Chiquita and the Strongmen: An Historical Perspective

"El Presidente." Image from Allan Sanders "Loopland." (Click to check out his gorgeous illustration portfolio.)

Marcelo Bucheli – of the University of Illinois at Urbana and Champaign College of Business – published a fascinating paper on the relationship between the United Fruit company (Chiquita) and Latin American dictatorships. Here’s the abstract:

“The US multinational United Fruit Company has been considered the quintessential representative of American imperialism in Central America. Not only did the company enjoy enormous privileges in that region, but also counted on authoritarian governments in dealing with labor unrest. The literature assumes that United Fruit and the dictators were natural allies due to their opposition to organized unionism. This paper shows that this alliance could only survive as long as the multinational provided the dictators with economic stability for the country. However, when the multinational proved to be incapable of doing that, the dictators allied with the working class to confront the multinational and extract higher rents from it.”

Bucheli is one of the most respected and thoughtful banana scholars out there. His work was primary source material for my book. You can read the whole paper (PDF download) here. (Thanks to Steven Kinzer, another primary source, for the link.)

Tags: Banana Latin America, Banana Politics