lmperiali~m in Central America

As European countries furthered Imperialism In Central America their economic penetration of

Africa and Asia during the 19th century , the United States continued its westward expansion, extending its borders to the Pacific. While the United States had had an interest in the Western Hemisphere since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, it was only after the Spanish-American War in 1898 that this nation began to exploit the economic potential in Central American countries.

The introduction of the banana into the United States in 1870 started businessmen and companies thinking about profits they could make in Central America. For economic as well as political reasons, President Theodore Roosevelt became interested in areas south of the border and instituted the "Big Stick" policy. Later, President Taft, stressing the areas' economic importance, pursued a policy of "dollar diplomacy." With governmental approval, the stage was set for U.S. businesses to underdeveloped nations. United Fruit was one such corporation. It set out to make it mark in Central America and establish a monopoly in the banana trade.

Although United Fruit was not the only company to produce and trade in Central America, it was by far the strongest and and its verv name came to be associated with "Yankee Imperialism." From its inception in 1899 -- an amalgam of several other companies -- it grew to such proportions that it accounted for 65% of banana exports to the United States before World War I. How this came about says much about the history of so called "banana republics" -- nations whose internal affairs were heavily influenced, or even taken over, by foreign business interests. It is a study of brilliant organization and initiative in seizing control of a profitable market. However, United Fruit's success was not only duet to hard-nosed entrepreneurship. It was also characterized by destructive tactics toward competition, illegal activities and clout with local politicians. One key factor, though, that made all the others work: control over natural resources. For United Fruit was a giant not only in the business of agriculture but also in the role of land owner, and that was how the company secured its dominance.

United Fruit's growth in the banana republics went hand in hand with its acquisition of natural resources. The company owned vast areas in countries such as Costa Rica, Honduras , Guatemala, Panama, and Cuba. In Honduras , United Fruit controlled over 400,000 acres, 40% obtained free due to grants. In country after country, this firm was a leading real estate holder , owning or leasing over three million acres before World War II. Control of these lands made United Fruit the most successful corporation in Central America.

To sell huge quantities of bananas to American consumers, it was necessary to transport them quickly from the interiors of the jungles to the ports. It was expeditious, therefore, that United Fruit get control of the railroads and also engage in rai~road construction, through its various subsidiaries. As an inducement, local governments granted the company from 250 to 500 acres for each: mile of railroad construction. United Fruit received alternate blocks of land , with each other section going to the people of the nation where track was being laid (similar to the railroad land grant system in the United States). However, since large areas are required for banana cultivation, the company had intermediaries lease the land back from native landholders. This enabled the company to obtain vast acreage with a minimal investment. United Fruit was thus able to use much of each nation's agricultural land and at the same time reap high profits for its stockholders.

Other American companies, too, gained control of natural resources and thus monopolized trade. This monopoly of land created an atmosphere where many landless peasants had little choice but to work for American companies. Controlling natural resources was an important step in monopolizing other stages of the banana trade, which United Fruit accomplished with tremendous success.

Background Questions:

I. What was the goal of the "Big Stick" and "Dollar Diplomacy" policies? 2. What accounted for the growth of the United Fruit Company? 3. How did United Fruit gain control over national resources in Central America? 4. Compare the land grants received by United Fruit and the raifroad land grants in the

United States. 5. Why was control over natural resources important for US companies in Central America? 6. Is the United States engaged in imperialism today? Explain your answer.

http:/ /www.landandfreedom.org/us history/us 16.htm

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Bananas· How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World - Peter Chapman - Book Review - New York Times

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March 2, 2008

Big Fruit By DANIEL KURTZ-PHELAN

When the Banana Company arrives in

Macondo, the jungle town in Gabriel Garcia

Marquez's "One Hundred Years of

Solitude," it brings with it first modernity

and then doom. "Endowed with means that

had been reserved for Divine Providence in

former times," Garcia Marquez writes, the

company "changed the pattern of the rains,

BANANAS

How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World.

By Peter Chapman.

224 pp. Canongate. $24.

accelerated the cycle of harvests and moved the river from where it had always been." It imported

"dictatorial foreigners" and "hired assassins with machetes" to run the town; it unleashed a "wave of

bullets" on striking workers in the plaza. When the Banana Company leaves, Macondo is "in ruins."

If Macondo is meant to represent Latin America, it is fitting that "the Banana Company" plays so central a

role in its development and decline. For much of the 20th century, the American banana company United

Fruit dominated portions of almost a dozen countries in the Western Hemisphere. It was, Peter Chapman

writes in "Bananas," his breezy but insightful history of the company, "more powerful than many nation

states ... a law unto itself and accustomed to regarding the republics as its private fiefdom." United Fruit

essentially invented not only "the concept and reality of the banana republic," but also, as Chapman shows,

the concept and reality of the modern banana. "If it weren't for United Fruit," he observes, "the banana

would never have emerged from the dark, then arrived in such quantities as to bring prices that made it available to all."

Today, "the banana is the world's fourth major food, after rice, wheat and milk." But when a Brooklyn-born

twentysomething named Minor Keith planted a few banana cuttings next to a railroad track in Costa Rica

in the early 1870s, it was virtually unknown outside its native environs. Keith and his partners soon

realized how great the potential profits were - especially if, along with growing bananas, they could control

railroads, shipping and Central American governments (to that end, Keith married the beautiful daughter

of a Costa Rican president). Only then did they set out to turn the banana into a product for the masses.

Until its demise a hundred years later, United Fruit controlled as much as 90 percent of the market.

Throughout all of this, United Fruit defined the modern multinational corporation at its most effective -

and, as it turned out, its most pernicious. At home, it cultivated clubby ties with those in power and helped

pioneer the modern arts of public relations and marketing. (After a midcentury makeover by the "father of

public relations," Edward Bernays, the company started pushing a cartoon character named Senorita

Chiquita Banana.) Abroad, it coddled dictators while using a mix of paternalism and violence to control its

workers. "As for repressive regimes, they were United Fruit's best friends, with coups d'etat among its

specialties," Chapman writes. "United Fruit had possibly launched more exercises in 'regime change' on the

banana's behalf than had even been carried out in the name of oil."

In its final pages, Chapman's witty, energetic narrative veers off into po.Jemie, straining to flaunt some

direct contemporary relevance. Today's supporters of multinational corporations, Chapman declares,

"would have us all as banana republics." But his heart is more in the storytelling than in the lecturing, and

he never does much with these sweeping proclamations.

Still, that is not to say there are no echoes of United Fruit today. Chapman could have noted, for example,

that the comoanv's successor in the banana business. Chiauita Brands International. has admitted to

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i anas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World - Peter Chapman - Book Review - New York Times

paying nearly $2 million to right-wing death squads in Colombia. And the blow-back from United Fruit's

way of doing business still haunts Latin America. Just look at Guatemala - once United Fruit's most

treasured possession, now one of the Western Hemisphere's most violent coun tries.

"Guatemala was chosen as the site for the company's earliest development activi ties," a former United Fruit

executive once explained, "because at the time we entered Central America, Guatemala's government was

the region's weakest, most corrupt and most pliable." When a left-wing democratic president named

Jacobo Arbenz tried to roll back the company's dominance in the i95os (by, among other things,

redistributing its fallow land), United Fruit executives saw it as an affront - and set out to help pressure

the United States government to engineer a coup. Fortunately for them, virtually every major American

official involved in the plotting had a family or business connection to the company itself.

A young Argentine traveler named Che Guevara happened to be in Guatemala when Arbenz was

overthrown in 1954. After that, Che told his mother, "I left the path ofreason." And so, too, did Latin

America. That day marked a turning point, the end of a hopeful age of reform and the beginning of a bloody

age of revolution and reaction. Over the next four decades, hundreds of thousands of people - 200,000 in

Guatemala alone - were killed in guerrilla attacks, government crackdowns and civil wars across Latin

America.

A resident of Garcia Marquez's Macondo provides an epitaph: "Look at the mess we've got ourselves into

just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas."

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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Page 2 of 2

Banana Kings I The Nation

Katrina vanden Heuvel: What Cliven Bundy Learned From the Koch Brothers aa

Banana Kings The history of banana cunrvallon 1s nfe With labor and en\11tonmenta1 abuse, corporate skulduggery and genetic expenments gone awry

Emily Biuso Fd;rti<"v ·•!: .M!!'H I Thi.~ articlt! appeared in the Mardi 17, 2uo8 edition o/The Nation .

