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The United Fruit Company in Honduras

Setting Stage for Economic Development

Decades following the Honduran declaration of independence in 1838 from the Central American Federation, Honduras was in a state of economic and political strife due to constant conflict with neighboring countries for territorial expansion and control. Liberal President Marco Aurelio Soto (1876-1883) saw instating the Agrarian Law of 1877 as a way to make Honduras more appealing to international companies looking to invest capital into a promising host export-driven economy. The Agrarian Law would grant international, multinational companies leniency in tax regulations along with other financial incentives. Acquiring the first railroad concession from liberal President Miguel R. Davila in 1910, the Vaccaro brothers and Company, helped set the foundation in which the Banana republic would struggle in balancing and regulating the relationships between American capitalism and Honduran politics.

Samuel Zemurray, a small-sized American entrepreneur, rose to be another contender looking to invest in the Honduran agricultural trade. In New Orleans, LA Zemurray found himself in cahoots with the newly exiled General Manuel Bonilla (nationalist ex-president of Honduras 1903-1907, 1912-1913) and strategized a coup d'tat against President Miguel R. Davilia. On Christmas Eve December 1910, in clear opposition of the Davila administration, Samuel Zemurray, U.S. General Lee Christmas, and Honduran General Manuel Bonilla boarded the "Hornet" and sailed to Roatan in order to attack, then seize the northern Honduran ports of Trujillo and Le Ceiba. Thus forcing President Davila to step down and Francisco Bertrand to become interim president until General Bonilla won the Honduran November 1911 presidential elections.

In 1912, General Bonilla took no time in granting the second railroad concession to the newly incorporated Cuyamel Fruit Company owned by Zemurray. The time frame for which some of these exclusive land, railroad concessions lasted would last up to 99 years. The 1st railroad concession leased the National railroad of Honduras to the Vaccaro Bros. and Co. (once Standard Fruit Company and currently Dole Food Company). Zemurray granted his concession to the Tela Railroad Company which another division within his own company. Cuyamel Fruit Company's (bought by United Fruit Company in 1929) concession would also be awarded to the Tela Railroad Company. United Fruit Company (currently Chiquita Brands International) would partner with the President Bonilla in the exchange of access and control to Honduras' natural resources plus tax and financial incentives. In return, President Bonilla would receive cooperation, protection, along with an substantial amount of U.S. capital to build a progressive infrastructure in Honduras.

Banana Multinational Establishment and Expansion

*The granting of land ownership in exchange for the railroad concession started the first official competitive market for bananas and giving birth to the Banana republic. Cuyamel Fruit Company and the Vaccaro Bros. and Co. would become known as being multinational enterprises. Bringing western modernization and industrialization to the welcoming Honduran nation. All the while Honduran bureaucrats would continue to take away the indigenous communal lands to trade for capital investment contracts as well as neglect the fair rights of Honduran laborers. After the peak of the Banana republic era, rresistance would eventually begin to grown between small scale producers and production laborers because the exponential rate in which the wealth gap grew and the extreme levels of collusion between the Honduran working and poor class versus the profiting Honduran government officials and the U.S. fruit companies (United Fruit Co., Standard Fruit Co., Cuyamel Fruit Co.).

Due to the exclusivity of the land concessions and lack of official ownership documentation the Honduran producers and experienced laborers were left with two options of regaining these lands by dominio util or dominio pleno. Dominio util meaning the land was intended to be developed for the greater good of the public with a possibility of being the granted "full private ownership" versus dominio pleno was the immediate granting of "full private ownership with the right to sell". Based off of the 1898 Honduran agrarian law, without being sanctioned the right their communal lands, Honduran villages and towns could only regain these lands if granted by the Honduran government or in some cases it was permitted by U.S. companies, such as United Fruit Co., to create long-term contracts with independent producers on devastatingly diseased infested districts. Even once granted land concessions, many were so severely contaminated with either the Panaman, moko, or sigatoka, that it would have to reduce the acreage used and the amount produced or changed the crop being produced. Additionally, accusations were reported of the Tela Railroad Company placing intense requirements, demanding exclusivity in distribution, and unjustly denying crops produced by small-scale farmers because they were deemed "inadequate". Compromise was attempted between small-scale fruit producers and the multinationals enterprises, but were never reached and resulted in local resistance.

