By Peter ChapmanLast week, a new president took the helm in Cuba. Fidel Castro and, later, his brother Raul, had ruled Cuba for nearly 60 years, beginning in 1959. Fidel plays a significant role in this story.
Chapman, a journalist, traces the history of the United Fruit Company to its origins in the 1870s, through its years of expansion (and near monopoly) in about ten central and South American countries, its struggles with disease, its powerful control of railroads and media, to its fairly recent rebranding as the much smaller Chiquita corp. Pushing the growth of the banana business was the marketing of bananas here in the US, especially between and after the wars. It was shocking to read, however, of the company's power in controlling governments (suggesting the term "Banana Republics"), in bringing in the US military to quell governments hostile to their purposes (e.g., when President Arbenz of Guatemala tried to break up the large plantations to return lands to the peasants in the 1950s - which was a successful effort by United Fruit - AND - when they partnered with the US government in 1961 to try to quell Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba - which was a dismal failure [and Castro's brother and political heir Raul is still the first secretary of the communist party in Cuba 48 years later!], and to read of the careless and cruel manner in which UF ended their work in some countries (tore up the railroads they'd built, destroyed bridges, left farms to rot).
The writing is often disjointed and the author writes from a somewhat "seat of God" perspective, but this is still a fascinating and important story, with important lessons about American military involvement in developing countries.
Readers may recognize that United Fruit, and especially a massacre of striking banana workers that took place in 1928, are central to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude.
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