Banana Cultures By John Soluri

South America throughout the time-period from 1450-1750 relied on the idea of forced labor in a variety of ways. Forced labor began in the early 1450’s with the Inca civilizations using the system of the mit’a, which was used by the Span. This system made over one-seventh of

Today, I want to talk about bananas. This familiar yellow fruits is nutritious, delicious, and good for you. But, most importantly, there are a trillion fun facts about it on the internet. Banana Fact: “Americans eat an average of 27 pounds of bananas per person every year, making them the most popular fruit in the U.S.” Banana fact: “Research shows that eating bananas may lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes, as well as decrease the risk of getting some cancers.” Banana fact: “Banana farms use extremely harmful pesticides including diazinon and chlorpyrifos, which when consumed can cause: diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, convulsions, and comas.” Banana fact: “Tortoises and manatees off the coast of Costa Rica are facing extinction partly due to the fact that pesticide runoff from banana plantations kills the algae on which they feed.” Now you might be thinking, those things aren’t really my problem, I’ve never gotten sick from a banana and tortoises aren’t doing bad, I saw one at the zoo once. Why is any of this important? And to that, allow me to read you this sweet native american quote Ms. Barber probably found on facebook, a few clicks away from my banana facts. "Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your

A banana republic is a term to describe a politically unstable country in Latin America.

The Michoacan state in Mexico has become the world’s largest producer of avocadoes. Although this vegetable is grown on farms throughout this state, it is also tied to an integral network of trade and export to countries across the globe. In this essay, I will argue that like any commodity chain study, the production of the organic Hass avocado has an intricate production process, which for my commodity chain study begins in Uruapan, Mexico a town in the state of Michoacan. This analysis has indicated the crucial underlying links to trade, labour, and demand that the export of this vegetable has created throughout North America

Central American Identities are very diverse thanks to the cultural production and historical context of the tradition and customs of Central American people. Central American people express diversity through their very unique culinary practices, such as: dress codes, social relationships and in the arts and humanities. Nonetheless we still can’t fully define culture in a permanent way since it’s always ever-changing for every group. As of today, Central America is made up of many different groups of people, such as: the Maya, Nahuat, Lenca, and other indigenous groups. These groups show significant variability in terms of social organization, religion and culture that form the modern

Throughout history, the enslavement of native peoples around the world has been a driving force in what makes the great nations today. Unfortunately, this practice has also practically destroyed the lives of billions, and the nations that practiced it benefited from the pain and suffering of the lives it took. Four documents highlight the behavior of the Europeans towards the natives of South America, creating an insight into the shocking behaviors that were practiced to exert control over a very innocent people.

The alternative crop programs the US proposed to replace coca failed for various reasons. The unstable political situation made the area too dangerous to bring in “agronomists, engineers, and project specialists” to survey the land (Kirk 265). Even if farmers had been successful in growing alternative crops, the Colombian market for legal crops such as corn, yucca, coffee and chocolate was already “battered by global shifts in price.”(Kirk 264) Legal crops had to be transported on poor roads and farmers had to wait months to be paid for their goods. These were no competition for coca which was paid for immediately, often times with American cash, and transported without any charge to the farmers (Kirk 243).

I acknowledge that given the scope of limited resources, and lack of information on the Mapuche advances in the fight against seed laws, I am lacking some depth to the current state of the situation. In addition, there is limited academic knowledge in English about the Mapuche Peoples relationship with the seed patent laws and the Chilean government. Furthermore, with regard to the connection of the Mapuche fight for food security and benefits of their culture and the theory of cosmopolitanism there is a much deeper imperialist fight to be fought. Due to capitalist influence and big business entering the country of Chile the ideals of cosmopolitanism and the sentiment of balancing universality and difference is becoming of less significance

This article examines the effects of the Classic Maya collapse of Copan, Honduras on its constituent social units in an effort to ascertain the flexibility and resilience of these groups within a larger political structures. The author argues that the collapse and abandonment of Copan is not the exception among Southern Maya Lowland centers it once seemed. Instead, a relatively rapid and complete abandonment of the site during the decades most likely followed after the dynastic collapse, due to the fact that Classic Maya social units were not semiautonomous groups but, rather were integrated within polities. And so the author elucidates in the article on how they must be understood within larger political frameworks. A total of 5,635 Ejar-complex

Cynthia Enloe, in her book Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, once said: “Living as a nationalist feminist is one of the most difficult political projects in today’s world” (46). It is just this challenge that confronts many Palestinian women involved, either explicitly or implicitly, in the Palestinian national project. For in this project, they are doubly marginalised, both from the national movement with which they attempt to engage, and in the patriarchal structures that are reinforced by the militarisation of the national movement and its commemoration. However, women within the Palestinian liberation movement are not merely subjects of patriarchal and nationalistic authority; instead, they are agents within it and against it, sometimes in contradictory and simultaneous instances. Situating itself within an analysis of contemporary women’s experiences within Palestinian history and

The contents of this section are rather varied, ranging from Columbus to wood shortages and erosion, though they are all tied together. When Columbus first landed among the natives of Hispaniola, the island was a lush green paradise with a booming population. When he and his countrymen were done with it, it was an uninhabited burnt rock. Columbus, and by extension, his society made this happen. They took everything of value, from native slaves to the wood of the jungles. The natives were tortured, beaten, and killed in horrifying ways that are not fit for this paper. This treatment even drove them to mass suicide. It was not isolated to this one island, but all of the islands around it, like Haiti, though Hispaniola was hit the worst. The deforestation causes erosion on a huge scale, so much that the torrential rain that affects that area simply washes the soil away. This type of situation

Introduction to the Indigenous Population in Guatemala To the developed world, Guatemala may just seem like another poor undeveloped Latin American country, in part with its indigenous community to blame. Yet surprisingly, areas like Antigua Guatemala are “one of the places where the wealthy from all over the world come to live and to vacation and to buy homes” (Little 24). Today, the population of indigenous individuals is still a substantial “forty percent” but the remaining “sixty percent are Ladino” (CIA). Ladinos are those who have a mixed background of Indian, whether Mayan or Aztec, and Spanish descent. Although a paper citing the colonial past and economic implications of Maya culture would be interesting on its own, this paper is prioritizing

In this article, social anthropologist Orin Starn accuses Andeanist anthropologists of missing the revolution. Andeanist anthropologists failed to consider that a movement like the Shining Path, could emerge in a rural, primarily indigenous area of Peru. As a result, Starn was particularly critical of the work of Billie Jean Isbell, whose book To Defend Ourselves, chronicled life in the same village, Chuschi, Ayacucho department, where the Shining Path announced itself to the world by burning ballot boxes during an election in 1980. By focusing on “traditional” culture rather than contemporary socio-economic conditions, anthropologists in general, and Isbell in particular, had “portray[ed] contemporary highland peasants as outside the flow

Laveaga, Gabriela Soto Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

As mentioned before the banana holds more than nutrients and other uses, it plays a large role in some countries’ economies and even politics. The banana is one of the top staple fruit crops on a global level. This being said it wouldn’t be considered much of a surprise that the banana trade also symbolizes economic imperialistic goals. For example due to its non-intensive labor the price of the banana was relatively cheap which lead to it being high in demand. Without being aware of it the banana opened up opportunities that would affect Latin governments at the