The U.S. fruit corporations were choosing rural agriculture lands in Northern Honduras, specifically using the new railroad system for their proximity to major port cities of Puerto Cortes, Tela, La Ceiba, and Trujillo as the main access points of transport for shipments designated back to the United States and Europe. To get an understanding of the dramatic increase in amount of bananas being exported, firstly "in the Atlantida, the Vaccaro Brothers (Standard Fruit) oversaw the construction of 155 kilometers of railroad between 1910 and 1915...the expansion of the railroad led to a concomitant rise exports, from 2.7 million bunches in 1913 to 5.5 million in 1919." Standard Fruit, Cuyamel, and the United Fruit Co. combined surpassed past profit performances, "In 1929 a record 29 million bunches left Honduran shores, a volume that exceeded the combined exports of Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Panama."

Social Welfare Programs for Employees of United Fruit Company

U.S. food corporations, such as United Fruit established community services and facilitates for mass headquartered (production) divisions, settlements of banana plantations throughout their partnered host countries such in the Honduran cities of Puerto Cortes, El Progreso, La Ceiba, San Pedro Sula, Tela, and Trujillo. Because of the strong likelihood of these communities being in extremely isolated rural agricultural areas, both American and Honduran workers were offered on-site community services such as free, furnished housing (similar to barracks) for workers and their immediate family members, health care via hospitals/clinics/health units, education (2-6 years) for children/younger dependents/ other laborers, commissaries (grocery/retail), religious (United Fruit built on-site churches) and social activities, agricultural training at the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School, and cultural contributions such as the restoration of the Mayan city Zaculeu in Guatemala.Establishing these communal services and amenities would attempt to better the living conditions of laborers as well as create windows of opportunity for employment (i.e. teachers, doctors, nurses,etc), and help lay down the foundation for the demand of national progress.

Housing

While these communal services and amenities were offered to both American and Latin American laborers along with their families, they were not equally created, distributed, nor monitored. Americans living in these host countries received much more modernized and above the sub-standardized living conditions that were offered to the Hondurans for housing. One form in which this could be observed would be how the Hondurans were given the communal, primitive, but functional means of sanitation for the disposal of human excrement in outhouses or the usage of a single outdoor faucet designated for a unit(s).[4] This is compared to the housing of Americans which did have indoor lavatories within their personal residences, along with running water.[4] However newer housing was eventually built that did have significant improvements such as electricity, running water (kitchens), "toilet-bath" houses with running water, .[4]

Healthcare

United Fruit took the first step to control one major factor that could heavily influence the efficiency of each plantation, that is the establishment of preventative medicine. The first United Fruit healthcare facility was built in Bocas Del Toro, Panama in 1899.[4] Taking into consideration that without good health of their work force-production would suffer, United Fruit continued to fund and construct health facilities in every host country and their services. Healthcare, for some laborers and their families would be free of charge, while others would be deducted from their wages.[4] Healthcare services would include treatments for tropical diseases and illnesses (i.e. tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, etc.), common viral infections (colds, fever, etc), plus pre-employment/periodical physical examinations. However laborers would be need of these services with the increased exposure to toxic, deadly exposure of chemicals via pesticides, insecticides, fungicide applications, and even the cleaning solutions (removal of residue from fungicide applications).

Education

Education played another important role within each settlement because it helped create windows of opportunity for children and laborers to expound in subjects and training that majority of host countries could not afford or offer. While the education for adult laborers would be more vocational, there would be private efforts for education especially in literacy. Each nation varied in the requirements for the elementary schools such as the length of education offered would range from a minimum of 2 years and a max of 6 years. Specifically United Fruit was faced with a large and imposing threat that was used as an opportunity to incorporate education, vocational training, and the horticulture of their banana enterprise. 

Agriculture Research and Training

Samuel Zemurray employed agronomists, botanists, and horticulturists to aid in research studies for United Fruit in there time of crisis, as early as 1915 when the Panama disease first inhabited crops. Funding specialized studies to treat Panama disease and supporting the publishing of such findings throughout the 1920s-1930s, Zemurray has consistently been an advocate for agricultural research and education. This was first observed when Zemurray funded the first research station of Lancetilla in Tela, Honduras in 1926 and led by Dr. Wilson Popenoe.

Zemurray also founded the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School (Escuela Agricola Panamericana) in 1941 with Dr. Popenoe as the head agronomist. There were certain requirements before a student could be accepted into the fully paid for 3 year program including additional expenses (room and board, clothing, food, stc), a few being a male between the ages of 18-21, 6 years of elementary education, plus an additional 2 years of secondary. Zemurray, established a policy where "the School is not for the training or improvement of the company's own personnel, bur represents an outright and disinterested contribution to the improvement of agriculture in Spanish America...This was one way in which the United Fruit Company undertook to discharge its obligation of social responsibility in those countries in which it operates-and even to help others". Zemurray was so intensely adamant in his policy that students were not allowed to become employees at the United Fruit Company post graduation.

