United Fruit Company: Impact on Host Countries and Involvement in Coups

The chapter consists of two parts. The first part offers a general discussion of the United Fruit Company’s (UFC) history of involvement in the banana business and the cultivation of other dessert-economy cash crops in Central America and the Caribbean. This is accompanied by an appraisal of the political, social, and environmental implications of the company’s activities. The latter have left a mixed legacy of relative socioeconomic and infrastructural development (largely confined to areas where UFC operated) on the one hand and reinforced inequalities and major environmental harms on the other. As a key mechanism of environmental damage, the quasi-nomadic nature of the banana plantation economy is presented. The second part of the chapter considers the company’s role in coups – understood broadly as violent extra-legal attempts at changing a government – that UFC is associated with by various sources in the period from 1911 to 1961. Guatemala (1952–1954) is introduced as a clear case of such involvement. Uncertainties are pointed out as to UFC’s surmised indirect role in Honduras (1911). Allegations concerning UFC’s role in the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961) are found to be unsubstantiated.