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The banana is the most popular fruit in the country, and apparently the most popular fruit

among publishers this year. Two new books detail the history of the fruit itself and the torrid

past of the banana industry, which is dominated by the ubiquitous, oppressive United Fruit

Company. With similarly ambitious titles--Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped

the World and Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World--the books promise not

a dull, compulsory soup-to-nuts account of the subject but a tale of corporate skulduggery,

an irreversible lesson in agricultural folly and a musing on the banana's place on our

collective palate. A reader may be forgiven for wondering whether the story of a simple,

unassuming fruit could provide such intrigue. Have Peter Chapman and Dan Koeppel bitten

off more than they can chew? No, for as both authors demonstrate with convincing

arguments, the impact of United Fruit's banana on multinational corporate malfeasance,

current agricultural practices and food consumption patterns is no small, sweet-smelling

thing.

•• !'-

Emily Biuso Emily Biuso is on the editonal staff of The New York Times Magazine.

Hooked: Bottomless Appetites and Overfished Seas £Environmental Issues Non-ficUon

EnV1ronment1

Three new books chronicle our wanton depletion of ocean life.

ETni lyBiuso

Are Voters Ready to Dump Liebennan? <Political Figures , Parties

Senate Pofitic:s)

Evidence is mounting that Connecticut Democrats are dismayed by Senator Joseph Lieberman's support of President Bush and the Iraq War, giving impetus to assertions that voters are ready to dump him.

ETni ly Biuso

Chapman's scope is narrower and more direct than

Koeppel's. A British reporter who has been following

United Fruit since the 1970s, when he wrote his thesis on

the company at the University of Sussex, Chapman has

written an impressive indictment of a deeply flawed

corporation. And there's no shortage of material here;

United Fruit (known now as Chiquita) was truly a terrorizing

company--a kind of Halliburton, McDonald's, Nike and

Archer Daniels Midland all rolled into one. United Fruit set

the precedent for the propaganda, exploitation and

imperialism of modern-day corporate plunderers.

In many ways, United Fruit was the original agribusiness--if

an accidental one. The seeds of the company began with

Minor Keith, a young Brooklyn entrepreneur who ventured

into the Costa Rican jungle in the 1870s to build a national

railroad. The project cost more than 5,000 workers their

lives but birthed a successful side business. Jn cleared

areas of the jungle Keith planted banana cuttings to sell to

the workers and eventually to an American schooner

captain who hooked him up with Andrew Preston, the

Boston importer with whom he would officially launch

United Fruit in 1899. Their timing was good, as Americans

were beginning a love affair with the exotic fruit that

seemed the quintessence of upper-class privilege.

United Fruit was not the first company to introduce the banana to Americans, but it was the

most successful in making it widely available. As the American appetite for the fruit grew, so

too did the corporation's appetite for market dominance. Pursuing profits and fleeing

diseases afflicting their crops, the United Fruit men skipped from one country to the next in

Central and South America, perfecting their pattern: strong-arm their way in; destroy natural

habitat to make way for banana plantations; enslave the native population in low-wage,

dangerous servitude; suppress labor movements; watch their banana crops fall prey to

blight; spray the groves with toxic pesticides that also poisoned the workforce; and, when

spraying failed, abandon the land for greener pastures on which to inflict their 'progress."

This explains why countries in the region came to be known as "banana republics," a term

first coined by 0. Henry in his 1904 novel Cabbages and Kings. The behavior also earned the

company an enduring nickname: El Pulpo--the octopus. And no wonder: By the late 1920s,

United Fruit was an international conglomerate, outstretched tentacles everywhere. The

company owned 1.6 million acres of land, employed 67,000 workers and did business in

thirty-two countries. It was worth more than $100 million and would stop at nothing to keep

http://www. th ena ti on. com I article I banana-kings

I 4 / 29 / 14 8:37 PM

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UUSll\e::;::; 11u111111111y.

The company played a major role in fomenting political unrest in countries whose policies

didn't favor its bottom line. These included the 1910 coup in Honduras orchestrated by Sam

Zemurray, future president of United Fruit, and the 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan ruling

government, encouraged by the corporation and carried out by the CIA. Capitalizing on the

anticommunist hysteria of the day. the corporation lobbied the US government and the

United Nations to oust Jacobo Arbenz, the country's president , after he expropriated its

plantations as part of a vast land-reform effort. The Guatemalan coup, dubbed Operation

Success, left more than 200,000 Guatemalans dead.

United Fruit's brutal tactics extended, naturally, to labor issues. Low wages and dangerous

working conditions were the norm, and any attempt by the workers to assert their rights was

met with harsh consequences. In 1928 thousands of striking United Fruit workers in

Colombia gathered in a town square to call for a six-day week, an eight-hour day, free

medical treatment and wages paid in cash rather than scrip redeemable only at the company

store. Government troops were called into the square to protect US interests, and after giving

a five-minute warning, the Colombian military fired on the crowd with machine guns. The

strike was broken and the massacre covered up. No one knows how many were killed that

day--it's widely believed that the bodies were buried in the forest or dumped in the sea--but

a United Fruit estimate Oikely low) put fatalities at more than 1,000. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

drew on the event in his 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Chapman views the case of United Fruit as a moral lesson for businesses, consumers and

citizens; he concludes his tale with an excoriation, chiding not only the company but also the

forces--namely, us--that allow its familiar {if extreme) story to play out over and over again:

"We continually put ourselves in a position to be surprised. We assume the best. .. we are

shocked when it is revealed that we have been 'sold' a lie. Then we get embarrassed and try

to forget, as we did with United Fruit.. .. Today's advocates of multinational power would have

us all as banana republics."

Emily Biuso ,: v 1111 :--.L ··.•: _.,. ·" Thi~ article <1ppeured in the Mcm:h 17, 2008 edition o/The Nut ion.

Share Tweet g .. 1 181 TEXT SIZE 00 SUBSCR!SE

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Stephen Mill ies. How United Fruit robbed and killed the people of Central America

.,.J Docun11•nl' menu

Date: Thu. 26 Sep 1996 18:49:26 CDT Reply-To: Workers World <Ww@wwpublish.com> Sender: Activists Mailing List <ACTIV-L@MIZZOU !.MISSOURI.EDU> From: NY Transfer News Collective <nyt@blythe.org> Subject: United Fruit's Central American Murders

Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 3. 1996 issue of Workers World newspaper

How United Fruit robbed and killed the people of Central America

By Stephen Millies, in Workers World, 3 October 1996

"It's important that I don't get too knowledgeable about the past."

So spoke Wallace Booth on becoming president of United Brands back in 1975. Booth had plenty of reason to wish fo r amnesia.

After all , he had just succeeded Eli Black who left United Brands by jumping through his office window on the 44th floor of the old Pan Am Building in New York.

Black was just about to be exposed for giving a $1.25-million bribe to the president of Honduras.

United Brands was then the new name for the notorious United Fruit banana monopoly. Now it's got another new name: Chiquita Brands International.

For decades this ruthless corporation dominated the economies of the countries of Central America.

Chiquita still owns or rents over 267 square miles of farmland in Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras . It operates a fleet of 42 refrigerated ships and hundreds of miles of railroad.

ALL THE NEWS FIT TO PRINT?

In mid-September an agreement was signed in Guatemala between the government and guerrilla commanders . News is finally coming out about the grisly background of the long war there.

In the 1980s alone, the Guatemalan military and its death squads killed over 100,000 people. Entire Indian villages were massacred.

A front-page article in the Sept. 20 New York Times made a rare admission. It said that "the conflict had its roots in a 1954 coup sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency."

The Times then went on to claim that "most of Guatemala's 10.5 million people can no longer remember what started it."

But United Fruit--now Chiquita--remembers.

What brought down the wrath of this company and of the CIA was President Jacobo Arbenz Guzm n's attempt to distribute uncultivated lands owned by United Fruit to landless peasants.

The big Boston banks behind United Fruit were determined that Arbenz must go. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the order for a CIA-staged invasion that toppled the elected Guatemalan government.