United Fruit and Labor Challenges

Invasive Banana Diseases

Epidemic diseases would cyclically strike the banana enterprise in the form of Panama disease, Black sigatoka, and Moko (Ralstonia solanacearum). Large investments of capital, resources, time, tactical practices, and extensive research would be necessary in search for a solution. The agriculture research facilities employed by United Fruit pioneered in the field of treatment with physical solutions such as Fusarium wilt ("flood fallowing") and chemical creations such as the Bordeaux mixture spray.

These forms of treatment and control would be rigorously applied by laborers on a daily basis and for long periods of time so that they would be as effective as possible. Potentially toxic chemicals were constantly exposed to workers such as copper(II) sulfate in Bordeaux spray, 1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane in Nemagon the treatment for Moko, or the sigatoka control process that began a chemical spray followed by an acid wash of bananas post-harvesting. The fungicidal treatments would cause workers to inhale fungicidal dust and come into direct skin contact with the chemicals without means of decontamination until the end of their workday. These chemicals would be studied and proven to carry their own negative repercussions towards the laborers and land of these host nations.

While the Panama disease was the first major challenging and aggressive epidemic, again United Fruit would be faced with an even more combative fungal disease, Black sigatoka, in 1935. Within a year, sigatoka plagued 80% of their Honduran crop and once again scientist would begin a search in a solution to this new epidemic. By the end of 1937 production resumed to its normal complicity for United Fruit after the application of Bordeaux spray, but not without creating devastating blows to the banana production. "Between 1936-1937, the Tela Railroad Company banana output fell from 5.8 to 3.7 million bunches" and this did not include independent farmers who also suffered from the same epidemics, "export figures confirm the devastating effect of the pathogen on non-company growers: between 1937-1939 their exports plummeted from 1.7 million bunches to a mere 122,000 bunches". Without any positive eradication of sigatoka from banana farms due to the tropical environment, the permanent fungicidal treatment was incorporated and expounded upon in every major banana enterprise, which would be reflective in the time, resources, labor, and allocation of expenses needed for rehabilitation.

Labor Health Risks

Both United Fruit Company production laborers and their fellow railroad workers from the Tela Railroad Company were not only at constant risk from long periods of chemical exposure in the intense tropical environment, but there was a possibility of contracting malaria/ yellow fever from mosquito bites, or inhale the airborne bacteria of tuberculosis from infected victims.

In 1950, El Prision Verde ("The Green Prison"), written by Ramon Amaya Amador, a leading member of the Honduran communist Party, exposed the injustices of working and living conditions on banana plantations with the story of Martin Samayoa, a former Bordeaux spray applicator. This literary piece is the personal account of every day life, as an applicator, and the experienced as well as witnessed injustices pre/post-exposure to the toxic chemicals within these fungicidal treatments and insecticides. The Bordeaux spray in particular is a blue-green color and many sources referencing to itsusage usually brings to light the apparent identification of those susceptible to copper toxicity based on their appearance after working. For example, Pericos ("parakeets") was the nickname given to spray workers in Puerto Rico because of the blue-green coloring left on their clothing after a full day of spraying. In 1969, there was only one documented case of vineyard workers being studied in Portugal as they worked with the Bordeaux spray whom all suffered similar health symptoms and biopsied to find blue-green residue within the victim's lungs.

Little evidence was collected in the 1930s-1960s by neither the American nor Honduran officials to address these acute, chronic, and deadly affects and illnesses warranted from the chemical exposure such as tuberculosis, long-term respiratory problems, weight loss, infertility, cancer, and death. Many laborers were discouraged to voice the pain caused from physical injustices that occurred from the chemicals penetrating their skin or by inhalation from fungicide fumes in long-labor intensive hours spraying the applications. Without any specialized health care targeted to cure these unabating ailments and little to no compensation of workers who did become gravely ill. Bringing awareness to such matters especially against major powers such as United Fruit Co. amongst other multinational companies and the involved national governments would be feat for any single man/ woman to prove and demand for change. That is until the legalization of labor unionization and organized resistance.

