Banana Republics: United Fruit and the Journey to Banana Land - Part 1 (1950)

1950 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847671942?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/11/journey-to-banana-land-1950.html

Banana republic is a term that refers to a politically unstable country dependent upon limited agriculture (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and (but not necessarily) corrupt politico-economic clique. The original concept of banana republic was a direct reference to a "servile dictatorship" that abetted (or supported for kickbacks) the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation. As a political science term banana republic is a descriptor first used by the American writer O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings (1904), a book of related short stories derived from his 1896--97 residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from the U.S. law for bank embezzlement in the U.S.

The concept of banana republic originated with the introduction of the banana fruit to Europe in 1870, by Captain Lorenzo D. Baker, of the ship The Telegraph, who initially bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 percent profit. Yet the banana business was incidentally established by the American railroad tycoon Henry Meigs and Minor C. Keith, his nephew, who started banana plantations, initially along the railroads, to feed their workers, and, upon grasping the potential profit of bananas sold in the U.S., also began exporting the fruit from their plantation to the Southeastern United States. In the event, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company, the future half of the corporate merger that established the United Fruit Company at the end of the nineteenth century; he became its vice president.

The banana proved popular with Americans, because it was a tropical fruit cheaper than local U.S. fruits, such as the apple; in 1913 a dozen bananas sold for twenty-five cents, whilst the same money bought only two apples. The exporters profited from such low prices because the banana companies, via manipulation of the national land use laws, could cheaply buy large tracts of agricultural land for plantations in the Caribbean, Central American, and South American countries, whilst employing the native peoples as cheap manual labourers, having rendered them land-less. In 1899, the largest banana company, the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Brands International), resulted from a merger between Andrew Preston's Boston Fruit Company and Minor C. Keith's Tropical Trading and Transport Company; by the 1930s, its international politico-economic influence granted it control of 80--90 per cent of the U.S. banana trade. Moreover, in 1924, the Vaccaro Brothers established the Standard Fruit Company (Dole Food Company), to export Honduran bananas to New Orleans.

In Honduras, the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and Sam Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit Company dominated the economy's key banana export sector, and the national infrastructure, such as the railroads and the ports. Moreover, the United Fruit Company's nickname was El Pulpo ("The Octopus"'), because it freely interfered — sometimes violently — with Honduran national politics. In 1910, Zemurray hired mercenaries, led by "General" Lee Christmas, an American soldier of fortune from New Orleans, to effect a coup d'état in Honduras and install a government friendlier to the Cuyamel Fruit Company's business interests. In 1933, twenty-three years later, with a hostile takeover Sam Zemurray assumed control of the rival United Fruit Company.

In the 1950s, the directors of the United Fruit Company convinced the administrations of presidents Truman (1945--53) and Eisenhower (1953--61) that the popular government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala was secretly pro-Soviet for expropriating unused "fruit company lands" to land-less peasants. In the Cold War (1945--91) context of the pro-actively anti-Communist politics of the McCarthy era, said geopolitical consideration facilitated President Eisenhower's ordering the CIA's Guatemalan coup d'état (1954) deposing the elected government of President--Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. In the event, with the poem La United Fruit Co., Pablo Neruda denounced foreign banana companies' political dominance of Latin American countries.

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[prept77]

United Fruit has turned millions of Central and South Americans into Slaves.

[Renegen1]

This video makes me sick. If you really understand the issues, you see how the video misleads the viewer.

[hardkoregamer999]

fruit people?

[Garcia117]

I love how in this video it gives off the image that everyone is happy. No suffering, and nothing bad is happening to them.

[rfd73]

@jaycr2006 Te entiendo, acá en Ecuador hicieron lo mismo, o lo hicieron un buen tiempo hasta que el gobierno tuvo que nacionalizar la producción, ibamos en el mismo camino, es una pena que por lo menos no podamos decir que "valió la pena todo el sacrificio" nunca revertió en nuestra economía realmente, aunque yo también sostengo que nosotros y nuestros políticos de turno que se dejaron sobornar por estos gordos inversionistas son los culpables también, en mi opinión vendieron nuestras patrias

[mzindpendent7]

@Renegen1 opps sorry i misunderstood your side hehe and how it does do a stereotype... gosh propaganda... :/ evil..

[mzindpendent7]

@Renegen1 it doesn't mislead do you live in central america to know that?.. no.. i did and i've seen the poverty that it cuased and the genocide comitted there

[ashkimana]

This is bullshit!!!!!!!!!! 

[Mesalonika]

Banana Land offensive pig KKK

[shitonMOHAMMAD]

the people are mostly of Spanish descent??? More like of Indian descent