Guatemala and the United Fruit Company

http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/

The United Fruit Company was a United States corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas and pineapples) grown in Third World plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of Minor C. Keith's banana-trading concerns with Andrew W. Preston's Boston Fruit Company. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century and came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and the West Indies. Though it competed with the Standard Fruit Company for dominance in the international banana trade, it maintained a virtual monopoly in certain regions.

The company had a deep and long-lasting impact in the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the so-called "banana republics" (a term coined by O. Henry). After a period of financial decline, United Fruit was merged with Eli M. Black's AMK in 1970 to become the United Brands Company. In 1984, Carl Lindner, Jr. transformed United Brands into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

The United Fruit Company was frequently accused of bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting its workers, contributing little by way of taxes to the countries in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies. Latin American journalists sometimes referred to the company as el pulpo ("the octopus"), and leftist parties in Central and South America encouraged the Company's workers to strike. Criticism of the United Fruit Company became a staple of the discourse of the communist parties in several Latin American countries, where its activities were often interpreted as illustrating Lenin's theory of capitalist imperialism. Major Latin American writers sympathetic to more independence from foreign governments and corporations, such as Carlos Luis Fallas of Costa Rica, Ramón Amaya Amador of Honduras, Miguel Ángel Asturias of Guatemala, Eduardo Galeano of Uruguay, Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, and Pablo Neruda of Chile, denounced the Company in their literature.

The business practices of United Fruit were also frequently criticized by journalists, politicians, and artists in the United States. Little Steven released a song called "Bitter Fruit" about the company's misdeeds. In 1950, Gore Vidal published a novel (Dark Green, Bright Red) in which a thinly fictionalized version of United Fruit supports a military coup in a thinly fictionalized Guatemala.

Eli M. Black (April 9, 1921 - February 3, 1975) was a Jewish-American businessman who controlled the United Brands Company. His son, Leon Black, is a founding member of private equity firm Apollo Management.

In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a $2.5 million bribe that United Brands had agreed to pay Honduran president Oswaldo López Arellano in return for reducing taxes on banana exports.

A few weeks before the scandal broke, Black went to his office on the forty-fourth floor of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, bashed out the window with his briefcase, and jumped to his death on Park Avenue.

After Black's suicide, Cincinnati-based American Financial Group, one of millionaire Carl Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit.

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[murray1234567891011]

culturally America is one of the greatest country's in the world but this for me will always be the true face of that country, so much potential and look what they do with it politically America is a monster and needs to be destroyed.

[roxusan]

Not bullshit.

Go immerse yourself in some Guatamalan history. :)

[publicmario17]

@murray1234567891011 whoops ok sry.

[murray1234567891011]

@publicmario17 im Scottish of Irish decent few peoples could match the brutality handed out to them by the British empire as my ancestor's, and even if I was English and supported the union would the fact im commenting on a video about covert US activities in central america not give you some indication that I am well aware of and opposed to the activities of western capitalist nations everywhere, fucking retard what are you like 12 ?

[publicmario17]

@murray1234567891011 Just like how Britsin overthrow the 1953 Iranian coupt with placing Sha in Iran. you guys are no better either. Aware taking place of the Cold War.

[murray1234567891011]

@holm81 "History has little to do with this", now thats never true

[holm81]

@murray1234567891011 Sorry, but I'll have to correct you.

It's 'know' your history not 'no'.

History has little to do with this.

I'm not from America, I'm from Denmark.

And Bill Hicks is actually confirming my point. He talked about America being culturally bereft and utterly stupid. And they are. Bill Hicks is the exeption pointing to the rule.

[murray1234567891011]

@holm81 no your history man, yes your country gave us fast food and reality tv, but the people who produced bill hicks cant be all bad :P

[holm81]

@murray1234567891011 Culturally it's just as much down the drain.

[jimbobanalbeats]

Our culture nowadays is absolute fucking shit. Have ya been here recently? 

[Brenda2OOO]

So wealthy US business owners have used most of Latin America as their own produce fields and used the people as their own indentured servants. Shameful.