For over 100 years, the United Fruit Company (UFCO) has been for many politicians, activists and historians the clearest example of an overwhelmingly powerful corporation and a true symbol of “American imperialism”. The company has been portrayed as a ruthless exploiter with a political stake in the fate of Central American and Caribbean countries. For example, an extensive literature blames the company for the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, after President Jacobo Arbenz confiscated vast tracts of land that the company had acquired through questionable means several years earlier.
However, several more fully informed works challenge the standard portrayal of UFCO and reveal a more balanced and complex history. Marcelo Buccelli's well-documented and thorough book, Bananas and business, This book belongs to this category: the first on the subject and studying the little-known case of Colombia, the authors use “several primary sources that no other scholar has used before” (p. 6), which give the book a solid and valuable underpinning and allow for a detailed description of UFCO's activities in Colombia.
Boucheri begins with a general history of the banana industry from the late 19th century to the present day. He examines how banana consumption has changed from a “luxury good” to a ” [a] He details the disruptions experienced in the first half of the 20th century by the world wars and the Great Depression, as well as recent changes in the international food market. With a wealth of numerical data, he provides the reader with a precise description of these important changes.
In chapter 3, Boucheri discusses the changes in UFCO's business strategy, educating readers about the company's adaptive responses to the business and political environment that posed different challenges in the twentieth century. He describes the ideas and practices that allowed the company to establish a great company in an underdeveloped country without a representative government, the technical reasons that drove land acquisition and vertical integration (p. 49), the challenges posed by the rise of nationalism that began in the 1930s, and the long-term readjustment program that UFCO began in 1960 (pp. 64–75). Boucheri uncovers the internal logic of these changes and the specific sequence of events (not always favorable) that explain the company's strategy. This presentation fosters critical analysis and dispels myths that have been constructed about UFCO.
Chapter 4, dealing with Colombia's political developments in the twentieth century, is perhaps the best part of the book. It is clear, concise, balanced, and does a good job of explaining UFCO's strategy in Colombia. It starts with a summary: “The United Fruit Company did not exercise the same kind of political and economic influence in Colombia that it did in Central America” (p. 86). Furthermore, Boucheri notes that the company did not receive concessions “compared to those generous” that it received in Central America (p. 90). He deals with the press and labor union opposition to UFCO that began in 1923. In chapter 5, not wanting to interrupt the overall historical account, he looks more deeply at the general strike and conflict that ended with the Ciénaga massacre in 1928. This decision is a good one, as it allows the reader to get the big picture before reading the more sensitive issue of the massacre. Buceri goes on to describe the social reforms implemented by the leftist government of Alfonso Lupez Pumarejo beginning in 1934 (pp. 98-100), the moderate governments that followed, and the series of events that led UFCO to sell its Magdalena land and begin operating in the Urabá region with an entirely new strategy: buying bananas from local planters rather than growing them on its own plantations.
The massacre of UFCO workers is significant because this infamous incident forms part of the company's “terrible reputation” (p. 3). Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells the story in his novel: One Hundred Years of Solitude, He mentions 3,000 dead, a deliberate inflated figure to make the story seem more epic. He later admitted that this figure could not be taken seriously. [García Márquezs] In other words, “the legend was received as history” (p. 3). In fact, as Buccelli thoroughly explains, there was no revolutionary movement in Magdalena in 1928, and the number of casualties was probably less than 14. The fact that García Márquez's imaginative work has had such an impact on scholars is, I believe, part of the reason for the widespread intellectual prejudice against the UFCO in Latin America.
Chapters 6 and 7 provide a good illustration of the particular situation that the company faced in Colombia after World War II. The first chapter, “Nobody Won,” explains how a strong trade union movement “went on strike for almost any reason,” while UFCO “always ended up accepting the union's demands” (p. 142). Ultimately, UFCO closed its operations in the Magdalena Valley, opting to operate in Uraba, and sold the plantations along with their labor problems. This move meant that workers lost the high level of protection and good wages they had enjoyed while working for the company. In chapter 7, Bucheli analyzes the relationship between UFCO and the banana planters in Uraba.
Overall, Marcelo Buccelli's book is comprehensive and accurate, presenting a realistic view of an important and unusual company. Although the reader may wish for more detailed information about UFCO's operations, this minor shortcoming is compensated for by a sound approach to the times and the social and political environment in which the company had to operate. Bananas and business This book reports valuable research and will undoubtedly be useful to all scholars who need to understand the complex world of plantations, the turbulent politics of Latin America, and the real forces at work in the banana business.
Carlos Sabino
Francisco Marroquin University
