'Radio

Onassis, Aristotle 162

One Hundred

OPEC

Years of Solitude 3, 11,

171, 177, 178

2, 6,

Bound

for

Banana Land' 138

radio broadcasts 114, 135, 138, 140

170

railways

Central America link up 50

Organisation of American States 139, 170

Oswald, Lee Harvey 160

Chile 28

Oxford English Dictionary 107, 108-09

construction workers see workers/railway

Padre Island (Texas) 29

Costa Rica 25-31, 37, 39, 40, 43-4, 75-6,

building

palm

196

production 108

oil

Panama

53, 62, 67, 195,

and United Fruit

Cuba

202

Company

49, 82, 86

154-5

Guatemala 54-5, 56-7, 63, 196 Honduras 4, 65-6, 68 Panama 26

banana plantations 23, 38, 47, 49, 62, 67, 162

26

railways

50, 56,

El Salvador 123

Panama Canal

Peru 28

pre de Lesseps plans 28, 30

United Fruit Company 168-9

USA

USA

de Lesseps canal 43, 44

Panama

canal 62-3, 76, 84, 129, 162, 181

disease 22, 62, 67,

Company Persia

Reagan, Ronald, president Cross 138-9 'Red Macabu' (banana 'reefers'

186

see also

Reventazon

117, 138-9, 161, 170-1, 205

multi-national corporations/corpo-

rate responsibility

Piedmont 43 plantations see bananas/plantations see

postage stamps,

commemorative 118 174

and United Fruit Company 115, 116, 118, 151, 168 manipulation 135-8, 141, 148, 174, 178, 199 Preston (Cuba) 154

44

7, 34 Romance and Rise of the American Tropics, The 51 Romero, Oscar, archbishop San Salvador 181,

'robber barons'

183 Roosevelt, Franklin D, president

workers/plantations

press 102-3, 104, 141, 165,

43

river (Costa Rica)

Ritz-Carlton hotel, Boston 120

Pinochet, General Augusto 6, 175-6, 202

workers

variety) 19, 51

8

refrigeration technology 33,

Peurifoy, Jack xiv, 131-3, 141 8, 79,

121, 182-4,

Red

154

Peru 27, 28

philanthropy

USA

186, 189, 202

Fruit

127-8

pesticides 23,

56-7, 97-8,

Rainforest Alliance 204

104

Peabody family, Boston 50 Peabody Gardner, chairman United

8,

34, 43

USA

109-11,

115, 121, 148

Roosevelt, Kermit 'Kim' 127-8, 130-1 Roosevelt, Theodore, president

USA

63-4, 148

'Rough Riders' (Cuban war) 62 Salem (Massachusetts) 21 San Jose (Costa Rica) 8, 196

221

xii,

62,

BANANAS Tinoco, General Federico, dictator Costa Rica

San Salvador 195 Santa Marta (Colombia)

46, 87, 89, 90-1,

xi,

84, 85

92, 93, 137, 193

Tiquisate plantation (Guatemala) 107, 145, 153

Domingo 49

Santo

sarsa trade

tourism 194 trade

monopolies

trade wars 52-3, 188-91,

Truman, Harry, president trusts

77 smaUholders 66-7, 161-2

Nicaragua

206-07

turtle trade 38,

xi, 4,

64-5

Orleans 117

39

U-boats (German) 85-6

(musical) 13

Union

New

Tulane University,

157

6, 125, 140,

evasions 48,

Guatemalan interests 145, 146-50, 168-9 UFC railway interests 97—8

122, 177, 187

philanthropy

Pacific

125, 127

115

UFC UFC

Somoza, Anastasio, president Nicaragua 179, 180-2 South

USA

anti-trust offensives 45-6, 81, 85, 99, 111,

social welfare 18, 177, 201, 203, 204,

family,

66

6-7, 45, 64

snakes 78

Somoza

202

(railway builder)

TrujiUo (Honduras) 61, 72, 73, 104

slavery

see also

C

Trautwine, John

banana boats

democracy 121,

see cartels; trusts

trade unions 3, 121, 161, 169

sigatoka (banana disease) 22, 23, 105, 171

social

181, 182,

xiv,

184

Second World War 110, 115, 118 Selma (Alabama) 59, 164 Seiiorita Chiquita Banana 119 Shah of Persia/Iran 127, 128, 182 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) 45 Shield of Achilles, Tlie 203 ships see

Omar, Panama

Torrijos, General

38

Spain 53, 62

Ubico, General Jorge, dictator Guatemala 106, 122

Spanish workers 87

Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent

Soviet

18, 121, 134, 145-6, 149, 182,

186

Spellman, Cardinal Francis 136 St Kitts

stamps,

143

82

United Brands 87 later Chiquita United Fruit Company see also Black, Eli; Keith, Minor; Preston, 1