Among the coup's first victims were 45 assassinated leaders of the banana workers on United Fruit's plantations.

Seven years later, United Fruit paid back its debt to the CIA by donating two of its ships to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

hllp I /www.hanford-hwp.com/archives/4 7 /04 3 .html

4/29/14 9:22 PM

Page l of

hen Mlllies, How United Fru it robbed and kilted the people or Central America

The Cuban people--under the leadership of Fidel Castro-- remembered well the tragedy of Guatemala . They defeated the CIA invasion . And they took back all the land that United Fruit owned in Cuba--land that today's Helms-Burton Law is meant to return to U.S. corporate owners .

WHERE'S THE WAR CRIMES TRIAL?

The U.S . capitalist establi shment has recently been trying to organize a so-called war-crimes trial in the Netherlands . Its aim is justify U.S. intervention in Bosnia , once part of socialist Yugoslavia .

Where's the war-crimes trial for the massacres in Central America?

For the l 00,000-plus victims in Guatemala? For the thousands of victims of Ol iver North's Contra war against Nicaragua? And the countless victims of the death squads in El Salvador and Honduras?

U.S. government money paid for this terror. And it was the U.S. Army that trai ned so many of these assassins at the School of the Americas in Panama--a country itself left with unmarked mass graves and many missing after the U .S. invasion in 1989.

But the U.S. government just did the bidding of United Fruit. United Fruit reall y should be in the dock .

United Fruit sold its properties in Guatemala to Del Monte in 1972 for $20 mill ion .

Under its new name of Chiquita Brands, it still maintains its empire in the rest of Central

America . It's controlled by the Lindner family in Cincinnati through the American Financial Group--a big insurance company.

Just one of these Lindners--Stephen Craig--owned 23 ,809 ,445 shares of Chiqui ta Brands stock in April 1992. Their market value was $351,809,445 at the time.

Meanwhile Del Monte has been gobbled up by RJR Nabisco-- the huge cancer-stick and cookie conglomerate .

Another big player is Castle & Cooke , which owns the Dole brand . (No relation to Bob Dole.)

These are the criminal companies that have benefited from the CIA wars that have left the people of Central America bloodied and impoverished. How can there be justice in Guatemala, or Honduras, or El Salvador, without at the very least a major reparations program paid for by those who became multi-millionaires off the suffering of the people?

Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St ., NY, NY 10011 ; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com . Web: http://www.workers.org

4/29/14 9 22 PM

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, Umted Fru11 Comp•nv - ctuonoloc;w 4/29/14 9 S.<; PM

1 !o:ne >.hour rhe Society Chron0lo~y Uingraph1es B1hliogrJphy Great WhHe Fleet \ 1anuscriprs Forum

Chronology

\ \ 1848 11 Jan. 19.Minor COQQer K~ith is born in Brooklyn, New York

I B Copl"" Loreow D~ ''"' '"" mo '""""~ ofboooo" '" Jomolra '°'' """'"g 1870 per bunch and sells them in Jersey City for $2 each. After this success he and the

Bostonian entrepreneur Andrew Preston join efforts to develop a banana market in Boston.

EJ Keith travels to Costa Rica to work on a railroad project his uncle Henry Meiggs was building for the national government

EJ Kfilth. when looking for cheap food for his workers. plants banana trees adjacent to his railroad tracks.

8 Extremely difficult working conditions pay a high toll on Kfilth's workers. Nearly 5,000 men die. inducting Meiggs_ Keith takes charge of the project

EJ Samuel Zmurri is born in Besarabia, Russia_ When immigrating to the United States he changes his name to Samu~! Z~m!,Jrrsff

EJ Baker and Preston establish the Boston Fruit Company as Americans increase their demand for fruit Preston takes charge of tropical enterprises while Baker controls management in Boston.

EJ After facing incredible difficulties. Keith finishes the railroad from San Jose to Puerto Limon. However. the low number of passengers using the train made it unprofitable. Keith decides to use it to export bananas from the plantations he had created in the early 1870s_ The first shipments proves to be a great success.

EJ Young Samuel Zemurray arrives to the United States from Besarabia. He settles with his family in Selma, Alabama

11895 1 Zemurray enters in the banana business marketing the fruit in Mobile, Alabama

B Keith purchases a 50% of the share in the Snyder Banana Co. which produces bananas on 6,000 acres at Bocas del Toro, Panama.

B April-December: Spanish-American war. The United States defeats Spain and occupies Cuba and Puerto Rico.

~

Keith's bank, Hoadley and Company, goes bankrupted. Keith loses $1 .5 million. In order to solve his difficult financial situation. Keith goes to Boston and arranges with Andrew~ a merger of his company and the Boston Fruit Company. Prior to the negotiation Preston. Baker, and Keith control 75% of the banana market in the U.S. In March 3oth. they establish the United Fruit Company.

1899 April. The newly already incorporated United Fruit Company acquires seven I independent companies that have been operating in Honduras.

The Sicilian immigrant Joseph, Luca. and Felix Vaccaro and Salvador D'Antoni begin importing bananas to New Orleans from La Ceiba, Honduras_

~

11900 I The Vaccaro Brothers import 6,000 stems of bananas into New Orleans beginning a successful banana import business independent from United Fruit

tJ The government of Guatemala hires United Fruit Company to manage the country's national post service.

Elders & Fyffes Co. is established in Great Britain with the purpose of shipping and distributing of Jamaican bananas within the United Kingdom. With British government support, the company becomes a formidable competitor_

EJ The Hubbard-ZfillJJ.!rrav_ Company is established in New Orleans. ~

After a series of weather catastrophes and financial problems, plus strong competition from United Fruit. the directors of Elders & Fyffes decide to sell part of its stock to the American company_ United Fruit eventually acquires 50% of Elders & Fyffes stock opening and opens a door to the European market

The plant disease known as "Panama Disease" appears for the first time in United Fruit's plantations in Panama_ The disease attacks the plant's trees roots cutting off

"' ,..,

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11·· - ·- ·- · -··r r ·, ···· - -- -··· - · · ··· · -- - · -·· •··· -· r ···· ·-· ··- · · ·· ··-··--·-- --- - - ·- -

1

United Fruit launches the S.S. Venus, the first refrigerated produce boat. 1903

November. Separatist groups in the Colombian state of Panama declare j independence. The US government, in support of the separatists, sends part of its

I Navy to prevent the Colombian government from recovering the state. As soon as Panama's independence is assured, the US obtains sovereignty of a strip of land 1n

1 which it plans on building an interoceanic canal.

United States troops intervene in Honduras.

United States troops intervene in the Dominican Republic.

~;=======================================~

11904

1 :=G=u=a=te=m=a=l=a=n=d=i=ct=a=to=r=M= a=n=u=e=I =E=s=tr=a=d=a=C=ab=r=e=r=a=g=r=a=n=ts=U=n=it=ed=F=ru=it=a=n=i=n=e=ty=-=n=in=e=y=e=a=r~ concession to construct and maintain the country's main rail line from Guatemala City to Puerto Barrios

8 ~goes to Honduras to study the possibility of creating his own banana export corporation.

~ :================================~

1906

United Fruit purchases 50% of the shares of the Vaccaro Brothers Company which had operated in Honduras. Vaccaro had organized export plantations in that country as part of a contract to build a railway between La Ceiba and the interior of the country.

The United States Army invades Cuba. The American occupation government remains until 1909.

The Vaccaro Brothers incorporate their banana import business in New Orleans.

- ~======================================================! DI United States troops invade Nicaragua and establish a protectorate in the country.

CJ i United States troops land in Honduras during the war with Nicaragua.

~ Through the Anti-trust legislation the American government forces United Fruit to L::J sell its Vaccaro shares.

~ The United States Army invades Nicaragua. -

With a loan of two thousand dollars~ buys five thousand acres along the Cuyamel River in Honduras to establish plantations. Soon after~ purchases the land, he discovers that the Honduran President, Miguel Davila, would not grant him the tax, land, and transportation concessions that he was seeking. With this disappointment in mind, ~ decides to organize and finance a military coup that would replace Davila with Manuel Bonilla. Slipping past US agents sent by Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, Zemurray's expedition sails from New Orleans. The expedition is composed of one small ship captained by Lee Christmas and Guy "Machine Gun" Molony and one box of arms. Within weeks after Christmas

1910 and Molony arrive at the port of Trujillo, the government falls and Davila is replaced by Bonilla. The new President awards~ generously and grants him the contracts he needs to incorporate the Hubbard-~ Company in Honduras.

