Comments on: A short history of banana-mongering in the late 20th century

By: Janna

Janna — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:12:04 +0000

Does it bother anyone else that a large banana company is operated out of a climate where bananas are not even grown?

By: Carol

Carol — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:02:19 +0000

I’m sure that this comes up in one of the articles, but my eye-opening experience with BIG FRUIT Co. came after working in an indirect fashion on the lawsuits being brought against Dole and Chiquita in South America. The FDA banned an effective nematicide (dibromochloropropane, or DBCP) from use in the good old US of A because it had the nasty side effect of causing male sterility.

So…in concert with a couple of chemical producers who needed to unload their supplies, BIG FRUIT decided that hey! South America is a good place to grow bananas, exploit the workers, and use DBCP with relative impunity!

The story is long, complicated, and full of corruption on the side of both the multinational corporate defendants, and unfortunately also on the side of the alleged “representatives” of the banana workers. It’s almost too depressing to even think about.

By: Gayle

Gayle — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:24:27 +0000

Some good news related to bananas:

I went on vacation on St. Lucia where I learned their number 1 export used to be bananas. They’ve now changed their economic model as they realized they were dedicating too much farmland to a crop that was barely making a profit– and that profit wasn’t helping very many people on the island.

They’re now growing bananas and a large variety of other fruits and veggies, not for export, but for sale on the island itself. This reduces the cost of needed foods for the people (importing to an island is expensive), it’s healthier for their farmland and it gets St. Lucia out from under the oppressive Big Banana companies!

By: brainiac9

brainiac9 — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:57:18 +0000

In my Modern Latin American History class, you would not believe the amount of time we spend on the evils of banana companies (notably, the United Fruit Company). Apparently the UFC was also partly responsible for the civil war in Nicaragua, among all sorts of other nasty business. And when they were originally trying to promote bananas to the white middle classes, they marketed them as, basically, Viagra for the 19th century set. Puts a whole new spin on that banana used in sex ed for the condom demo, eh?

By: Hattie

Hattie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:20:57 +0000

My Hawaiian bananas now–you’d love them. Not like those dry mushy Chiquita things. They are a little bit tart and very tasty. Seems to me it should be possible to grow bananas anywhere that’s frost free. Why don’t the agriculturalists get to work developing a hardy and good tasting banana?

By: caffeinatedqueer

caffeinatedqueer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:33:24 +0000

Just wanted to throw out there that I’m able to buy fair trade, organic bananas in my local co-op. Perhaps you have them available at yours? Or, perhaps you could ask your local grocer to carry them, so that you too can breakfast with a banana of lesser evil…

By: Kay

Kay — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:04:17 +0000

We spent an entire class talking about the fruit, and specifically banana industry in my women and gender studies class, including the horrific corruption and crime surrounding it, the plantations that employ women on the condition that their mandatory monthly pregnancy tests come back negative, and of course Chiquita’s brilliant marketing scheme of turning a piece of fruit into another way of sexualizing women (complete with rendition of the song by my prof!).

By: ashley

ashley — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:42:16 +0000

Twisty,
Good point.
Also, anyone who’s interested in more information about American global oppression by peelable fruit, there’s a book called Bananeras by Dana Frank that delves into the abuses of Dole and Chiquita in South and Central America and also what women in those countries have done to organize within the unions and how they’ve found a lot of strength and solidarity while struggling with their men for worker’s rights and against men within the unions in those regions.
It’s a rad book.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:43:34 +0000

So it seems to me from the article that Chiquita paid off/armed the AUC in order to remove the FARC from that area. If this is so, they were making a deal with the right-wing group, not the left-wing. When I first read this, it seemed as though the FARC-EP was colluding with Chiquita, and that makes no sense at all. That group is more socialist-leaning from what I understand. They would never support foreign corporations in Colombia. The AUC is a paramilitary group, so I am still really surprized that the Chiquita-AUC deal is being criticized by the Colombian government.

By: invisible

invisible — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:28:32 +0000

I just thought of something. Think about this alongside the Genetically Modified seed industry that is attempting to rear its ghastly head.

I think this will be my food for thought for a day, or two. Then, I’ll come back here and read all the links to the comments. Wow.

Complete overthrow, huh? Yes, I guess you’re right.