The Banana: Empires, Trade Wars, and Globalization

Notes

Dej[i ?djheZkYj_ed . The terms third country and dollar zone are drawn directly from EU documents. $
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;cf_h[ . Many of the Jamaicans remained in Costa Rica, and their descendants continue to live in the Puerto Limón area. They were finally granted citizenship during the s. . Ellis ( , ) describes a United Fruit Company purchase of percent of the shares in the Vaccaro Brothers Company, one of its principal potential rivals in Honduras. The U.S. court system thwarted this acquisition as a violation of antimonopoly legislation, so the company sold its shares in . Ironically, the Vaccaro Brothers Company was reorganized in as the Standard Fruit Company, subsequently known as the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, and became the chief competitor to the United in Central America. $
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9^Wbb[d][Z . “Nine-hand bunch” refers to the output of one plant, measured vertically before being cut into the smaller bunches familiar to consumers. A nine-hand bunch was the industry’s standard measurement. . By the s the Urubá zone was manifesting the same characteristics of decline, and the s operating in the region began to move once again, this time returning to the Santa Marta area. This second shift threatened the livelihood of at least twenty thousand workers directly or indirectly employed in the industry in Urubá, the forty thousand people dependent upon them, and the six thousand homes provided by the companies for those families (Sierra , – ). | Notes to pages – . Kepner and Soothill ( , ) describe one instance in Honduras in in which the government declared martial law and sent in troops to break a strike declared by workers of the Tela Railroad Company. This enabled the to force the strikers to accept a reduction in wages. . Indeed, many Costa Ricans consider the book Mamita Unai (literally “Mother United,” in reference to the ), which focuses on that strike, to be the country’s national novel. . Following Costa Rica’s short civil war of and the abolition of its army the following year, the National Liberation Party (Partido de Liberación Nacional, or ) dominated the country’s politics. While remaining socially progressive and maintaining Costa Rica’s social security system, it was fiercely anticommunist. The pursued interventionist policies where labor strife was concerned, driving the leftist elements within labor organizations underground, except in the banana zones, where they continued to confront the s. . Of the fifty-five thousand acres, ninety-four hundred were cultivated in bananas at the time of purchase. $
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?iebWj_ed . While the tax increases may seem rather high, the boxes involved weighed forty pounds, rendering the tax a more reasonable one cent to two and one-half cents per pound. . In Guatemala’s case, the decision not to implement a tax at that time was based on the fact that doing so would violate the country’s contract with Del Monte, which extended to . . Among these were the Corporación Bananera Nacional ( ) in Costa Rica, the Oficina Nacional del Banano (later the Dirección Nacional) in Panama, and the Corporación Hondureña del Banano ( ) in Honduras. . This situation was described at length by Antonio Montero, of the Instituto Centroamericano de Asesoría Laboral, and was documented in an unpublished environmental study conducted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. . During my visits to Costa Rica in and , Costa Ricans in the rest of the country still associated the Golfito area with images of poverty and massive unemployment. The government’s response to the problem Notes to pages – | was to open a duty-free shopping zone in the town in , allowing Costa Ricans to avoid the country’s still high tariffs by traveling to Golfito. Many did so, despite the relative inaccessibility of the region. I saw long lines of people laden with electronics equipment and other purchases when I was there in July . $
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