Stalin 116, 133,

146

commemorative 118

Standard Fruit

Company

xiii,

1

,

Andrew; Zemurray, Sam(uel) 1890s 49, 51-3

64-5, 148-50, 160,

171

Standard Oil 67

1900s 53-4, 55-8, 60, 62, 63-5, 66, 79 1910s 66-7, 73-74, 80-3, 85, 86-7, 95

Starbucks 204

stock market crashes 48, 90

1920s 88-9, 90-2, 93, 97, 98-100 1930s 101-06, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113-15 1940s 115, 117-18, 119, 120-1

strikes

1950s 122-3, 125-6, 127-9, 133-4, 136-9,

Statue of Liberty 33 stevedores 78-9, 82-3,

Colombia

88-9

3, 87, 89,

145-50, 152-4

90-2, 93

Costa Rica 43-4

1960s 154, 156, 157-8, 160-3, 164, 165,

Guatemala 82-3, 88-9

166-70

Panama 86

1970s 9-10, 170-2, 178-9, 186 advertising 15-16, 113-14, 118-19, 163,

sugar cane production 66, 123, 154, 155

199

Sussex University- 5 Syrian workers 87

anti-trust investigations see trusts/anti trust

offensives

Tacoma,

USS

72, 73, 89

Taft,Wimam, president Tangipahoa (USA) 100 Tegucigalpa (Honduras)

accounting) 155

assets (creative

USA

67, 71, 73

4, 66, 68, 99,

banana plantations

see

bananas/plantations

banana varieties 19, 160 branding 115, 117-18, 119, 163, 199 bribery 108

184

Tela (Honduras) 61, 73, 104, 117, 196

telegraph, use of 59

Costa Rica 207

Textron 167

Guatemala 57-8, 88 Honduras 9, 65, 99, 171, 199

Thatcher, Margaret 189, 202

The Craft of

Intelligence

125

cartels see cartels

Third World 161, 177

Thompson, George Maker

cattle rearing

155

civilising force

(fictional character)

52

cocaine production 197

58

222

INDEX company stores/towns

radio

77, 86, 92, 101,

103-04

consumer demand stimulation 51 corporate social responsibility

programmes 114, 138

relations

with producers

relations

with

USA/and

8, 117, 155,

168, 205

Cuban

pulpo/evW octopus

Guatemalan coup (Arbenz overthrow)

107, 115, 147, 161

8,

elimination of rivals 52—3 films 138, 148, 170-1,

13f^8, 14(:^1

Honduran coup (1911) 73-4 Honduran/El Salvador war (1969)

foundation 49

99

169

labelling bananas see

170-1

3,

in literature 3, 8-9,

labour

169-70 Honduran/Guatemalan border dispute

15

in California

Kennedy assassination 159-60 Panama war of independence 63 Second World War 115

69

163

workers (United Fruit

Company)

subverting democracy/wars 56,195,

198

land ownership 1-2, 49, 53, 100, 169 uncultivated lands 8, 49, 106, 124, 134-5

shareholdings/mergers

Sam Zemurray

lynchings 79, 80

shootings, reprisal 103

managers' conditions

8,

77-8, 87, 103-04,

sugar cane production 154, 155

under Thomas Cabot 120-1

UFC/advertising;

UFC/public

see

strikes see strikes

107, 114-15

work

relations

ethic 162

see workers (UFC) United Kingdom 17-18, 86, 121, 140, 201, 202 University of Chicago 201

mass production techniques 19—20

workers

79, 118

memorial plaques 194

UPEB 2, 9, 171, 178, 181 USA see also under presidents;

mineral prospecting 153

monopolistic 6-7, 21, 45, 49, 52-3, 64, 95,

see also

111, 145

ambassadorships 10, 131-3

see also trusts

and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

multi-national see multi-national corporations

nicknames 7-8

'Our Social Responsibility' 171 palm oil production 108 Panama Canal, use of 63, 84 philanthropy

movement 166

8, 79,

117, 138-9, 161, 170-1,

205 photo archive 197 press manipulation 136-8, 141, 148-9, 174,

178, 199 profits taken

by Costa Rica 150

public image 79, 81, 108, 168 public relations 98, 102-(M, 108, 113-114,

117-19, 129, 167 see also

49, 60, 66,

spy networks 75

machete purchase 101

peace and love

,

60, 65, 99-100, 102

shipping

Mayan remains

1

banana boats

logo copyright 165

see

2

,

railway interests 97—8, 169

growing 169

lobbying 96, 125, 129, 199

marketing

1

150, 167-8

legacy 194-200 lettuce

128-9, 133-4, 134-5,

3, 125,

199

gun running 125 humanitarian aid

invasion (1961) 3, 156, 157-8,

198

education department 102, 113, 199

1

see

UFC

Colombian massacre (1928) 91-2, 93

153-4

diversification 108, 152,

hospitals 8,

161—2

2,

government

role in

corporate sponsorship 117—18, 170

el

US

UFC/advertising;