, The new company would soon become a serious competitor to United Fruit ..

United Fruit buys the remaining Elders & Fyffes stock. Elders & Fyffes acquires 8,000 acres of banana lands in the Canary Islands.

The "Panama Disease" appears in the banana plantations of Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

11911 I The Hubbard-~ Company changes its name to Cuyamel Fruit Company -~·s Guatemala Railroad Company becomes The International Railways of Central America (IRCA)

After a fierce price competition against the United Fruit Company, the Atlantic Fruit Company declares bankrupcy. Atlantic had been United Fruit main competitor in Costa Rica; after the bankruptcy United Fruit takes control of the country's banana

1912 exports.

The United States Army sends troops to Cuba.

The United States marines land in Panama during the presidential elections.

The United States Army intervenes in Honduras.

~=======================================================: United Fruit gets two railway and land concessions in Honduras. They are managed by the company's subsidiaries the Tela Railroad Company and the Truxillo Railroad Company. These concessions allow the company to begin to produce bananas in large scale in Honduras. Concessions include 162,000 hectares of land from which 71,000 were granted in change of the railroad construction.

1913 The Senate Finance Committee of the United States includes bananas in the proposed Underwood-Simmons Tariff. Bananas would be taxed at five cents a bunch. This initiative faces strong opposition from the New York Times, the Tariff Reform Committee of the Reform Club, The Banana Buyers' Protective Association, and the Housewives' League. The lobby made by these organizations eventually succeeds and the US government permits the tax free import of bananas to continue.

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lJmtt:d Frutt Co mp.my - Chronoloqy ~/2911~ 9.55 Pf\.\

I Ii The United States Navy fights against rebels in Santo Domingo, Dominican I ' Republic. 1914

i LJ The United States Army invades Haiti. I

i I BI "m"~'' ~p,;oy beoom"' UoHed FruH bigge" oompe<i<m I

I Standard Fruit buys most of the ice factories in New Orleans. The ice was needed to I 1915 refrigerate the banana ships. After this, the company's president Joseph Vaccaro

became known as the "Ice King."

The United States Army invades Haiti.

§_] The United States Army invades the Dominican Republic.

q The United States Army invades Cuba . The American occupation lasts until 1933.

The US War Trade Board proposes a complete embargo on bananas in order to free the United Fruit and Standard Fruit ships for military purposes. The embargo

I L___J plan was eventually dropped.

The workers of the banana plantations in Northern Colombia go on strike. They DI dom'°d '''~'Y lobm -ek ood Oghl-hoo< ''"'" doy pl"' heol~ rnre . The "''" I does not succeed.

The United States Army intervenes in Panama and keeps a police force in the I country.

~ The United States marines land in Honduras during presidential campaign.

I B I The United States Army lands in Guatemala and fights for two weeks against the so-called unionists. 8 i Improvements in banana-drying technology encourage United Fruit to promote I I consumption of dried banana chips. The company wanted to use this as a way to market discarded bananas or plantains.

8 The song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn reaches incredibly high levels of popularity, selling 25,000 copies a day. Afterwards, Silver tours the country with his Banana Band.

- I The Vaccaro Brothers re-organize their old company and establish the Standard Fruit Company

I November 7. The Guatemalan government gives a concession to the United Fruit for all the uncultivated lands in a 100 kilometers territory.

I \ Dr. Sidney Haas makes it public that bananas are a good cure for children suffering from celiac disease. United Fruit used this finding to promote banana consumption

1924

1

in the following decades.

United Fruit subsidiary Fruit Dispatch Company publishes a recipe book promoting the consumption of bananas with dry cereal, suggesting in particular corn flakes with bananas and milk. This combination proved to be an incredible success among consumers. In the following years cereal companies made deals with United Fruit to advertise this new breakfast. One of them was to include a coupon for bananas in cereal boxes.

The United States Army intervenes in Honduras during elections.

~ The United States Army lands in Panama during a general strike. B I The Vaccaros change their company from Standard Fruit Company into the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company. B The ""''emoloo go~mmeo< e'''"''""' '"·''° ooo~I reo< fo«he 100 kilometers it gave to United Fruit in 1924.

7

United Fruit purchases the California-Guatemala Fruit Corporation which exported fruit from the Guatemalan Pacific Coast to Western USA

-

I I The workers of the banana plantations in Colombia go on strike in December. They I demand written contracts, eight-hour days, six-day weeks and the elimination of \ food coupons. The strike turns into the largest labor movement ever witnessed in the country and radical members of the Liberal Party and members of the Socialist I

1928 and Communist Parties participate strongly. The national labor union bigwigs Carlos Mahecha and Maria Cano traveled to the banana zone to organize the strike. They counted with the help of Italian and Spanish anarchist immigrants for this .

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is born in Aracataca, a town in the banana zone of Magdalena, Colombia.

-n Joo"ruy (COombio) Tho"'°'°' ~<ke< ""ke ooo<ioo°' '°' ge<' °'"""' '"'°'"° since it is supported by the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party, which controls the government, decides to send the Army into the Banana Zone. During a demonstration in the main plaza of the city of Cienaga the Army, commanded by I Carlos Cortes Vargas fires on the strikers and leaves an undetermined (and di~p~t~dL n~'.11b~r. ~.f ~tri.k~rs dead. '."~e ?o~er~:nt ~:c~~r:s. ~ _s!ate ,of sie2~ in the

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d Fruit Comp.;iny - Chronology

1929

IG.il.lliill denounces the government's action at the National Congress, on the radio, and public speeches. Gaitan's denounciations help undermine the Conservative

I Party's reputation and the party is defeated in the next year's election.

I I May 1st (Honduras) : The Communist Party creates the Federacion Obrera

Hondure8a. This federation creates "Action Committees" among the banana workers.

November: After an unsuccessful price war against ~·s Cuyamel Fruit Company, United Fruit decides to buy~ out. United Fruit sells~ $31 ,500,000 in the company's stocks in exchange for all Cuyamel stock. Zemurray becomes the biggest shareholder of United Fruit.

United Fruit's subsidiary, Fruit Dispatch, hires a group of consultants to do a market research on American banana consumption. The consultants' results says that bananas were consumed by a large sector of the country's middle class and were considered the perfect food for babies. After this report, United Fruit doubled Fruit Dispatch's advertisement budget and begins an aggressive campa ign in national newspapers and magazines targeted to middle class families.

Fruit Dispatch establishes the Education Department in addition to the Advertising Department. The Education Department prints educational materials for classroom use promoting banana consumption.

~ :============================================================:==:

B Louisiana's governor Huey Long denounces Samuel Zemurray in the U.S. Senate for being involved in corrupted businesses in Central America

July (Honduras): The Action Committees of the Federacion Obrera Honduref)a organize a strike in the banana plantations. The strike has little support from the workers and is cracked down easily.

B~A=p=n=.l=(=H=o=n=d=ura==s=):=T=h=e=g=o=v=e=rn=m==e=n=t =de=c=l=a=re=s=m==a=rt=ia=l =la=w==o=n=th=e==n=o=rt=h=c=o=a=st=a=tt=e=r===;

~931 :::

w==o=rk=e=r=s=a=tt=a=c=k=m=i=li=ta=ry==b=a=rr=a=c=k=s=a=t=T=r=u=ji=llo==a=n=d=T=e=l=a=. T==h=e=r=e=b=e=lli=o=n=i=s=o=rc=h=e=s=t=ra=t=e=d=b=y=:

former Secretary of War General Gregorio Ferrera.

June (Honduras): Ferrera's rebellion ends with his dead in a skirmish with Government troops.

The United Fruit transfers its railroad in Colombia to the national government which, in turn, leases it to the company for thirty years more.

Honduras: Labor unrest among United Fruit workers follow the company's decision 1932 to fi re BOO workers.

1933

Guatemala: Juan Pablo Wainwright, leader of the 1930 banana workers' strike in Honduras, is assassinated .

