Banana Production & Trade
(see also Guatemala, Central America General, Ecuador, Colombia)
Basics
On the Web: Articles
On the Web: Specialized Sites
Banana Link. Working for sustainable production & trade in bananas.
Chiquita. Banana transnational which negotiates with unions & corporate responsibility activists.
Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Sindicatos Bananeros (COLSIBA).
International Union of Food Workers.
Transfair USA. Promotes fair trade retailing. Are bananas next?
US Labor Education in the Americas (US/LEAP).
In the Library: Articles
Avila, Eneida. "Las compañías bananeras en la novelística centroamericana," Lotería (Panamá) 5,57 (8/60):100-28, 5,58 (9?60):74-128 & 5,59 (10/60):68-128.
Aybar, José M. "Dictatorial repression & US imperialism in Guatemala in Miguel Angel Asturias' La trilogía bananera," Annals SECOLAS 6 (1975):42-48.
Cardoza y Aragón, Luis. "Guatemala y el imperio bananero," Cuadernos Americanos 13,2 (3-4/54):19-45.
Echeverri-Gent, Elisavinda. "Forgotten workers: British West Indians & the early days of the banana industry in Costa Rica & Honduras," Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (1992).
Forster, Cindy. "Reforging national revolution: campesino labor struggles in Guatemala, 1944-1954," in A. Chomsky & A. Lauria-Santiago (eds.) Identity & Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America & the Hispanic Caribbean (Durham NC: Duke, 1998).
Gordon, Max. "A case history of US subversion: Guatemala, 1954," Science & Society 35,2 (1971):129-55.
Jerez, César. "La United Fruit Company en Guatemala," Estudios Centroamericanos 26 (1973):117-28.
LaBarge, Richard A. "The impact of United Fruit Co. on the economic development of Guatemala, 1946-54," in LaBarge & others, Studies in Middle American Economics (New Orleans: Tulane U., 1968).
LeGrand, Catherine. "Living in Macondo: economy & culture in a United Fruit Company enclave in Colombia," in G.M. Joseph, C. LeGrand & R.D. Salvatore (eds.) Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of US-Latin American Relations (Durham NC: Duke, 1998), pp. 333-68.
Marquardt, Steve. "'Green havoc': Panama disese, environmental change, & labor process in the Central American banana industry," American Historical Review 106,1 (2/01):49-80
Sloat, Warren. "United Fruit Co.," Nation (7/8/68):26-28. Role in Guatemala & links to CIA.
In the Library: Non-Fiction Books
Adams, Frederick Upham. Conquest of the Tropics: The Story of the Creative Enterprises Conducted by the United Fruit Company (NY, 1914).
Arévalo, Juan José. The Shark & the Sardines (NY, 1961).
Aybar de Soto, José M. Dependency & Intervention: The Case of Guatemala in 1954 (Boulder CO, 1978).
Barahona, Marvin (ed.) El silencio quedó atrás: testimonios de la huelga bananera de 1954 (Tegucigalpa, 1994).
Bourgois, Philippe I. Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989).
Cardoza y Aragón, Luís. Guatemala: las líneas de su mano (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1955).
Chomsky, Aviva. West Indian Workers & the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U., 1996).
Dosal, Paul. Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899-1944 (Wilmington DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993).
Euraque, Darío A. Reinterpreting the "Banana Republic": Region & State in Honduras, 1870-1972 (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 1996).
Fawcett, William. The Banana: Its Cultivation & Commercial Uses (London, 1921).
Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution & the US, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton, 1991).
Grossman, Lawrence S. The Political Ecology of Bananas: Contract Farming, Peasants & Agricultural Change in the Eastern Caribbean (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 1998).
Immerman, Richard H. The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: U. of Texas, 1982).
Josling, T.E. & T.G. Taylor (eds.) Banana Wars: The Anatomy of a Trade Dispute (Cambridge MA: CABI, 2003).
Karnes, Thomas. Tropical Enterprise: Standard Fruit & Steamship Co. in Latin America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U., 1978).
Kepner, Charles D. & Jay H. Southill. The Banana Empire: A Case Study in Economic Imperialism (NY, 1935).
__________. Social Aspects of the Banana Industry (NY, 1936).
Kinzer, Stephen & Stephen Schlesinger. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (NY: Doubleday, 1982).
Langley, Lester D. & Thomas Schoonover. The Banana Men: American Mercenaries & Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930 (Lexington: U. of Kentucky, 1995).
__________. The Banana Wars: US Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 [1983] (Wilmington DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002).
MacCameron, Robert. Bananas, Labor & Politics in Honduras, 1954-1963 (Syracuse NY: Syracuse U., 1983).
May, Stacy & Galo Plaza. The United Fruit Company in Latin America (Washington, 1958).
Musicant, Ivan. The Banana Wars: A History of US Military Intervention in Latin America from the Spanish American War to the Invasion of Grenada (NY: Macmillan, 1900).
Reynolds, Philip K. The Banana: Its History, Cultivation & Place among Staple Foods (Boston, 1927).
Simmonds, N.W. & R.H. Stover. Bananas (3rd ed.; London, 1987).
Stanley, Diane K. For the Record: The United Fruit Company's Sixty-Six Years in Guatemala (Guatemala, 1994).
Stephens, Clyde S. (ed.) Bananeros in Central America: True Stories of the Tropics (Fort Meyers FL, 1989).
Stoat, Warren. The United Fruit Co. in Guatemala, or Watch Out for the Top Banana (Voluntown CT, 196?). Exposé of its involvement in the US-backed 1954 military coup.
Striffler, Steve & Mark Moberg (eds.) Banana Wars: Power, Production & History in the Americas (Durham NC: Duke, 2003).
Wilson, Charles M. Empire in Green & Gold: The Story of the American Banana Trade (NY, 1947).
In the Library: Fiction
Asturias, Miguel Angel. Viento fuerte (Strong Wind) (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1950; English trans. Gregory Rabassa: NY: Dell, 1968). Epic of United Fruit Co. in Guatemala.