Do your own culture jamming! Print these out on sticker paper cut them out and stick them on bananas to educate people about united fruit (Chiquita)’s economic imperialism. Also, educate yourself about it with the zine United Fruit Corruption: What Chiquita, Dole, and Fresh Express are up to
“Take Guatemala, where 70% of the land is owned by
2.2% of the population (most of which is United Fruit
plantations). The UFC owns the country’s telephone and
telegraph facilities, the only important Atlantic harbor,
and has established a monopoly over all the banana
exports. This is very problematic, given that the UFC also
has ties to the Dulles brothers, State Department
officials, congressmen, and the American Ambassador to
the United Nations. Ruling Guatemala economically,
while maintaining good relations with so many political
insiders in the US, United Fruit can get away with
almost anything.”
“In the 1950’s, Guatemala democratically elected a new
leader, Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz sought land reform,
under which the land would be redistributed to the
peasants. Arbenz was willing to compensate United Fruit
for the land they would lose, but the company requested
a whopping $16 million, infinitely more than the land
originally cost them (nothing). Meanwhile, the CIA had
marked Arbenz as a communist, setting him up as a
target to take down. When the CIA arranged to send
arms to right-wing officers in the Guatemalan army, the
UFC donated $64,000 — cash. This ultimately led to a
military coup followed by years of mass-murder in
Guatemala — all for your bananas.
If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at Colombia.
United Fruit paid the right-wing United Self Defense
Forces of Colombia (AUC, in Spanish) — considered a
terrorist organization — around $1.7 million for
protection from left-wing militias. This was recent, too:
the payments started in 1997 and are documented as
continuing until at least 2006. United Fruit also
smuggled in thousands of weapons for
paramilitaries to fund operations against peasants,
union workers and rivals. The AUC, now financed by
Chiquita (which is financed by you), is responsible for
killing as many as 10,000 Colombians over a
period of 10 years. Between 1997 and 2004, the AUC was
behind the 2,700 murders in the banana growing
region that supplied Chiquita with $49.4 million dollars.
The AUC was also found to have seized vast amounts of
land for Chiquita.
And don’t even get me started on Dole, the owner of
whom (a Mr. Sanford B.) was put in place as president of a provisional government after the US overthrow of
Queen Lili’uokalani in Hawai’i. Queen Lili had proposed
a constitution that would return power to native
Hawaiians, but her efforts were only met by guns. The
US organized a coup d’état and forced the King to sign a
Bayonet Constitution, eliminating the Hawai’ian
monarchy and putting US business men in power
(United Fruit).
Chiquita — and Dole, and the United Fruit Company as a
whole — has a history of taking land by force, leaving its
victims poor, landless, or dead in a ruthless pursuit for
profit and monetary gain. When you buy a banana, you
are supporting this murder and oppression. Silence is
consent. Still want that banana?”