Resistance and Reformation

Labor resistance, although was most progressive in the 1950s to the 1960s, there has been a consistent presence of abrasiveness towards multinational enterprises such as United Fruit. General Bonilla's choice to approve the concessions without demanding the establishment of fair labor rights and market price, nor enforce a comprise between small-scale fruit producers and the conglomerate of U.S. fruit enterprises would create the foundation in which strife would ensue from political, economic, and natural challenges.The first push for resistance began from the labor movement, leading into the Honduran government's turn towards nationalism, compliance with Honduran land and labor reformations (1954-1974)*, and the severance of U.S. multinational support in all host countries governmental affairs (1974-1976)*. As United Fruit battles with Honduran oppositions, they also fight similar battles with the other host central American nations, let alone their own Great Depression and the rising threat of communism.

Labor Unionization

From 1900 to 1945, the power and economic hegemony allotted to the American multinational corporations by host countries was designed to be bring nations such as Honduras out of foreign debt and economic turmoil all the while decreasing the expenses of production, increasing the levels of efficiency and profit, and thriving in a tariff-free economic system. However, the growing demand for bananas surpassed the supply because of challenges such as invasive fruit diseases (Panama ,sigtaoka, and moko) plus human illnesses from extreme working conditions (chemical toxicity and transferable diseases).

Laborers, began to organize, protest, and expose the conditions in what they were suffering from at the location of their division. Small-scale fruit producers would also join the opposition to regain equality in the market economy and push for the redistribution of the taken communal lands sold to American multinational corporations. Referencing to the Honduran administrations from 1945-1954, Marcelo Bucheli interpreted their acts of collusion and stated "The dictators helped United Fruit's business by creating a system with little or no social reform, and in return United Fruit helped them remain in power".As the rise of dictatorship flourished under the Tiburcio Andino's national administration (1933- 1949) and prevailed for 16 years until it was passed onto nationalist President Juan Manuel Galvez (a former lawyer for the United Fruit Company).

The General Strike of 1954 in Tela, Honduras was largest organized labor opposition against the United Fruit company. However, it did involve the laborers from United Fruit, Standard Fruit, along with industrial workers from San Pedro Sula. Honduran laborers were demanding fair pay, economic rights, checked national authority, and eradication of imperialist capitalism. The total number of protesters was estimated to be greater than 40, 000. On the 69th day, an agreement was made between United Fruit and the mass of protesters leading to the end of the General Strike. Under the administration of Galvez (1949-1954) strides were taken to put into affect the negotiated improvements of workers rights. Honduran laborers gained the right for shorter work days, paid holidays, limited employee responsibility for injuries, the improvement of employment regulation over women and children, and the legalization of unionization. In the summer of 1954 the strike ended, yet the demand for economic nationalism and social reform was just beginning to gain even more momentum going into the 1960s-1970s.

Nationalist Movement

By legalizing unionization, the large mass of laborers were able to organize and act on the the influences of nationalist movement, communist ideology, and becomes allies of the communist party As like in the neighboring nation of Cuba and the rise communism led by Fidel Castro, the fight for nationalism spread to other Latin American nations and ultimately led to a regional revolution. Aid was given to these oppressed Latin American nations by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Americans, struggled to maintain control and protect their capital investment while building tensions grew between America, the communist, and nationalist parties.

The 1970s energy crisiswas period where petroleum production reached its peak, causing an inflation in price, leading to petroleum shortages, and a 10 year economic battle. Ultimately the United Fruit Company, among other multinational fruit enterprises,would attempt to recover capital lost due to the oil crisis through the Latin American nations. The United Fruit's plan for recovery would ensue by increasing taxation and reestablishing exclusivity contracts with small-scale farmers."The crisis forced local governments to realign themselves and follow protectionist policies"(Bulmer-Thomas, 1987). The fight to not lose their control over Honduras and other sister host nations to communism failed, yet the nature of their relationship did change to where the national government had the higher authority and control.

End of the Honduran Banana Republic Era

At the end of the 1970s energy crisis, Honduras was under the administration of Oswaldo Lopez Arellano after he seized control from President Ramon Villeda Morales. Trying to redistribute the taken lands of Honduras, President Arellano attempted to aid the Honduran people in regaining their economic independence but unfortunately stopped by President Ramon Ernesto Cruz in 1971. In 1974, the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created and involved Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Colombia. Designed to safe guarded the same nations that experienced extreme economic turmoil due to the stronghold on dependent capitalism, the authority and control of foreign multinational companies, 1970s energy crisis, and the inflation of trade tariffs. Through nullification of the concession contracts originally granted to the U.S. multinational companies, Latin American countries were able to further there plan for progress but were met with hostility from the U.S. companies. Later in 1974, President Arellano approved a new agrarian reform granting thousands acres of expropriated lands from the United Fruit Company back to Honduran people. The worsened relations between the U.S. and the newly affirmed powers of the Latin American countries would bring all parties into the 1974 'Banana War.