HOW DID BANANAS CHANGED THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE USA AND CENTRAL AMERICA ?
If you head to your kitchen right now, there's a good chance you'll find a banana ready to be enjoyed. Over the years, this fruit has become highly popular in households around the world. Nonetheless, bananas are a fragile fruit, mainly because they spoil quickly. So, the only way for the trade of bananas to be profitable is to have huge plantations of the fruit. And the only way to achieve this amount of massive banana production is through the absolute control of the supply chain. It is for this reason that in 1900, the different banana companies from the United States decided to merge and create a single company called "The United Fruit Company". The purpose of this decision was to finally control the entire production chain. It was at this time that this mega-company set its sights on Central America with the aim of achieving the longed-for control of the aforementioned supply chain. However, this control meant also controlling the entire life of the workers in the plants and crops, including their homes, their neighborhoods, their food, the stores where they shopped, as well as an absolute control of the means of transportation throughout the nation and other administrative aspects of the countries where banana production took place. In Guatemala, for example, in 1901, the United Fruit Company managed to gain control of the postal service in that country.In addition, this company provided its workers with very low wages, and often did not even pay them with money but in vouchers to buy food.
But what is the role of the United States government in all this mess? Well, what happened was that, as expected, some heads of state, as well as certain banana plantation workers finally noticed the incredible power that the “United Fruit Company” had in their nations, so they took action to change the situation. Obviously this was not well seen in the eyes of the giant company, so they decided to ask for support from the U.S. government to stop Central American attempts to diminish the company's power over the banana supply chain, as well as to change the situation of the plantation workers. Thus, in the face of any Central American political residence in the face of the power of the banana company or with respect to the labor situation of the workers, the U.S. government intervened to safeguard the economic interests of the banana companies, which also represented U.S. interests.
For the sake of clarity, we will present the case of Honduras, a nation that was invaded seven times by U.S. military forces during the early 1900s. Another example of the influence of the United States is the so-called Banana Massacre. This was a massacre of United Fruit Company workers that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928 in Colombia. As pointed out by Elias and Vidal (2012) the strike began on November when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions.After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the conservative government of Miguel Abadía Méndez sent the Colombian Army in against the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47 to 2,000 people. U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State. The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe.
We can also point to the 1954 coup d'état in Guatemala by U.S. military forces as a result of the democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz's attempt to oppose the interests of the United Fruit Company. But you can read more about it in another post of this blog: THE TIMELINE OF THE GUATEMALAN COUP OF 1954
So, through all of the above we can recognize that bananas indeed played a fundamental role in the relationship that the United States maintained with the different countries of Central America during the 1900s. Now we must reflect on how these events have left their mark on Latin American history, and how it is that in the name of a nation's economic interests so many acts can be carried out that can negatively impact the lives of hundreds of citizens.
We also leave you the following youtube video so you can understand a little more about the process of the influence of bananas in the political, economic and social relations between Uncle Sam and Central America.
Koeppel, D (2008) Banana : the fate of the fruit that changed the world. Hudson Street Press. https://www.worldcat.org/es/title/banana-the-fate-of-the-fruit-that-changed-the-world/oclc/173218748
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