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.