The United States Navy intervenes in the Marti Revolt, El Salvador. :::=================================================================: During the first years of the Great Depression the shares' price of United Fruit fall dramatically and its profits decrease from $44.6 million in 1932 to 6.2 in 1932. The members of the board of directors vote to name Zemurray general director of the company. Two weeks later the price of the company's stock doubles. ~·s first move is to replace the existing tropical managers with experienced managers and former employees of Cuyamel. He also improves transport and intra-company communication while reorganizing the company with a clear hierarchy of employeespecialization.

During the 1930s Zemurray uses his fortune in several philanthropic works such as a large donation to the New Orleans Child Guidance Clinic and financial backing of The Nation magazine

~~=========================================================:

B Anastasio Somoza takes power in Nicaragua. His family continues to rule until the late 1970s.

B ::OA=n==e=p=id=e=m=y=o=f=S=i=g=at=o=k=a=(=a=fu=n=g=u=s=t=h=a=t =at=ta=c=k=s=t=h=e=le=a=v=e=s=o=f=t=h=e=b=a=n=a=na==p=la=n=t=a=n=d=;

causes the fruit to ripen prematurely) appears in Standard Fruit's Honduras

1935 plantations and threatens to wipe out the entire crop. The companies begin large-scale spraying programs. The first experiments with Bourdeaux mixture (made up of copper sulfate, hydrated lime, and water) prove to be successful at controlling the disease but extremely expensive.

EJ United Fruit Company signs an ninety-nine year concession with Guatemala President General Jorge Ubico and opens its second plantation in the country in the region of Tiquisate.

~============================================~ United Fruit merges with Minor Keith's International Railways of Central America

(IRCA) B B

~U==n=ite=d=F=ru=i=t'=s=H=o=m=e=E=c=o=n=o=m=i=cs=D=e=p=a=rt=m=e=n=t =p=u=b=lis=h=e=s=th=e=s=c=h=o=o=l=te=a=c=h=e=r=m= a=n=u=a=I ~J entitled "A Study of the Banana: The Everyday Use and Food Value." The manual

1939 gave a detailed description of the food value of bananas and gave suggestions of preparation. The success of this manual led the company to publ ish other school manuals in the following years for elementary to high-school students. .

DI Samuel~. President of the United Fruit, establishes the Escuela Agricola l Panamericana in Honduras. The institution is intended to be a free higher-education

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un.~ ed fn11t Company· Chronoloqv

/ · "-~ f i school financed by the company specialized in agricultural research, and attended L___J I by Central American students.

[1942:'1 I During World War II United Fruit reduces its operations to the minimum level ~I because of the presence of German submarines in the Caribbean.

EJ United Fruit hires cartoonist Dik Browne (the creator of Hagar the Horrible) to create a cartoon based on the Latin American singer and movie star Carmen Miranda. The cartoon was baptized as Miss Chiquita Banana and was part of the advirtisement campaign the company was preparing for when the war was over.

:==============================================~

[

--1 Juan Jose Arevalo takes power as the new President of Guatemala He pushes l United Fruit to improve the working cond1t1ons at its plantations The company J makes some concessions after a senes of strikes from its workers

1945 1

LJ The character of Miss Ch1qu1ta Banana debuts 1n the techrncolor movie advertisement "Miss Ch1qu1ta Banana's Beauty Treatment" 1n which she sings to

1 revive an exhausted houwew1fe

EJ The Guatemalan government establishes a Labor Code. The company denounces it

1947 La=s=·=·c=o=m=m=u=n=is=ti=c·=· a=n=d=th=re=a=t=e=n=s=to=le=a=v=e=G=u=at=e=m=a=la=.=T=h=e=cod=e=fo=rce=s=t=h=e=co=m=p=a=n=y~ :o make further concessions to the workers in the strikes that followed.

EJ Samuel~ lets one of the company's ships to participate in the settlement of Jews in Palestine after the war. The ship was re-baptized with the name of Exodus and carried the first wave of Jewish immigrants to the Middle East

~:==============================================~

1949

11950 I

B

Senators Claude Pepper (Florida), Alexander Wiley (Wisconsin). and Mike Mansfield (Montana) accuse the Guatemalan government of failing to safeguard United Fruit's businesses in that country.

January (Honduras): After being the dictator of Honduras for thirteen years, President Juan Vicente Car6as voluntarily gives the presidency to his vice­President and former lawyer of United Fruit, Juan Manuel Galvez. Galvez restores guarantees to political exiles and begins social reforms. Many exiles return to the country and this reinforces his opposition. Yet even under Galvez, the left-wing newspapers kept criticizing the governmental concessions given to United Fruit.

Honduras: During Galvez's government the Honduran Congress passes labor regulations for children and women and establishes an eight-hour working day. This is a monumental change in Honduras' labor laws.

Nobel-awarded Chilean writer Pablo Neruda publishes his epic work "Canto General" about the history of Latin America. One of its chapters is entitled ''The United Fruit Company."

:==============================================~ Jacobo Arbenz wins the Presidential election in Guatemala and promises to change the agrarian structure of the country.

~====================================~ The Guatemalan Congress approves the Decree 900, the Agrarian Reform Act. ~

~~====================================~ Using the Agrarian Reform Act~ government declares that 209,842 acres of uncultivated lands of United Fruit should be expropriated and distributed to landless peasants. The Guatemalan government promises the company an indemnification of $627,572 in governmental bonds. The value of this indemnification was based on the company's declared tax value of the land. During this year Zemurray hires a

1953 public relations company to begin an aggressive campaign against Arbenz in the American media.

Standard Fruit introduces the first experimental plantings and shipments of the Panama Disease resistant Cavendish-type banana. This type eventually adapted by United Fruit to replace the Gross Michel type in the 1960s.

GUATEMALA: April 20. United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sends a protest note to Arbenz declaring that the idemnification value calculated by the Guatemalan government was not fair. ~. however, continued with his Agrarian Reform Program. Dulles calls John Peurifoy, the American ambassador in Guatemala, to get detailed information of the Guatemalan situation. Peurifoy said to the Congress that Guatemala was spreading "Marxist tentacles" in Central America.

~approves the publication of a book called "Report on Guatemala" which claimed that~ Agrarian Reform had been planned in Moscow. The book was distributed to Congressmen

March. The Conference of the Organization of American States in Caracas finishes with a resolution in which the member countries show their concern about the "Communistic infiltration" in the continent.

May: Arbenz proposes a non-aggression treaty to Honduras. The Honduras government refuses.

June, 18. Using military bases in Nicaragua Guatemalan Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas attacks Guatemala in what his supporters called "the Liberation war against Communism." The operation was backed by all the other Central American governments and the United States . .G.2..fili!!Q succeeded at forcing Arbenz to go on exile and immediately ended the legal actions against United Fruit under the

Agrarian Reform Law. Twenty-five year old Argentinean Ernesto Guevara Oater

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d fruit Comp~nv - Chronotoov

1954

11 known as el "Che"l witnesses the coup and becomes convinced that radical changes in Latin America are only possible through an armed revolution . ~ 1s living in Guatemala at the time working as a doctor and book-seller and he

I volunteers to organize resistance militias against ~·s army. When facing an inevitable defeat he later escapes from Guatemala to Mexico where he meets

I another political refugee who will become one of his closest friends: Cuban Fidel Castro.

July 2. A US Court begins legal action against the United Fruit Company for violating the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the Wilson Act.

July 13. United States President Dwight Eisenhower gives officia l recognition to I ~·s government.

' July 19. ~establishes the National Committee of Defense Against Communism to seek out any remaining of~ supporters. He also sets back the labor laws created under ~ government.

~begins his long exile in Mexico, France, Switzerland, Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Uruguay, and Mexico.

HONDURAS: May 5. The workers of the United Fruit Company go on strike demanding higher wages and are followed by the Standard Fruit workers. This strike paralyzes all banana operations and peaks with 25,000 striking workers (around 15% of all the country's labor force)

May 7: United Fruit manager J. F. Aycock declares that the company would not negotiate as long as the workers are on strike. That day, the strike expands to La Ceiba, Standard Fruit center of operations. Contrary to United Fruit, Standard offers to negotiate with striking workers.

By the second week of May 11,000 Standard Fruit Company employees join the strike. Simultaneously, laborers in others sector of the economy go on strike too, including miners, brewers, and textile workers .

