The United Fruit Company: The Scourge of Central and South America: Background information when reading Where There Was Fire

The United Fruit Company: The Scourge of Central and South America

This article relates to Where There Was Fire

In Where There Was Fire, the neighborhood that is the central setting in the 1968 timeline is home to a banana plantation run by a fictional corporation called American Fruit Company, based loosely on the real-life United Fruit Company (UFC). United Fruit (which has since become Chiquita) had plantations in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and elsewhere in Central America and the West Indies.

UFC was born in 1899 when the Boston Fruit Company merged with the Central American banana companies of businessman Minor C. Keith, who owned a railroad system in the region (in the novel, the American Fruit Company was founded by a "distant cousin" of Keith's). By 1930, UFC employed more people in Central America than any other company. Its influence in particular areas inspired the coining of the phrase "banana republic."

Central American employees of the UFC were exploited — they worked for long hours for low wages in dangerous conditions. The company was also responsible for outbreaks of violence and upheaval. In 1928, Colombian employees of UFC went on strike to demand improved working conditions and fair wages (employees were paid in credits that could only be spent in the company store). American diplomats were in regular conversation with UFC higher-ups about the strike, and the Colombian government feared U.S. military intervention if it continued. Colombian Gen. Carlos Cortés Vargas summoned the workers to the city of Ciénaga, where instead of engaging in ongoing negotiations as they were led to believe, they were fired upon by Cortés Vargas's soldiers. More than 1,000 were killed in what came to be known as the Banana Massacre. A fictionalized version of these events appears in Gabriel García Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude.

In Guatemala in 1935, the U.S. government launched a campaign to smear President Jacobo Arbenz over reform legislation that took land from UFC and returned it to local farmers, painting him as a communist dictator. With this seed planted, the CIA paid Honduran militants to go to war with Arbenz, ultimately leading to his resignation. A Honduran puppet president in UFC's pocket was elected, and he returned the redistributed land to United Fruit. (In 1975, the chairman of United Brands, formed after United Fruit merged with AMK Corporation, died by suicide amid rumors he tried to bribe Honduran authorities for lower taxes on bananas.)

UFC owned 9% of the land in Costa Rica, and when they finally left in 1984, they had significantly impacted both the land and population, partly due to the use of pesticides. In Where There Was Fire, a particular chemical used on the banana plantation results in infertility issues among the workers, and a major plot point revolves around the consequences of these health problems in the Cepeda Valverde family's lives.

The company's reign of terror in Central America continued into the 21st century. In 1984, UFC merged with another company under the United umbrella to become Chiquita. Chiquita paid a right-wing paramilitary group in Colombia over $1.7 million to carry out assassinations (of landowners who would not sell and dissidents, among others) on the company's behalf. Chiquita pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism in 2007 and paid a $25 million fine.

SS Abangarez, a United Fruit banana boat, in San Francisco Bay, circa 1945
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph, via Wikimedia Commons

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to Where There Was Fire. It originally ran in October 2023 and has been updated for the September 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.