The United Fruit Company As A Position For Commit Corporate Crime

Cuba “held an economical potential that attracted American business interests and a strategic significance for any Central American canal” (Goldfield, Abbott and Anderson, p 638). Cuban rebellion “erupted again in 1895 in a classic guerrilla war… [and] American economic interests were seriously affected” (book pg638). The Spaniards started confining the locals to concentration camps “where tens of thousands died of starvation and disease” (book pg 638). This gained a lot of publicity throughout America as journalist’s were reporting the harsh treatment, which helped persuade our nation to intervene. Furthermore, this led to growing tension between Spain and

The United States has influenced many nations in the world throughout history. Some of the ways the U.S. has been able to dominate poor countries are with military action and corporate activities that allowed the United States to influence their governments. Since the United States extends its power with the previously mentioned methods, it is recognized as an imperialist nation. The United States has specifically demonstrated imperialistic forces in Latin America. The effects that the United States’ imperialism had on Latin American economies and politics were negative since it brought violence and caused the poor to struggle even more. When the United Sates government did not like policies that Latin American presidents were creating, they would take military actions to force American ideologies into Latin American countries’ governments by installing puppets into their governments. Generally, these countries would have flourished economically without the United States, but since the U.S. became involved with the countries’ policies, their economies have weakened because the U.S. wants the benefits of controlling countries’ resources without being responsible for the people who reside there. This pattern of the United States’ imperialistic behavior has been demonstrated many times in Latin America.

John Soluri 's Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States, (Which for spatial and repetitive purposes, I will refer to as Banana Cultures for the remainder of the paper), introduces the reader to a world of corporate greed, consumption, and environmental change using the history of the common, everyday fruit, the banana. He explores the various political occurrences, health problems, and changes in mass media through the rise of the consumption of the banana in the United States, and around the globe.

We eat bananas almost every day; however, most of us do not really know where these fruits come from. In Banana Cultures, John Soluri focuses on the relationship between banana production in Honduras, especially in the North Coast between roughly 1870 and 1975, and banana consumption in the U. S.. He focuses on growing, protecting, transporting, and mass marketing of bananas. John Soluri integrates Agroecology, anthropology, political economy, and history in order to trace the symbolic growth of the banana industry. The author admits that his work is highly interdisciplinary, as a desirable trait in the academic world. The study incorporates a wide range of sources, including manuscript census data from Honduras, fruit company records, published scientific records, Honduran and U.S government correspondence, oral testimonies, and ephemera from U.S mass culture. Throughout his work, he combines elements of geography, biology, social history, foreign affairs, and environmental history. Soluri also looks at labor practices and worker’s lives, changing gender roles on the banana plantations, and the effects of pesticides in the Honduran environment and people. His central argument is that United States consumption of bananas causes major social, political, and environmental change in Honduras. In addition, he looks at the banana pathogens, the ways the United States treated these fungal diseases, and the terribly detrimental effects these new treatments had on the farmers on

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

The motivation behind US endeavors during the Cold War was to interfere with Latin American countries politically to counter the spread of communist ideologies that were seen by the US as being directly opposed to its economic and philosophical interests. The US’ economic interests were spread and consolidated through corporations operating within Latin America such as Alcoa, United Fruit, and others. It is through these corporate interests, which were under threat of nationalizion in their respective countries by leftist governments taking hold, that the US justified much of its involvement toppling governments in the region.

Supporters of the legislation believe that prohibiting foreign investment will quicken Castro’s downfall. (Close Up Foundation) Many debate on the issue of why the U.S. should or shouldn’t keep the ebargo against Cuba. These debates deal with the effects of the Embargo on Cuba’s economy, humanitarian rights and health of the people of Cuba. The embargo today places a ban on subsidiary trade, Licensing, shipping and humanitarian aid. (Close Up Foundation) In 1992, the Cuban Democracy act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban restricted Cuba’s ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. There have also been corporate buy-outs and mergers between U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies thus adding to the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba. Under the Cuban Democracy Act, The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, supposedly for humanitarian reasons to make up for the embargo’s impact on health care delivery. According to the U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so tough as to have had the opposite effect. With this statement, it is assumed that there are fewer licenses given out for humanitarian reason therefore favoring the embargo and aiding in the downfall of health in Cuba. Since 1992, the embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after

The late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century trends towards the continuing integration of the world economy have attracted the attention of geographers who seek to assess the impacts that globalization processes have at various geographic scales.1 The banana has a rich history of globalization, and for this reason, this essay will explore the commodity chain that shows the trajectory that the banana takes in order to be produced in the Caribbean, Latin America and elsewhere, then transported through the sea, next entering grocery stores throughout the world and finally consumed in the homes of millions. Commodity chain analyses allow modern day geographers to understand the process in which a resource is

Peter Chapman's expository work Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World was one of the most revelatory pieces of literature I have read. Growing up, we are often told that the integrity of our government is absolute and that the corruption prevalent in some other nations is all but nonexistent in ours. Chapman however, describes a story that directly contradicts this information. During the height of the cold war, the United Fruit Company lobbied the government to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, Jacob Arbenz. Arbenz's agrarian reform act would redistribute the land owned by United Fruit Company to the poor farmer class of the country. To counteract this, the United Fruit Company convinced Dwight Eisenhower

"Fueled by the Cold War and transnational corporate interests, the U.S. has covertly tinkered with the governments of Latin American countries since World War 2, producing an extremely violent and unstable political climate."

In the book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (2008), Dan Koeppel talks about the historical background of banana. He also talks about its’ importance to African farmers and its’ importance to Latin America and Asia in economic terms. He describes that a disease called blight has caused serious threats to banana crops, as it is rapidly destroying the banana crops around the world (Koeppel, 2008). In this book, the author describes the role of two mega companies; Dole and Chiquita. They are committing massacres in the name of producing cheap banana. In Latin, America Chiquita is exploiting the labor. It also supports

While globalization is a relatively new phenomenon in theory, but not necessarily in history, as of 2009 it has created transnational corporations linked to government, international economic institutions, and non-government organizations. (Steger 67). With this definition bananas are a textbook example of the globalization of tropical fruit commodities. The transnational corporations of the United States, most notably Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, have been linked to the governments of Latin and South America, the World Trade Organization, and the “organic” fruit movement. By tracing the path from banana plantations to supermarket it becomes clear how the “morals” of capitalism have permeated

The lectures in class this week and the article “10 of the Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America” by Olivier Acuña has opened my eyes to the U.S.’s international political connections. The U.S. has proved throughout history to be self serving and has proven to intervene in nations that will lead to its own economic and political advantages. I find it unfortunate that the CIA and American government tries to pride itself on our democratic system, but will support corrupt dictators and absolute rulers

Six firms dominated the banana industry in the early 1990’s, three from Europe and three from the United States. In 1994, the three United States producers, Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte, accounted for approximately 72.4% of world banana sales. Chiquita accounted for 48% of worldwide banana sales and 66.4% of banana sales of the three U.S. producers.

Chiquita Brands international was founded in 1899 after the merger of United Fruit Company and the Boston Fruit Company. As bananas be came more of a staple in every home so do Chiquita Bananas. Bananas are know to mainly grown in tropical places like Central America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Chiquita decided to have operations out of Colombia. During this time there was turmoil in Colombia and different terror groups form “against the government” & other wealthy people in the country. Some of these groups settled in the areas where Chiquita had facilities.