The Real Price of Bananas- United Fruit Company

This week we find out what we are really paying for when we buy a bunch of bananas, The United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands International, has left a bloody history in its wake to being the largest banana provider. They've taken part in massacres, controlled governments, and even toppled some with the help of the CIA. We delve into it all on this week's episode!

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff has been arrested and
charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Congress wants to know what caused the Enron meltdown, and
while the collective rage currently is focused on low
comp, Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski was convicted of looting
hundreds. Of millions of dollars.
This is one of the biggest fraudcases ever.

(00:23):
Their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Find out more on this week's episode of White Collars Red
Hands. I think we can all agree the
bananas are the silliest fruit by far.
Slipping on their peels has delighted people for decades.
When someone is being over the top, we say they're going

(00:43):
bananas. They're also the most phallic
fruit, which has led to an uncountable amount of bits in
movies and TV shows. And as far as I know it is the
only fruit that you can buy a board game bag that is shaped
like it. Bananagrams.
Shout out Bananagrams. In pop culture, we may associate
bananas with all of these light hearted ideas and accompany it

(01:05):
with a woman in a dress with a large fruit laden hat.
But Chiquita Brands, which owns the likeness of that character,
has in anything but light hearted history.
In fact, bananas in general havea history littered with blood,
violence, poisons, and politicalconflict.

(01:26):
Today we discussed the historical precursor to
Chiquita, the United Fruit Company, the governments that it
toppled for power, and how the CIA helped it all happen,
amongst other atrocities that stretch all the way to 2024.
Also we could do the banana and a bottle of Sprite challenge.
What is that? You have to like, you have to

(01:49):
like eat a banana and chug a whole bottle of Sprite and not
throw up. I think I would just not why
would Why do you need to eat thebanana?
I think I just need to not chug the bottle of Sprite.
Some sort of combination betweenthe banana and the Sprite.
Makes you throw up supposed. To make you throw up.
They did it on Tosh Point O, They drank bottles of Sprite,
they ate bananas, they got on a carnival ride.

(02:09):
Oh, well, that's all I know. Well, it makes you throw up
anyway. But they were like, we're going
to, we're going to do an extra. And did they throw up?
Of course, yes, they threw up a lot.
Nice, it's. Kind of the whole point.
Nice. Welcome back, everybody, to
another episode of White Collars, Red Hands.
I'm Kashawn. And I'm Nina.
And today, we're going bananas. We're going bananas, baby.
Yeah. But no, seriously, there's a

(02:31):
there's a lot of really terriblestuff in today's episode.
Am I going to cry? Maybe.
Damn. Maybe this, this is, I mean
this, this rivals a lot of our other big corporate spotlights.
Feels like a bad word because we're not highlighting them,
we're low lighting them. You know, Nestle was bad, Dao

(02:56):
was bad. This one's also this one's
pretty bad. You might not eat a banana
again, I'm not going to lie. Shit, or like if you ever got
into the ethics of chocolate, the.
Ethics of. Coffee beans.
Or anything. They're all pretty much built on
like pseudo slave labor and bananas are kind of like that.

(03:17):
So welcome. It's not going to be fun.
The story of the United Fruit Company starts when an American
real estate magnate, Henry Meigs, who built up a good
portion of the coastal area in San Francisco, fled to South
America to avoid fallout from a scandal where he had stolen
municipal funds to make ends meet.

(03:40):
He landed in Chile in 1854 and turned to developing railroads
in the country. He built just the second
railroad in all of Chile. Then he built himself a grand
estate and a mansion with the proceeds and then eventually
moved on to Peru in the 1860s, where he became a de facto
dictator by controlling the country with his immense wealth,

(04:03):
which would be another episode. And we're not going into detail
about him, but meanwhile, his nephew, Minor C Keith Minor.
His name was Minor spelled OR. He's a miner.
You know 1800s names, man. They're.
What they're what they're bad? But Minor Keith was moving
forward with constructing railroads in Costa Rica.

