Banana Republic

Through two centuries of history guided by the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the Roosevelt Corollary (1905), and the Washington Conventions (1907), no Latin American nation has dangled at the end of the U.S. State Department's marionette strings more wretchedly than Nicaragua. From William Walker's crusading filibuster in the 1850s to the 1921-33 Marine incursion and occupation; from the kleptocratic, American-backed Somoza Dynasty of 1936-79 to the crippling economic sanctions imposed by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, today's Nicaragua harbors a particularly personal distrust--and dislike--of the Yankee colossus.

In a New York Times op-ed essay, Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, explains how oil is but one of a host of commodities with steadily rising prices.

• "Yes, We Will Have No Bananas," The New York Times, June 18, 2008.

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly -- by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening. The banana barons also marketed their product in ways that had never occurred to farmers or grocers before, by offering discount coupons, writing jingles and placing bananas in schoolbooks and on picture postcards. They even hired doctors to convince mothers that bananas were good for children.

Once bananas had become widely popular, the companies kept costs low by exercising iron-fisted control over the Latin American countries where the fruit was grown. Workers could not be allowed such basic rights as health care, decent wages or the right to congregate. (In 1929, Colombian troops shot down banana workers and their families who were gathered in a town square after church.) Governments could not be anything but utterly pliable. Over and over, banana companies, aided by the American military, intervened whenever there was a chance that any "banana republic" might end its cooperation. (In 1954, United Fruit helped arrange the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala.) Labor is still cheap in these countries, and growers still resort to heavy-handed tactics.

The 42nd Parallel, Part I of John Dos Passos's U. S. A. trilogy, offers the following prose poem describing railroad-cum-fruit magnate Minor C. Keith's--and by corollary, the U.S.'s--conquest of the Central American isthmus through the cultivation and exportation of the banana.

• "Emperor of the Caribbean," from The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos, 1930.

In 1882 there were twenty miles of railroad built and Minor Keith was a million dollars in the hole; the railroad had nothing to haul. Keith made them plant bananas so that the railroad might have something to haul, to market the bananas he had to go into the shipping business; this was the beginning of the Caribbean fruittrade. All the while the workers died of whisky, malaria, yellow jack, dysentery. Minor Keith's three brothers died.

Minor Keith didn't die.
He built railroads, opened retail stores up and down the coast in Bluefields, Belize, Limon, bought and sold rubber, vanilla, tortoiseshell, sarsaparilla, anything he could buy cheap he bought, anything he could sell dear he sold.
In 1898 in cooperation with the Boston Fruit Company he formed the United Fruit Company that has since become one of the most powerful industrial units in the world.
In 1912 he incorporated the International Railroads of Central America;
all of it built out of bananas;
in Europe and the United States people had started to eat bananas,
so they cut down the jungles through Central America to plant bananas,
and built railroads to haul the bananas,
and every year more steamboats of the Great White Fleet
steamed north loaded with bananas,
and that is the history of the American empire in the Caribbean,
and the Panama canal and the future Nicaragua canal and the marines and the battleships and the bayonets.

Why that uneasy look under the eyes, in the picture of Minor C. Keith the pioneer of the fruit trade, the railroad builder, in all the pictures the newspapers carried of him when he died?

The so-called "Knox Note," written from U.S. Secretary of State Philander Knox to Felipe Rodriguez, the Nicaraguan Charge d' Affaires in Washington, demanded that José Santos Zelaya, a popular reforming president, be replaced with someone more amenable to American geopolitical interests. Three days after Knox delivered his note to Rodriguez, President Zelaya announced his resignation to President Taft, who then sent in the Marines to oversee the installation of a friendly regime.

• "The Knox Note," by Philander Knox, Dec. 1, 1909.

Department of State, Washington, Dec. 1, 1909.

Sir:

...To insure the future protection of legitimate American interests, in consideration of the interests of the majority of the Central American republics, and in the hope of making more effective the friendly offices exerted under the Washington Conventions, the Government of the United States reserves for further consideration at the proper time the question of stipulating also that the Constitutional Government of Nicaragua obligate itself by convention for the benefit of all the Governments concerned as a guarantee for its future loyal support of the Washington Conventions and their peaceful and progressive aims.

From the foregoing it will be apparent to you that your office of Charge d' Affaires is at an end. I have the honor to inclose your passports for use in case you desire to leave this country. I would add at the same time that, although your diplomatic quality is terminated, I shall be happy to receive you, as I shall be happy to receive the representative of the revolution, each as the unofficial channel of communication between the Government of the United States and the de facto authorities to whom I look for the protection of American interests pending the establishment in Nicaragua of a government with which the United States can maintain diplomatic relations.

Accept, Sir, the renewed assurances of my high consideration.

(Signed) P. C. KNOX.
To Felipe Rodriguez, Esq., Washington, D. C.

Comments

[BrickSykes]

Sounds like everyone here could use a fresh read of "Thy Will Be Done" by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett. This is relatively recent history of OUR commandeering of nearly all Latin America for the benefit of Nelson Rockefeller's Corporate Buddies. ALL the names are there, along with the plot and execution of Che Guevera carried out by OUR people. No, I'm no subversive...I'm a veteran and patriot, but no Imperialist, and this is the history I'm not proud of as an American. Go get it and read it, and learn how today's corporatocracy started with Rocky's Shadow Government.

Brick

[RRonin]

Funny, we were never taught this in school, heck, I learned more about it after I enlisted in the Marines (albeit, it was decidedly one sided) but it did stimulate my curiosity about such "hidden" history.

[BARRISTER]

Now, WHO is THE Banna Republic?? We, of course!!!N

[willfarnaby]

How quickly they forget... if they ever knew.

How about Guatemala?

More wholesome goodness from The World's #1 Terrorist Nation.

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In a much-anticipated report released last week, Guatemala’s independent Historical Clarification Commission concluded that the United States gave money and training to a Guatemalan military that committed “acts of genocide” against the country’s Mayan population during the most brutal armed conflict in Central America.

The report contradicts years of official denials of the torture, kidnapping and execution of thousands of civilians in a conflict that the commission estimated had killed over 200,000 people. The commission, set up as part of a United Nations-supervised peace accord that ended the conflict in 1996, concluded that the Guatemalan government or allied paramilitary troops were responsible for more than 90% of the 42,000 human rights violations, 29,000 of which ended in death or disappearances. It does not name any of the perpetrators.

The report also listed the American training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques as a key factor “which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation.” The findings on the U.S. role in the conflict are based on once-secret files provided to the commission by the U.S. government itself, a cooperation that many say should set a precedent for similar investigations in other nations–especially in Latin America.

[OlongapoEd]

(gasp!) Such heinous Averica-bashing!!! All those benighted people down there should kiss our feet for attempting to instill a proper love of democracy in them. This is the thanks we get for being the Light of the World!
(of *course* that was sarcasm)

[PioneerKing]

"no Latin American nation has dangled at the end of the U.S. State Department's marionette strings more wretchedly than Nicaragua"
This statement is grossly exaggerated there are other countries such as Panama, Mexico, Equador, Bolivia ... which would better suit your metaphor than Nicaragua

[gsuescum]

I'm from Panama and I've been to Nicaragua. Nicaragua is a wonderful place with warm and friendly people. Panama has recovered quickly but Nicaragua is still trying to get out from under the effects of the war we sponsored.

We've messed up every 'incursion' we've made into Latin America.

[TrevorAlan]

Our foreign policy has done a lot of BAD things to a lot of southern countires but the author has a point, Niaragua or guatamala probably are the longest, worst-case scenarios.