Imperial Perspectives (Part X)

by Jim Miles

2005

Much is made of the American lack of interest in empire, but its actions in Central and South America, the frequent incursions by the military in support of regimes friendly to U.S. ‘interests’ and in direct support of those interests, all testify otherwise. Part X of Imperial Perspectives is directed to the Central American ‘banana republics’.

X. Yes, We Have Bananas

Between the two wars, the American Empire exercised its imperial rights by keeping Latin America as its own sphere of influence under the Monroe Doctrine and by tacitly acknowledging the existence of other empires’ spheres of influence in China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Similarly, their inaction against other empirical abuses and differing trade regulations, especially as the thirties grew progressively more militaristic and threatening, supported the global tenor of empirical control. These latter actions, the political/military moves, are evident with Japan invading and terrorizing the Chinese in order to control labor, resources and to extend their own spheres of influence. The Italian bravura called for empire and led to the inept and equally cruel attempt to invade and control Ethiopia. An often overlooked imperial cause was the private fiefdom of King Leopold II in the Congo, later ruled officially by the Belgian king, both providing a cruel and tyrannical rule with repercussions carrying on through today. But after the Versailles Peace Treaty, Central America occupied much of the United States foreign interest.

The politics of Central America today, and with other South American countries, is still shaped by the banana. Large corporations, the three most significant being Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte, still deal with problems that were introduced by the original banana companies in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Land control and native rights for land ownership are ongoing problems. Use of indentured and child labor working in unregulated conditions including exposure to chemical sprays are current realities of the ‘fourth world’ in Latin America. Offshore control by large corporations, supported by American financial institutions, owning large segments of land, having monopolies on transportation, and using the U.S. military to support their ‘interests’, common themes throughout the world and across time, are the foundation of modern Central American history. The Banana Republics of Central America became the next frontier for corporate control and political and military intervention for the wealth creation and cheap product consumption for America.

The story of bananas is one of military intervention, of classical colonization practices of large land grants, in this case both for plantations and the railway infrastructure that supported them, exclusive rights for various other enterprises and building privileges, and political manipulation to favor those who curried favor with the colonial powers. Different political groups came and went, but for the most part any socialist leaning party that talked of land reform and workers rights and control of its own destiny was quickly terminated by some form of action from the right, leaving an historical trail of despotic and corrupt governments. More often than not, some form of American intervention supported these changes of government as the corporate demands desired.

Guatemala

Guatemala has probably suffered the most under the United Fruit Company, essentially being a private corporate development company in a similar manner that previous eras of colonization granted large tracts of land for exploitation, granted railway rights and the associated large land grants that accompanied them (who wouldn’t get rich with government subsidized railway construction and then subsequent control of hundreds of square kilometers on either side of the right of way?). In 1901 Manuel Cabrera, then Guatemalan dictator, granted exclusive postal rights to the United Fruit Company; United Fruit controlled the telegraph system as well; they were granted a large tract of land in Puerto Barrios at the railhead to provide for facilities to ship bananas on their own fleet of freighter.

They controlled the coffee producers transportation to market and charged a high tariff on all products to move them on the railway. [1] They had a deal to pay no taxes for ninety-nine years and owned forty-two per cent of all land in the country. “Personal financial interest in high places coupled with a general fear that Guatemala was on the brink of fully embracing communism led to the CIA-engineered coup of 1954. The tremendous power of the United Fruit Company had succeeded in setting back democratic development in Guatemala by at least half a century." [2] For the past century the indigenous people of Guatemala have suffered under the effects of American corporate and imperial greed, having no true democratic government and suffering murder and torture at the hands of the puppet governments.

Nicaragua

Other Central American governments suffered the same pattern. In Nicaragua the United States maintained armed forces in the country from 1912 to 1933, making the country essentially an American protectorate with only a nominal independence. This protectorate was supported by the elites of America, many of who had interests with United Fruit, the Rockefellers, Lodges, Cabot and Dulles families. Another problem was the interest by other countries in building another canal to compete with the Panama Canal, resulting in an exclusive rights treaty with the U.S. to build their own canal, an unfulfilled right for obvious reasons. The different factions within Nicaragua battled each other guerrilla warfare style, facing several interventions by U.S marines. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the assassination of Augusto Sandino by Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the first Nicaraguan born commander of the U.S. trained National Guard, led to the set up the Somoza dictatorship. [3] These interests eventually led to the modern interventions between the Somoza government and the renewed Sandanistas and the resulting Iran-Contra scandal.

