Peeling back the recent history of bananas

The first time I ever saw an all-yellow banana—without black spots or unripe sections—was in a Canadian grocery store. I was so surprised by its pristine state that I took a photo and sent it to my family in Colombia, joking about how these had to be genetically modified. In my mind, natural bananas were not that colour, and their coveted yellow appearance was nothing but a marketing strategy. Evidently, I was wrong; bananas, at their favoured state of consumption, are all-yellow. The reason why I had never seen one with these characteristics, even though Colombia is one of the world’s primary banana exporters, is because Colombians do not get an ounce of what they harvest. Instead, we sell it abroad for higher prices, forcing national consumers and domestic producers to conform with second-best food, earnings, and commodities. In the twentieth century, this process (which is still alive and well today), gained Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica the derogatory name of “Banana Republics,” tying their economic progress to dependency on foreign-owned companies.

However, what is more astounding to me than the discovery of all-yellow bananas, is that the primary importers of the golden fruit are unaware of their turbulent past. In many ways, the banana industry in Latin America represents the battleground for the region’s independence, pitting its right for self-determination against the global desire for profit, which is inherently tied to foreign intervention and land exploitation. As I will describe below, the extensive presence of the United Fruit Company (UFC) as the strongest banana producer in the 1930s, coated Latin America in interminable waves of violence under the banner of American revenue.

Formed in 1899, the UFC was the result of a merger between the Boston Fruit Company and other industries that engaged in the production, transportation, and marketing of tropical agricultural products. It partook in the commercialisation of sugar, cocoa, and abaca, but bananas were its primary focus. As a matter of fact, it became such an economic powerhouse that it was known as El Pulpo (the octopus) due to its extensive outreach: it was connected to telecommunication companies, government officials, and owned or leased hectares of land in the countries where it operated. 

Its tentacles were inescapable. 

Similarly, its modus operandi was highly controversial, as it implemented extremely racial politics in its plantations to quell worker revolts. For instance, the UFC would incentivise racial conflict by placing rigid distinctions between Hispanic and West Indian workers, encouraging both groups to oppose one another in the pursuit of administrative privileges and rewards. These tensions were exacerbated by precarious working conditions, long work hours with no rest days, and low wages—sometimes paid in the form of redeemable vouchers rather than actual currency. It is unsurprising, then, that plantation workers throughout Latin America clamoured for better treatment, as they represented the tenets of the banana economy.

In 1928, workers in Ciénaga, Colombia, unionised and formed the Unión Sindical de Trabajadores del Magdalena (USTM) to organise an official strike. Appealing for a set of reasonable changes (among which was a six-day workweek and weekly payments), their withholding of labour threatened to decrease the UFC’s revenue through a reduction in banana exports. In the eyes of the United Fruit Company and its American investors, this constituted a direct challenge to the company’s powerful empire. Thus, the UFC employed its connections with the CIA to threaten the Colombian government—and the banana workers in Ciénaga—into compliance, promising to invade the country with the US Marine Corps if the revolt continued. Concerned by the ultimatum, the Colombian government sacrificed its sovereignty in the name of American interests, ordering its military to disperse the protest. In the end, the national army opened fire at the demonstrators, killing between 50 to 1000 people in an event that propelled the country into its long-standing civil conflict. 

In this particular instance, workers in Ciénaga tested the power of the United States over Colombia by disrupting the UFC’s operations. The oppressor, in turn, responded in the only way it knew how: removing the Global South’s autonomy to protect its foreign interests and filling its own pockets. 

A similar situation took place in Guatemala in 1954 when democratically-elected president Jacobo Árbenz decided to limit El Pulpo’s influence in domestic affairs. Passing Decree 900, the Guatemalan Congress ordered the expropriation of uncultivated land larger than 600 acres, planning to divide these territories among landless peasants. Previous owners—such as the UFC—would be compensated through government bonds in accordance with their tax contributions. Based on these guidelines, the UFC faced the loss of productive territory and of economic revenue, since governmental remuneration would not equate the value of their expropriated estates. Hence, by employing its connections with Washington, the UFC engineered a coup that ignited Guatemala’s brutal military dictatorship. Similarly to how it happened in Colombia, Guatemalan sovereignty was trampled by the American desire to maintain its profitable enterprise without consideration for innocent lives. One of the most painful consequences of the banana economy is that its main perpetrator has been renamed and redefined in an attempt to erase its harmful past. The UFC—currently known as Chiquita Brands International—is in control of about 14 percent of the global banana trade, and its connections with Washington and national politics remain questionable. In all the areas that matter, the UFC has succeeded at doing what it always wanted: reap Latin American profits without any consequences, as consumers still go to the grocery store and buy their products without thinking about how their all-yellow bananas should be coloured red, or without caring about those who fought in the name of the Global South’s political agency. Bananas are a symbol of Latin American subjugation, and if we continue to consume these coveted fruits without acknowledging the exploitative structures that produce them, we are complicit in strengthening El Pulpo’s network. Our dismissal and disavowal of the Banana Republics leave the region’s calls for worker rights buried with the despairing peasants in Guatemala, allowing us to forget that, despite being the backbone of the system, victims in Ciénaga rarely got to eat bananas for breakfast.