(04:23):
They had signed an agreement with the Costa Rican government
in 1871 to build a railroad to connect their capital city of
San Jose to the Caribbean port, which would eventually be known
as Limon. Costa Rica's main export, at
least at the time, was coffee. And the railroad was supposed to
help their export business thrive because the main buyers

(04:46):
of Costa Rican coffee at the time was Europe, and this was
before they constructed the Panama Canal.
So there was nothing to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans
in Central America or anywhere because you'd have to go around
the bottom. They would have to transport all
of these coffee beans by oxcart,and they would have to transport
them to a Pacific port. It was hard to get to the

(05:08):
Atlantic side, so getting them to Europe was very, yeah,
difficult. So a railroad to the Caribbean
would solve this issue. Of course, since oxcarts had
trouble getting there, it was also pretty difficult to build a
railroad through it as well. Makes sense?
Cut through a lot of difficult, rough, choppy terrain that was

(05:30):
covered by dense jungle, and theconditions were also perfect for
the spread of diseases. It was hot, humid, it was
raining a lot, and it was a lot of hard work. 3 of miner C
Keith's brothers had actually died from one of the various
diseases going around, you know,yellow, yellow fever, malaria,
what have you. And it wasn't only his brothers.

(05:52):
A large portion of their workforce died 4000.
In total. And that was during the
construction of the 1st 25 milesof rail.
That was a lot bigger than 25 miles.
Can you imagine 4000 people dying and 25 miles?
That's insane. That's.
What it took to build a railroad.

(06:13):
A bunch of people died building the Panama Canal too, so.
Yeah, that's horrible. Kind of learned this was topped
with an inconsistent cash flow to the project as the coaster.
The Costa Rican government struggled financially during
this time and actually defaultedon the loan they had taken out
to fund the railroad in the 1st place.
But Minor Keith, newly dead brothers and all, stood up and

(06:38):
as a fellow Whitey convinced theEnglish bank to lower the
interest rate on the loan and give him more money, like lend
him personally more money on topof that £1.2 million.
More. Specifically and in return, the
Costa Rican government gave Minor Keith 800,000 acres of
land next to the railroad tracksthat he was building tax free.

(07:00):
And that much land is about 6% of Costa Rica.
They just gave it to him. Gave it to him for renegotiating
this loan. And.
And getting the money to fund. The railroad, yeah.
And they also gave him a 99 yearlease on the rail.
Like the use of the railroad tracks themselves, which reminds
me a little bit of what they didhere in Chicago.

(07:22):
Giving. Up but the parking.
Yeah, like 100 year lease too. I think it's 80, but yeah.
A very long lease. Way too long to be able to for
our. Roads, yeah, which is now owned
by Qatar. So yeah, Qatar owns the Chicago
St. Yeah, look that one up.
Crazy story. So what a monopoly, right on

(07:43):
this railroad with, with all of this corner on the market, you
figure he had to be square with business, right?
Good. 1. Thank you.
Was proud of that one, but he was not miner.
Keith was in a lot of debt from the project, and the freight and
commuter business from the railroad he built was just not

(08:05):
very lucrative. Luckily for him, though, he'd
been playing around with growingbananas on the land that was
given to him by the Costa Rican government, and at first this
was to feed his workers. He's like, you're fine with just
bananas, right? Like that's all you need is
bananas. They were fine with anything.
They were fine with not starving.

(08:26):
Probably around this time also cause all of his workers died.
He then he then filled his workers with, he had to import
workers from like other countries to do the work because
they were like, man, who cares if all these foreigners die?
Because that's how railroads were built, not only in South
America, by the way. Oh no.
In America. Right here in.
America. Yes.
Yes. And bananas, though, they, they

(08:48):
really like to grow in this tropical climate, so it was
booming. And he thought if people weren't
exporting enough coffee through the railroad, or maybe he could
generate his own business exporting these damn bananas to
America. So he bought a Steamboat to take
them from the Caribbean to Louisiana, and the Tropical

(09:08):
Trading and Transport Banana Export Company was born.
And I will say this is just likea very unrelated fun fact.
Like even by the 1940s in Europe, they weren't really,
they really didn't have bananas.My grandfather immigrated here
in 1952. Now granted, World War 2, I'm
sure that he grew up in Europe during World War 2.

