If you had to choose one industry (other than oil) to illustrate how big companies with interests in several countries can be so unbelievably corrupt and destructive then you would choose the banana industry. And of all the companies involved in the banana industry one stands out above all others and that is the United Fruit Company. It is often said to be the forerunner of the modern multi-national company. And, boy, did they get away with murder.
United Fruit was formed in 1899 from a merger between Minor C. Keith’s trading concerns and Andrew W. Preston’s Boston Fruit Company. The company expanded its sphere of influence during the early 20th century until its tentacles of influence reached all through Central America, the West Indies and into Ecuador and Colombia. The company was directly responsible for several regime changes in Central America and the infamous massacre of banana workers in Colombia that was mentioned in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s award winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Although it was the writer O Henry who coined the term ‘banana republic’ it was the United Fruit Company who made the notion a reality.
For many years the company went about ruthlessly expanding its banana empire using the influence of Boston WASPS to pressure the American government to fall in line with its neo-colonial ambitions. The company installed compliant leaders in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and got them to give the company for free vast stretches of jungle. They even got the Central American leaders to bankroll miles and miles of railroad to help with the transport of the bananas. Much of the land ceded to United Fruit was left uncultivated as a safe guard against competitors moving in.
The workers on the banana plantations were treated like slaves. They worked under appalling conditions. Only the bosses had access to proper medical facilities. The workers weren’t paid in money but ‘script’ which could only be spent at the company shop for overpriced goods. Needless to say the company had to ruthlessly quell several worker uprisings.
The banana itself is an odd thing – it is not a fruit and it doesn’t grow on a tree. Strictly speaking it is an herb. It is unable to self-propagate. Workers plant stalks by hand. The banana started off as a novelty in the States and thanks to many advertising campaigns by United Fruit came to be one of the biggest single sellers in supermarkets throughout the United States. It goes without saying that the massive production of bananas in Central and South America has had a devastating effect on the environment. Deforestation, soil degradation and pesticide pollution has ruined vast swathes of what should be one of the most fertile regions in the world.
The story of United Fruit was eventually picked up by the mainstream media and protests against its aggressive neo-colonialism started impacting on the company. The final stabs that killed the beast came in the form of the particularly destructive Hurricane Fifi which ravaged the Caribbean in 1974, the bananagate scandal (the company bribed the President of Honduras $2.5 million to reduce export taxes) and the suicide of its CEO Eli Black in 1974. By that time the company had changed its name to United Brands Company. Out of the ashes of one of the world’s greediest and most exploitative companies, however, rose the phoenix called Chiquita Brands International. The company has survived to this day and is now called Chiquita Brands, which is still the main distributor of bananas in the United States.
It is no doubt true that Chiquita Brands is no longer able to operate with a carte blanche in Latin America like its predecessor United Fruits. Those days are long over; but are they. On March 14, 2007, Chiquita Brands was fined $25 million as part of a settlement with the United States Justice Department for having ties to Colombian paramilitary groups. Between 1997 and 2004, officers of a Chiquita subsidiary paid approximately $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the AUC, in exchange for local, employee protection in Colombia’s volatile banana harvesting zone. Similar payments were also made to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as the National Liberation Army (ELN) from 1989 to 1997. All three of these groups are on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Makes you realize that even until very recently big companies have got away with behaving like the mafia.
To read the full story of the United Fruit Company get Peter Chapman’s excellent Bananas – How The United Fruit Company Shaped The World. I was gob smacked from page to page. And now I won’t eat supermarket bananas and I get angry if I see the Chiquita brand on display.