May 16: The strikers present their "pliego de peticiones" to manager Aycock in La Lima. They quote the Universal Declarations of the Rights of Man and demand an increase in wages. At the same time, the workers of Coca-Cola in La Ceiba and Puerto Cortes strike.

Shortly after the protests began, the Honduran President Manuel Galvez expels two Guatemalan consuls charging them of instigation.

May 9. The American ambassador in Honduras says that the country's strike had been inspired by Guatemalan communists. In addition, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles suggests that Guatemala Arbenz's government might be behind the

Honduran strike.

May 18: Standard Fruit opens negotiations with the workers under governmental arbitration. The company agrees to increase wages and improve working conditions, making this the first time in Honduran history that a private corporation negotiates a collective agreement. The workers committed themselves to go back to work on May 21 .

May 21 : After the Standard Fruit workers go back to work , the United Fruit workers harden their position. The number of strikers increases to 100,000 United Fruit.

May 25: A governmental commission arrives to La Lima and is accepted as an intermediate by both the workers and management of United Fruit.

May 31 : Breakdown in the talks between United Fruit and the strikers.

June 5: The workers try to create a new delegation to negotiate, but United Fruit tells the Honduran media its opposition to further negotiations. In the weeks to follow the strikers' peaceful attitude win them the sympathy of the Honduran media, politicians, and even Henry Wallace, a former US Vice-President.

July 9. The banana workers' strike in Honduras ends. Although the strikers do not manage to get what they initially wanted, the company does change the working conditions and the government is forced to create a more progressive labor legislation. The workers demanded a wage increase of 72% but only won a 21 % raise. The company also agrees to provide medical care for the workers' families.

A hurricane hits the Honduran plantations and United Fruit fires 10,000 workers

8955 ~B=e=tw=e=e=n=1=9=5=5=a=n=d=1=9=6=2=U=n=ite=d=F=ru=i=t =pu=b=l=is=h=e=d=a=ro=u=n=d= 1 =5=m=i=lli=o=n=p=ie=ce=s=o=f=li=te=r=a=tu=r=:e

for students in elementary grades through high school to promote the learning of bananas and the health benefits of their consumption. These manuals were also distributed in schools around the world .

n The Senate's Select Committee on Small Business, undertakes a investigation of "the problems of small business" and calls on United Fruit to testify on its commercial distribution of bananas within the US. The State Department immeqiately requests that the Senate hearings be closed to the public and press. It

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lJn1il'd f1u1t Comp~n\' - Chronology Ji29/l4 1001 PM

j t I '-"t-''c;..111..:0 U•C.O• .... ,.., • ....,, • ._..., v• ..;o,_11..;ouuv••C.O• ''-pv• '"'::1 ~• "''-"..;>'- '''-"''"'::1..;o ., 1 .,,._I-~•"' I I 1956 Ii American press might reflect unfavorabl_y on a large American company having 1 extensive operations 1n the area, and might easily be used by the Communists for I I 1 propaganda purposes to damage the prestige of the United States." Several days I I later, however, the State Department finds "nothing objectionable" and allows the

1

LJ I release of the transcripts to the press.

I j r-----i The US government's anti-trust against the company is finally settled. The United I 11 j I Fruit Company agrees to sign a consent decrees that allows the company to admit

I I to no wrongdoing but still allows the government to force several important changes 11 to the structure of the company. The largest change facing the company is that it

has to carve out a competitor, from its own holding, by 1970, will be one third of its current size. It begins by selling its Guatemala holdings to both Standard Fruit and to Guatemalan entrepreneurs. United Fruit also sells Meloripe and Banana Selling

1958 Corporation, its two large American fruit distributing subsidiaries, to private banana jobbing firms. The lawsuit, at least symbolically, marks the decline of the fruit company.

United Fruit does, however, expand its business in other directions by acquiring the I rights to explore petroleum and natural gas in Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador.

November. Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba after a successful guerrilla war against =Ii President Fulgencio Batista. Batista leaves the country.

Fidel Castro begins his agrarian reform and seizes the sugar properties of United Fruit in that country.

Thomas Sunderland becomes the new President of the United Fruit Company. His main goals are to reduce cost and effectively handle the changes brought about by the increased competition of the Standard Fruit Company and the Ecuadorian corporations. He also has to handle the drastic changes following the consent decree. Sunderland begins to promote the larger sized Cavendish banana over the Gros Michel, and the company begins to transport the bananas in cardboard boxes instead of free bunches. He also pushes the Chiquita brand-name by having labels

1959 placed on the bananas.

1 The second half of the 1950s witnesses a process of divestiture of the company. Slowly, the company has removed itself from directly growing bananas on its plantations and has concentrated on marketing its bananas.

A lawsuit against the United Fruit Company is filed in a New York state court. The court rules that the fruit company had forced its partly owned subsidiary, International Railways of Central America (IRCA), into setting prices that had only favored its own banana transportation. The prices had been set too low, harming IRCA and its American shareholders. A verdict is passed in 1959 and United Fruit has to pay $4.5 million in damages to IRCA's shareholders. -

B Nov. 2. The first serious strike of the banana workers in Panama. The workers of the Bocas del Toro Division demand higher wages and better working conditions. Shortly after they are joined by the Armuelles workers. The strikers paralyze all the export activities for two months. United Fruit gives recognition to the elected union leaders as the workers' legitimate representatives.

8 A group of Cuban exiles unsuccessfully attempts to invade Cuba and depose Fidel Castro.

-

United Fruit provides American school teachers with a package that included student lesson sheets on bananas and the Central American countries, a folder of banana recipes, a wall chart, a sound motion picture, a film-strip, and an eight-page teacher's manual on how to get and use these aids. This educational material was I recommended for geography, history, social studies. health and nutrition,

1962 elementary and general science and biology classes. The kit had a cost of $4.

I United Fruit creates the individual banana sticker label. The small blue stickers with the Chiquita logo are affixed to the fruit and the company makes a strong advertisement campaign to promote the consumption of its branded banana.

Colombian writer Alvaro Cepeda Samudio publishes his novel "La Casa Grande" inspired in the banana workers strike of 1929 in Magdalena, Colombia.

Herbert Cornuelle becomes the new President of the United Fruit Company. He begins a process of diversification of United Fruit's investments in order to reduce its dependence on bananas. During this process the company acquires A&W Root Beer Company, Foster Grant.

1963 Fulton City, Kentucky, celebrates the first International Banana Festival sponsored I by Standard Fruit and Dole (with no participation of United Fruit} , and declares itself the Banana Capital of the United States. The festival includes cultural and artistic I expressions of banana exporting countries, a carnival and a beauty contest (the I International Banana Princess). The event is praised by President Kennedy and

1 President Johnson as an important manifestation of friendship among the peoples of L_ the Americas and counted on the active help of the Alliance for Progress.

~ Castle and Cook buys the Vaccaro family (owner of Standard Fruit) .

Fl j The Urnted States Army sends troops to the Dominican Republic during its election I campaign. I

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·= -j AMK, originally a producer of milk-bottle caps, acquires a third of the common shares of John Morrell & Company, a meat packer. By the end of that year, AMK acquires John Morrell completely. AMK's President Eli Black begins an aggressive campaign to dominate the American food market.

1966 United Fruit builds a banana puree factory in Honduras in order to find a market for discarded bananas. The factory has a limited success in the following years, and has to wait until the 1980s to see acceptable results. Banana puree is used in ice-creams, eggnog, and yogurt.

After its acquisition of the West Indies Fruit Company, Del Monte Corporation enters in the international banana business.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez publishes the first edition of "Cien Af)os de Soledad" (One Hundred Years of Solitude) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Part of the novel is inspired on the strike of the Colombian banana workers against United Fruit in 1929.

1967

Castle & Cooke Corporation wholly acquires the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company.

United Fruit distributes 90,000 full-color illustrated recipe cards for Chiquita banana and peanut butter sandwiches to schools in the United States, promoting these sandwiches for lunch. -

~ J

EJ Sept. 24. Eli Black makes the third largest transaction in Wall Street history up to

I that moment by buying 733,000 shares of United Fruit in a single day. Black becomes the largest shareholder of the company.

