In the Shadows of State and Capital: The United Fruit Company, Popular Struggle, and Agrarian Restructuring in Ecuador, 1900-1995 (review)

In the Shadows of State and Capital tells the fascinating story of the contest between the United Fruit Company and Ecuadoran banana growers between 1900 and 1995. Rather than present a predictably heroic David-and-Goliath narrative, Striffler recounts the twists and turns of a 95-year relationship that never followed a predetermined script, as the actors themselves were shaped through their interactions. Arguing that peasants and workers did not simply react against an already-formed company but rather participated in the formation of United Fruit in Ecuador, he gives us a nuanced account of the evolution of the relationship between United Fruit, the Ecuadoran state, and peasants and workers in the banana- producing territories. The result is a refreshingly new look at the history of United Fruit and its interactions with the nations of Latin America, at the association of state and capital, and at the experience of workers and peasants who actually grow the tropical fruit that ends up on American breakfast tables.

Striffler accomplishes this by bringing the literature on "everyday forms of resistance" and "everyday forms of state formation" to the study of the history of United Fruit Company in twentieth-century Ecuador. He traces the transformation of one of the world's largest cacao plantations into a banana plantation in the first half of the twentieth century, the arrival of United Fruit, the development of a successful land reform movement at midcentury, and the emergence of contract banana farming in the last third of the century as United Fruit withdrew from direct production of bananas in Ecuador and peasant farmers were unable to maintain their hold on their small farms. Throughout, he argues persuasively that United Fruit, the Ecuadoran government, and workers and peasants in the countryside were all agents of change and that there was more space for negotiation between the actors than one might have thought.

That said, for all his sophisticated discussion of the interactions between state, capital, and subaltern subjects, Striffler tends to force banana growers artificially into the category of either peasant or worker, although most of them do not appear to fit neatly into either category. None of the people he terms peasants have the traditional, communal links to the land that one finds (for example) among a Morelos or Quiché peasantry, and all produce crops primarily for an export market. Moreover, many of those labeled "workers" were employed by the fruit company for only a short time before becoming farmers themselves through the land reform and are now being forced to give up their land. Given this situation, the author might have been better advised to refer to his subjects as campesinos, or to translate that as "rural people." Doing so would allow his readers to appreciate more fully one of the arguments he seems to be making: that the lines between peasant, small farmer, and worker are often blurred.

Similarly, Striffler would have been well advised to note more carefully the ways in which banana and cacao production were intimately intertwined. He treats the banana territory as a monocultural area that emerged after the "bust" of Ecuador's cacao industry but indicates that cacao continued to be an important crop in the area that he studies. At least some of the people who obtained farms through land reform, for example, turned to cacao rather than bananas. This seems an important alternative, since cacao, although subject to the vagaries of the international market, was not controlled by a single multinational company.

These caveats should not be taken as essential criticisms of this fine scholarly work. This book deservedly won the Social Science History Association's 2001 President...