CIA

Caribbean 35 Central America 6, 110, 121

Colombia 90-2 Costa Rica 31, 85

Cuba

156-8, 198

3, 6, 124,

Dominican Republic 35 Grenada 184 Guatemala 89, 125, 128-41, 149 Honduras 66, 70-1, 71-2, 74, 185 Iraq 185

Latin

America

Nicaragua

OAS

10,

1

6, 30,

1

17

74

139

Panama

62, 63,

202

Spain 53

United Fruit Company

6,

97-8, 148

anti-trust offensives see wider trusts

UFC/

anti-colonialism 53 banana market 20, 21, 36-7, 37-8, 43, 80-1 banana republic plot 109-10

lobbying; UFC/philanthropy;

UFC/press manipulation

223

BANANAS

communism

accommodation 103, 114 Communism/agitators 86—7,

99

bribery, attitude towards

121-2, 130, 139, 148, 149,

company

174-5, 182

88, 89

stores 77, 86, 92, 101

Contras (counter revolutionaries) 185

co-operatives 181

39-40 Dollar Diplomacy 70, 84 First World War 85-6 'Good Neighbor' policy 110, 121

deaths (accident/disease) 31, 55, 186

Great Centennial Exhibition 32—4, 35—6

jungle clearance 78

diet

dock workers 78-9, 82-3, 88-9 farm workers 'flexible

immigrants 194

illegal

killings 83, 86,

unwritten shooting code 103

188-90, 202

188

treatment of Indians 33-4

Un-American

90-2, 93,

plantation workers 14, 79, 86-7, 89, 103,

'robber barons' 7, 34

EU

3,

193

Operation Success 135, 156 Operation Zapata 156—8

war with

103

Colombia massacre (1928)

market crashes 34-5, 45, 90

trade

169

3,

working' 197

Activities

railway builders 30, 31, 43, 55,

Committee

110,

rights

75-6

79-80

nots/disturbances 79, 83, 103

121, 131

workers' rights campaign 79-80

smallholders 161-2 strikes see strikes

Vanderbilt, Cornelius 30, 34 vanilla trade

Velvet

unions

38

169

3, 121, 161,

wages 43, 77, 82, 86, 188 World Trade Organisation 187, 189-90, 202

Underground 166

Venezuela coup 139

World War World War

Vietnam war 164, 174, 175, 182

Wright, WiUiam lynched 79

vetteneros

105

I

85-6

II

110, 115, 118

Voice of Liberation radio station 135, 140 yellow fever 31, 60

wages (workers) 43, 77, 82, 86, 188 Walker, William 'King of Nicaragua' 30, 72, 104 Wall Street 9-10, 90, 109

Zemurray, Sam(uel)

Waugh, Auberon and Evelyn 18 Weizmann, Chaim 96, 119 welfare state 17, 177, 201, 203, 206-07

in

West Indian workers 76-7

relations

see also

Guatemala 99 Honduras 61, 65, 68, 70-4, 99, 185 rebranding of UFC 115, 117-18 in

with Boston Wasps 95 Minor Keith 60

Jamaican

workers the

KremUn Hates Bananas 148-9

Morgan bankers 71

'Wild Bunch' 22, 186, 188-90, 202 Wilson, Woodrow, president USA 80-1, 83-4, 85

Roosevelt, Franklin

Weizmann, Chaim retires

Windrush (banana boat) 16

role in

Windward

role in

184

103-04

role in e.g.

Jamaican

224

110

coup Honduras (1911) 71—4 Honduran-Guatemalan war pre95

World War

II

115

Zog, King of Albania 135

workers

D

96, 119

100, 101-2, 119-20, 121

WWI

workers (United Fruit Company) 75-80, see also under nationality

116

press 102-3, 104,

and Costa Rica 85, 98, 122 anti trust offensives 81, 85 League of Nations 85, 87-8 Islands

59-60, 95, 101-2, 120,

and United Fruit Company 65, 81, 99-100, 102, 194, 200 disease control 105 foundation of Israel 96, 119

Watergate 124-5, 173-5, 176

Why

xii,

159

Wall Street crash 90 War is a Racket 109 Warhol, Andy 166

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