Bananas (UK, 2007) By Peter Chapman

Bananas are ubiquitous to comedy – think Woody Allen’s 1971 drug cult classic, or the chorus from The Divine Miss M’s song Twisted (because two heads are better than one), or the Marx Bros. But, this book is not about comedy.  This book is about an early trial run at globalization and so-called "Free Trade" agreements, Reagan, Bush, Clinton & Obama style. And, it's no joke. Bananas, a book by a London-based financial reporter named Peter Chapman, is a decidedly unauthorized biography of the United Fruit Company, the remnants of which are today known as Chiquita.

Chapman’s book, the culmination of a thesis, is a 20^th century history of that aspect of American imperialism that gave the term “banana republic” its present day meaning. And the book is comprehensive, it covers everything from United Fruit’s marketing campaigns, to its supply chain, its internal politics, its overthrowing of Central American governments in alliance with the CIA, the Bay of Pigs, and the Panama Canal. And, it includes an eclectic cast of characters ranging from Teddy Roosevelt, to Carmen Miranda, to Howard Hunt of Watergate notoriety.

It’s the supply chain aspect that led me to this book, if I can digress for a moment. One of my sisters and her husband recently moved to the Kentucky Lake area. In investigating ways to get to and from their new place from Chicago where I live, I looked at Amtrak’s City of New Orleans train (which I’ve traveled on many times). The station nearest their new home is in Fulton, Kentucky. As I’m prone to do, I looked up Fulton on Wikipedia.  I discovered it once billed itself as “The Banana Capital of the World.”  Say what?

It seems that the supply chain for 80% of the bananas shipped to North America used to make a stop in Fulton. In the first half of the twentieth century, bananas were shipped north from the Port of New Orleans on the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad to Chicago, then dispersed east and west. But, early rail refrigeration cars were cooled by blocks of ice, which tended to melt as they passed through the hot and humid South, making it only as far as Fulton before having to be repacked with new blocks of ice – hence, bananas were rather important to the town’s economy. Keep that tidbit of history in mind next time you watch Jeopardy!

   

Back to the book …

Despite my flippancy, this really is a good and frighteningly relevant book. I’m a strong believer that what is wrong with the current political situation in America is that every level of government, regardless of partisan affiliation, has been completely taken over by corporate robber barons.  United Fruit’s history is a how-to manual on that subject. Likewise, our twentieth century foreign policy in Central America was unquestionably dictated by officials in the United Fruit Company, with scare tactics about communist insurgencies (also known as poor people believing in self-rule).  This “Big Banana” pattern is striking similar to how "Big Oil" today dictates American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, Libya, and Venezuela. Returning to my flippancy ... Bananas offers ample food for thought on the political history front. 

Recommendation:  Yes for history buffs, or anyone working on a marketing degree.