- United Fruit chairman John Fox and Eli Black negotiate the merger of United Fruit and AMK-John Morrell. After negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission they merger and name themselves United Brands Company in June 3oth. The company

1970 reports operation losses of two million dollars. Black cuts the research expenses.

Aldicarb, an insecticide to control mites and nematodes is introduced in the market by Rhone-Poulenc. This chemical proved to cause headache, stomach problems, blurred vision, and disorientation among the workers who worked with it.

- I January 27 Jacobo Arbenz dies in exile 1n Mexico City at the age of fifty-eight.

United Brands reports a loss of 24 million dollars, the highest 1n its history

1971 I December: Alleging violations of the Sherman Acthe U.S government orders United

1 Brands to divest themselves of a banana-producing division capable of 9 million I stems . The company sells the division Compania Agricola de Guatemala, to West Indies Co. (a Del Monte subsidiary)

I In an attempt to pay its high debts United Brands begins to sell several of the conglomerate's companies and tropical land assets.

1972 I An earthquake destroyes the capital city of Nicaragua, Managua. Black organizes a I United Brands sponsored aid to the victims.

I The Black Sigatoka fungus attacks the leaves of the Cavendish plantations in Honduras.

~

B Black manages $16 million in profits this year giving the hope of recovery for the company.

March: For the first time in history, Dole moves to the first place in United States sales ahead of United Brands, with 45% of the market, versus 35% for United Bmads.

March: The governments of Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama sign the Panama Agreement which imposes banana export taxes of $1 per 40 pound box. United

Brands considers this new tax unfair and confronts the local governments.

July-September: Workers in the United Brands Company go on strike and refuse to export bananas from Panama unless the local government ends its consideration to nationalize the company's Panama assets. This means an interruption of 45% of the total of Panama's exports.

September 17. The governments of Costa Rica, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama form the Union de Paises Exportadores de Banano (UPEB) -Organization of Banana Export Countries- to defend the interests of the member countries, raise and maintain high prices, and adopt common policies. United Brands threatenes unsuccessfully to pull out. Ecuador, the world's largest producer,

1974 decides not to join the organization.

September 18. Hurricane Fifi destroys 70% of company's plantations in Honduras and causes losses of more than $20 mill ion. The hurricane decreases the country's annual exports from 45.4 million boxes in 1973 to 35.3 in 1974, and 20.4 million in

1975.

Black organized relief teams to help the victims of Fifi . Financial losses are not recovered.

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Umled frun Company - Chronology

lJ United Brands' subs1d1ary John Morrell reports losses of $6 m1ll1on The total losses of United Brands that year are $70 million

I In a new attempt to alleviate the company's troubles, Black sells on December Foster Grant for almost $70 million The operation 1s considered to be a great

I success

j I February 3. Black commits suicide by jumping from his office in Panam building in

I I New York. The investigations following his death reveal a bribery scandal in which ; Black and United Brands are involved. In April the SEC accused United Brands of

11 bribing the President of Honduras, Osvaldo Lopez Arellano with $1 .25 million, with the promise of another $1 .25 million later, in exchange for a reduction in the export taxes Honduras committed under the light of UPEB rules. The investigation also reveals that during Black's presidency United Brands had bribed European officials for $750,000. The trade of United Brands stock is halted for almost a week, and some shareholders bring lawsuits against the company. In the meantime, the Honduran Army removes the President on suspicion of participating in the bribe, despite Lopez allegations of innocence. The scandal also rushes the Costa Rican

1975 President to threaten United Brands with a cancellation of all contracts if the company did not reveal all the names of local officials involved in bribes. Finally, a federal grand jury brings criminal charges against United Brands in the United States.

May. Wallace Booth, chairman of United Brands Company succeeds in a series of reforms that include tightening management control , streamlining banana delivery systems, and updating meat-packing technology at John Morrell .

The conversion from Gros Michel to Cavendish is completed in all Latin American plantations, with the exception of some area in Northern Ecuador grown for domestic consumption.

~::=:::============================================~ Carl Lindner, one of the biggest investors of the company, becomes the new President.

January. A federal judge grants SEC permanent access to United Brands records to 1976 avoid further violations of the law from this company.

April. United Brands sells 190 miles of railroad track to the Honduran government for $0.50 and then leases it back for $250,000 a year. It also commits itself to the maintenance and operation of the railroad line.

B United Brands admits that it had paid a bribe of $2.5 million to the former Honduran 1978 minister of economy, Abraham Bennaton Ramos. The company is fined with

$15,000 and the case is closed.

J The United States bans the use of dibromochloropropane (DBCP) for the effects it

I has on human health. DBCP had been developed by Dow Chemical and Shell Oil as a pesticide to kill nematodes (microscopic worms that feed on the roots of banana

0 trees). DBCP had used widely in the Central American plantations since the 1960s

I and caused damages in the banana workers' testicles. Although prohibited in the United States this pesticide continued being used in the banana-producing countries.

I R.J. Reynolds purchases Del Monte.

EJ982

Lindner increases dramatically his stake in the company.

Black Sigatoka begins to spread from Honduras to all over Central America in this decade.

B Strong storms in Panama and Costa Rica damage the banana crops. United Brands

1983

faces this loss at the same time it was dealing with strong losses of John Morrell.

United Brands loses ground sharing only a third of the banana market. The other two thirds were in hands of Del Monte and Standard Fruit.

The Unites States Army invades Grenada.

August. Lindner takes over as chairman of United Brands. He transforms the company from its large, diversified operations into a company with a narrower focus. He works to stabilize profits. EJ

~~=======================================================:

1985

With a new team of directors Lindner doubles the company's cash flow from 1985 to 1988. Lindner sells some of the company's operations, such as soft drinks, animal feeds, and international telecommunications. He moves the company's headquarters from New York to Cincinnati.

Lindner widens the use of the name "Chiquita" to other fruits such as grapefruits and II

I pineapples. He manages to recapture the first place in banana trade from Dole.

David Murdock buys Castle and Cook (the owner of Standard Fruit) and re-names

I, the new company as Dole Corporation Dole had business in a wide variety of fruits , vegetables, and elaborated food, besides bananas

~::=:::============================================~ C::l The workers of John Morrell meat packing houses in the United States go on strike. L.::J The conflict is settled in one year.

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tJ i ~~e- ~:n~:al-;~~;i:-~ b~~~n~ -g~~~~~~ spend this year $1 oo million to control BlacK 11

Sigatoka. I ! John Morrell workers sue the company claiming that they were not paid for work BI io~i>Oog ~"" oq,ipmooi >ho< >h•Y wora "'""''"' io """~ oo ih•" ~ hmo. Th• I Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration levies a fine of I $4.3 million.

~

Lindner decides to change the name of the company from United Brands Company into Chiquita Brands International Incorporated. He justified this by saying that popular name recognition would help the whole conglomerate.

1989 The United States Environmental Protection Agency recommends the ban of Aldicarb, a chemical to control mites and nematodes, in banana plantations for the bad effects this insecticide had on people's health. Aldicarb, however, is not banned.

The United States Army invades Panama and arrests President Manuel Noriega

The collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe brings hopes to the different banana companies of a larger market. Chiquita begins to invest in buying land again, after a long process of divestiture that began in the 1950s.

1990 Chiquita recovers the number one place of the banana companies (33% of the world's market share), followed by Dole (22%).

Dole reports that 40% of its food division profits came from banana sales.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency reported that a few bananas imported to the US were tainted with Aldicarb (a pesticide with proven hazzardous health effects). Although there were no reports of possible health effects due to

1991 eating bananas with Aldicarb the manufacturer, Rhone-Poulenc withdraws the product from the market for use on bananas. Aldicarb had been withdrawn from potatoes already, but remained in use in citrus, soybeans, coffee beans, sweet potatoes, sugar beets, pecans, tobacco, cotton, and alfalfa seeds.

B Fulton City, Kentucky, celebrates the last International Banana Festival. The

decision to kill the festival was because of a decreasing interest by the participating countries, the US government, the banana companies, and the local community.

~

A Texas court settles out a multimillion dollar suit filed against several American companies by thousands of Costa Rican banana workers in the 1980s who claimed that they had been made sterile by exposure to DBCP, an insecticide.