Honduras

Honduras was no different, with United Fruit controlled railway serving its parent companies purposes, controlling most of the coast along the Caribbean while “Coastal cities such as La Ceiba, Tela, and Trujillo and towns further inland such as El Progreso and La Lima became virtual company towns, and the power of the companies often exceeded the authority wielded in the region by local governments.” [4] Hondurans faced the challenges of the Great Depression when the majority of them lost employment. Strikes and protests were dealt with by the military, a not uncommon feature in Latin America in general, and as has been witnessed within the United States during this same time period. Combined with these two was the arrival of a fungus and leaf blight that decimated the plantation crops. While Honduras has not endured quite the same degree of corruption and violence as the above countries, they have remained a compliant American state, only in the 1990s asking the American military to withdraw from their bases.

Panama

The ‘purest’ case of American intervention was the creation of Panama as a distinct country from Columbia. Panama may eventually have become separated from Columbia through their own efforts, but they took advantage of the American interest in the idea of building a canal across the isthmus, already started by the French. Supporting a junta of prominent Panamanian families, the Americans stopped the Colombians from crossing the border into the district of Panama. Declaring itself independent, recognized by the Americans immediately, a treaty was signed that apart from essentially giving away the Canal Zone, also made the country a de facto protectorate of the United States.

The banana plantations of United Fruit were all affected by ‘Panama disease’, named for its perhaps doubtful origin in Panama. The disease highlighted the danger of monocrop agriculture in several respects. Most obviously, the easy presence of a large tract of a unique species would allow the disease to spread very quickly. This caused “reshaping of huge portions of the Central American landscape, as former rain forests became the scenes of massive projects of drainage, irrigation, and the flooding of thousands of hectares of "infected" soils.” [5] As the old plantations were abandoned, the destruction of more rain forest and indigenous farm territory created new plantations. These battles with disease are common with large corporate farms with unique cultures. Today the banana species that replaced the original species is subject to a “reinvigorated” Panama disease as well as other diseases. The continued reliance of society on large-scale monocrop farming continues to diminish the natural diversity and resistance of many kinds of agricultural products, as well as creating an economic climate unfavorable to small subsistence farming and a diversified economy.

Problems still exist with banana landlords throughout Latin America, where they still own as much as sixty per cent of the landscape. In other areas, agriculture also plays a significant role as it has with sugar in Cuba and the Philippines.

Costa Rica

In all areas, the policies of American intervention under the Monroe Doctrine “failed miserably”…the only true democracy in the region at this time being Costa Rica, where the United States had never intervened directly. [6] Surrounded by American influence, and also having signed business relationships with the United Fruit Company under similar terms as listed above, Costa Rica developed a similarly disenfranchised population. However, the disenchantment of the workers and the poor and landless led to the creation of a Reform Party and a Communist Party that created a strong social consciousness. Costa Rica banned the military in 1948 (and later banned the communist party) and has one of the healthiest demographics of all Latin American countries. It helps, obviously, to not have the United States military directly intervening in one’s country. Unfortunately today, thanks to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank’s ‘structural adjustment program’ for Costa Rica, it is now a net importer of foodstuffs, has increasing crime and violence, and a debt twice what it was before ‘adjustments’. [7]

Land Speculation

Ultimately, the banana republics were run by corporations, the largest being United Fruit based in Boston, Massachusetts, and controlled by the wealthy families of the American northeast. The company survived not on the good will of the people, nor its beneficence to the people, but because of the interventions of the American military. Woodrow Wilson’s dreams of liberal intervention, of a “liberal empire” in Latin America in support of the Monroe Doctrine “achieved precious little.” [8]

Rather, “the United Fruit Company can be seen as emblematic of a kind of successor enterprise that realized some of the same genre of aspirations that led to the formation and activities of the land speculation companies in pre-revolutionary British North America.” [9] That heritage remains with us today, with the indigenous peoples, the working class, and the many landless still suffering the ineptitudes of the American Empire, through its fear of the bogeymen communists and the renewed corporate assault through free trade and neo-liberal political dogma.

Notes

[1] Maya Paradise
[2] United Fruit Co, Chiquita from the Virtual Truth Commission.
[3] Fergusson, Niall. Colossus, The Price of America’s Empire. Penguin Press, New York, 2004. p. 58.
[4] Library of Congress Country Studies
[5] Marquardt, Steve, Green Havoc: Panama Disease, Environmental Change, and Labor Process in the Central American Banana Industry, The American Historical Review, Vol. 106 No. 1 February 2001.
[6] Fergusson, ibid, p. 58.
[7] IMF Structural Adjustment Programs: The globalization of poverty at DoubleStandards.org.
[8] Fergusson, ibid, p. 58.
[9] Hall, Anthony J. The American Empire and the Fourth World. McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2003. p. 367.

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.