Newswise — While slicing a banana onto their cereal this morning, few Americans stopped to consider how that banana arrived at their local grocery stores. Even fewer contemplated that the sweet fruit they held has been a product of bitter conflict for more than a century. A new book examines the history of the banana industry and how America's taste for this appealing fruit fueled social strife, peasant uprisings and imperialist production tactics throughout Central and South America.
Co-edited by University of Arkansas anthropologist Steve Striffler and Mark Moberg of the University of South Alabama, "Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas" offers a comprehensive overview of banana cultivation and export over the last century. Experts in sociology, anthropology, history, economics and geography contribute essays that examine the impact of the banana industry on local, regional and international levels.
"The banana industry is the quintessential case of foreign intervention in Latin America," Striffler said. "Depending on your perspective, this industry was the worst thing to happen to Latin America, in terms of U.S. imperialism, or the best thing, in terms of economic development."
From the beginning, giant American and European corporations " United Fruit (Chiquita) and Standard Fruit (Dole) " held near monopolies on banana production in the Western Hemisphere, Striffler said. They started in Latin America, seizing huge swathes of land in the remotest countries and enlisting peasant workers to live and labor in the compounds.
"The opening of new frontiers and the transportation of bananas required capital and labor on a massive scale," the editors wrote in their introduction. "Further, the very nature of large-scale banana cultivation until the 1950s necessitated an ongoing process of land acquisition and capital investment, often followed by the relocation and even destruction of infrastructure to prevent its seizure by potential competitors."
Diseases constituted a continuous threat, not only ruining entire crops but spoiling the areas they hit for future cultivation. As a result, corporations constantly sought new production territories, often encroaching on peasant land and inciting revolts that could be costly and dangerous, both in the field and in courtrooms. Government officials, swayed by nationalist sentiment, sometimes favored the peasants over foreign corporations.
In addition, their own workforce could be a source of strife for the companies. Though they attempted to exert strong control over the living and working conditions of their employees, corporations couldn't always stop labor unions or general unrest from springing up amidst their workers. All of these forces drove banana corporations further south, in search of new land, more docile workers and more sympathetic governments.
It was a futile search, according to "Banana Wars." The essays in the volume reveal how social turmoil surrounded the corporations in each new location, and how it eventually forced them to retreat from Central and South America. Though they left the region, the companies did not abandon the banana industry. Instead, they contracted production to local capitalists and shifted their own considerable resources to marketing.
"In some ways, it was a victory for those who wanted foreign interests and interference out of their countries, but it was a sad irony for the workers," Striffler said. "The domestic producers weren't under the same scrutiny that had followed the big corporations, so they felt no pressure to treat workers fairly or pay well or recognize labor unions."
Published by Duke University Press, "Banana Wars" is part of the American Encounters / Global Interaction series. According to its editors, this series "aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States." Visit http://www.dukeupress.edu for more information.
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