Facing the possibility of an international boycott on bananas because of the damage certain pesticides caused to the workers, the Costa Rican government and the multinational corporations begin research on pest-resistant and more

1993 enviromentally-friendly banana varieties. This initiative is promoted by the Banana Amigo Project and sponsored by the US-based Rainforest Alliance and the Costa Rican Fundacion Ambio and Tsuli Tsuli/Adubon.

The European Union establishes a quota system for banana imports giving preference to those produced in their former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean The Latin American growers face tariffs and no quota in their exports to Europe. The European Union argues that without this policy the banana export industry of its former colonies would collapse.

Given that Chiquita does not have any investment in the the former European colonies' producing areas, the company accuses the European Union quota policy as unfair. Senator Robert Dole says in the U.S. Senate that the European initiative

1994 was going against the most basic rules of free market and proposed retaliation. During his presidential campaign against President Bill Clinton, Senator Dole receives a $155,000 contribution from Chiquita and uses a company's airplane for his campaign tour around the United States

B NBC television show "A Word from Our Spense~· includes "Chiquita Banana" among the all-time top-ten advertising jingles.

May: The Cincinnati Enquirer publishes a series of articles written by Mike Gallagher and Cameron McWhirter exposing Chiquita's questionable business practices that included bribery, abusive corporate control in Honduras and Colombia, the use of harmful pesticides, and repressive actions against workers. Chiquita's shareholders sue the company, and Chiquita sues the newspaper claiming that the reporters illegally obtained voice-mail tapes. The Enquirer was forced in court to fire the reporters and to apologyze to Chiquita. The company, however, never challenged the facts reported by Gallagher and McWhirter.

November: The United States protests at the World Trade Organization against the new European policy around bananas, and threatens to slap 100% tariffs on several

1998 European products unless the European Union stops its preferential treatment for Caribbean, African, and Pacific producers. The European Union claims that the American demand does not make sense because its policies did not affect a single American job. European Union's trade commissioner, sir Leon Brittan claims that the sanctions are product of the strong lobby of Chiquita and Dole.

November: Hurricane Mitch destroys 90% of the entire banana industry of

Honduras. Al the time, Honduras was the fourth largest banana producer in the world . Chiouita lavs off 7.400 of its workers. but oromises to continue orovidino the

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'I' i I workers wiih medical insurance, housing, utility service, two months of financial J LJ assistance, and interest-free loans. Dole contributes with shipments of food and

medicine I

1n March: Beef joins the banana war when the European Union bans the imports of genetically modified beef from the United States. The American government threatens with more sanctions adding more fire to an already heated debate. The

11 World Trade Organization finds the European decision unlawful and sides with the

' US.

April 7: The World Trade Organization determines that American commercial interests had suffered losses of $191.4 million in each of the years the European Union regime had existed, making a total of $1 billion harm. The European Union

I

refuses to bring its system into the World Trade Organization conformity and suffers

1999 American retaliation in the form of sanctions against European businesses directly involved in the banana conflict.

1 In spite of the WTO rule, the European Union refuses to change the quota system. Sir Leon Brittan, EU's trade commissioner, insists again that the whole conflict is orchestrated by Chiquita and Dole who paid important politicians to lobby on their favor. US Trade Representative, Charlenne Bershefsky, claims that EU's policies will hurt poor countries like Honduras or Nicaragua more than the multinational corporations. Bershefsky says that the US government is losing its patience and might impose economic sanctions to Europe.

-BI The United States imposes economic sanctions to Europe as part of the banana I war. The sanctions meant heavy tariffs to luxury goods imported from Europe at the cost of $191.4 million. · 11 April " The E"""'" Uol~ •od the Uolted S"'t~ ""loth01 din~'~' '"" eod with the banana war. United States drops the economic sanctions and the Europeans drop their first-come-first-served import system and replace it for a transitional system that will lead to a tariff-only system in 2006. Under the agreement, EU import licenses will be allotted based on the way they were

' distributed during a 'historical reference period' of 1994-1996. The European I Commission will also initiate the necessary procedures to propose to the EU Council of Ministers an adjustment to expand access for Latin American bananas and to

2001 secure a market share for a specific quantity of bananas of ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) origin.

The final agreement between the US and the EU is praised by Chiquita who had sued the European Commission for US$525 million in damages it said it had suffered due to EU banana restrictions. The agreement, however, faced the opposition of Ecuador and Dole who saw this as an arrangement to assure Chiquita a fixed market share in the protectionist European market. Ecuador threatens to

protest at the World Trade Organization.

March: Chiquita starts restructuring its debt protected by the US bankruptcy legislation, permitting it to emerge from Chapter 11 .

March: Chiquita sells its main interests in the US Midwest after selling all its interests in the Castellini Group. I Chiquita adopts a new code of conduct that follows the standards required by the Social Accountability lnternational's SASOOO labor and human rights standards.

I Chiquita has a meeting considered "historic" with members of the International 2002 Labor Federation (!LO) and COLSIBA, a Latin American-wide banana labor union I

umbrella. For the first time in its history, Chiquita sings an agreement with the labor unions of all its divisions and agrees on improving workers' conditions.

Chiquita joins the Ethical Trading Initiative, an international set of standards on fair trade and human rights.

The Progressive Investor names Chiquita one of the top 20 "green stocks" for its environmental record.

-Chiquita acquires the Atlanta AG Group, a leading banana market company in Germany. Chiquita decides to focus on its fresh fruit market by selling its processed food divisions to Seneca for $110 million in cash and debt assumption. After this

2003 transaction, fresh produce amounted 98% of all the company's operations. Chiquita receives the ·corporate Conscience Award" from Social Accountability International Dole Foods acquire the Costa Rican pineapple division of Maui Land & Pineapple. David Murdock, Dole's CEO, acquires Dole and becomes the company's sole owner.

Feb. 4: Chiquita announces its bid to acquire the East Africa Coffee Plantations Co. May: Chiquita admits that it had paid "protection money· to different terrorist groups in Colombia, including right-wing paramilitary groups responsible for several massacres and murders of union leaders. Thereafter, the US Department of Justice starts an investigation in this matter.

June: Chiquita stops its operations in Colombia and withdraws from that country . The company sells its Colombian division to the local company Banacol for $52 million. Chiquita says that their withdrawal is part of its new policy of focusing efforts

2004 in African production. The Colombian unions say that the company's policy resoonds to lower labor costs in Africa and the Eurooean banana oolicv that favors

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African producers. Oct. The European Commission announces an increase of 75 Euros to 230 Euros per ton for bananas imported from places different from Africa, the Pacific, and the Caribbean (ACP). The policy is planned to start in January 2006. Chiquita says th is policy puts it at a disadvantage while the ACP countries propose a higher tax of 354 Euros/ton. The new European system leads the Latin American producing countries (Ecuador,

Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama) to request arbitration from the WTO.

Jan.: Chiquita agrees to acquire Performance Food Group's Fresh Express division for $855 million and completed the deal in June 2005. Fresh Express controls 40% of the American packaged salads market. This operation increases the company's North American revenue base from 26% to 44% .

Jan: Chiquita announces that 100% of its Latin American plantations had been certified by independent auditors to International Labor Standards and the environmental standards of Rainforest Alliance.

June: Chiquita accuses itself of violations of the European quota regime. The company starts and investigation on the employees involved in the case. avoiding a sue from the Europeans due to its voluntary acknowledgement of the problem. Other companies involved included Del Monte and Dole.

Jun 10: Wal-Mart. Chiquita's biggest customer in the United States, announces a decrease in its banana purchases. This means a decrease of 33% of Chiquita banana

sales in the U.S. Chiquita blames cheaper bananas from other competitors.

Jun 16: Chiquita says that the problems with Wal-Mart were a result of the extremely low price demands from the retailer.

July: The presidents of the main Latin American banana producing countries meet 1n a summit in San Jose (Costa Rica) to condemn the existing European quota system as discriminatory and plea for a WTO intervention.

This table was prepared by Marcelo Bucheli in colaboration with Ian Read. The sources used can be found in the Bibliograohy plus Lisa Mirabile (ed), International Directory of Company Histories (London: St. James Press, 1990) and John Ingham (ed). Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983)

© marcelo bucheli, 2001

© ian read, 200 l

he information contained in this website is absolutely free . However, we request users to quote this we bsite s their source when using material obtained here.

)united fruit historical society, 2001-2006

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