(09:31):
So I don't think getting bananasto Europe was the main priority
of Europe at the time. But my grandpa did not have a
banana until he came to the United States.
He was 14. He didn't have a banana until he
was 14. And.
It's funny, they did have them at one point, and I only know
that because the seeds that he got to plant the bananas came
from France. He got them from France.
Oh, weird. Dang French bananas.

(09:53):
I've had a French banana. Anyway, so not.
They don't take the whole peel off.
I don't know, I just like, I just like a banana with just the
top of the peel cut off. It's like it feels cleaner that
it. Feels better when you're eating
it if the top of it doesn't havethe peel I'm.

(10:14):
Saying I love a Jewish banana. So, so not long thereafter,
Miner C Keith would lose a bunchof money when a New York broker
went bankrupt. So the Oh my God, I put this in
here. So the Tropical Trading and
Transport Company decided they would merge with another fruit
exporting business, the Boston Fruit Company, which they were

(10:37):
already contracting the Boston Fruit Company for a lot of their
boat shipments out of the regionbecause they owned the railroad.
They didn't own a lot of boats. The Boston Fruit Company owned a
lot of boats. So they were like, what if we
get together? You know, you got a brand new
pair of roller skates. I got a bunch.
Of boats. Yeah, either way.

(11:00):
So they got together and in 1899, by their powers combined,
they became the United Fruit Company Incorporated.
Because they're united. Right here in the United States.
So just remember through the rest of this, this is a, this is
AUS company. It's going to be important.
So we'll bring it up a lot. But like, I think for me, it was
easy to forget because most of their business is done in
Central America, but they're technically an American company.

(11:22):
And sorry remind me again, the guy is from the UK though, who
founded this right? No, he's from America.
But they were loaning, getting money from UK, the UK.
The Costa Rican government had got the original.
Loan from the UK. So he negotiated.
It to be lowered, yes. OK, OK.
And then got more money from them.
Gotcha, Gotcha. Yeah.

(11:42):
The head of the Boston Fruit Company, Bradley Palmer, took
over leadership of the new unionand he immediately began to
rapidly expand their territory throughout Central America,
buying up smaller competitors until they owned 80% of the
businesses that export bananas to the US, making the United
Fruit Company filthy rich. They were making money hand over

(12:06):
fist with these bananas, so richthat in many of these countries
where they operated, the United Fruit Company was bringing in
more money than the entire GDP of the country by like a good
amount. That's 'cause they were building
in countries that were still developing nations and usually
had a lot of instability in their governments and they just

(12:28):
hadn't, they hadn't found their way.
They hadn't. They were on their path.
They weren't on their path yet. Yeah.
So they needed to go find themselves.
Eat, pray, love. In Spoiler Alert, a lot of them
still have not found themselves unfortunately, but it is what it
is. Because of this imbalance of
money and power, the United Fruit Company started gaining a
stranglehold on resources in places like Colombia, Guatemala,

(12:53):
Honduras, and many others. They created the International
Railways of Central America, which is a company that built
extensive railroad infrastructure throughout
Central America, mostly to help their export business, but also
meant they owned and controlled the only way that people and
goods could reliably be transported around a a country.

(13:13):
Basically, the government's going to build this
infrastructure, but they had enough money to build it.
And then they said, well, you can use it if you pay us, you
know? And they were so efficient at
this that in 1901, the Guatemalan government actually
contracted the United Fruit Company to deliver the mail.
Deliver the mail. Because they already had the

(13:34):
infrastructure built to get around the country.
So it makes sense. They're like, well, you already
built the railroad, so do you just want to like.
Also deliver the mail. Own and operate our post
offices. They're like, hey, while you're
on the way, can you just like drop off this letter for me?
That's pretty much what they didand they were like sure, they
also held a vice grip on naval travel as they owned and

(13:55):
operated a huge fleet of boats that would become known as the
Great White fleet. All the boats were painted
whites and it was based off likea a big US naval fleet whatever
which was the only way to transport goods or pretty much
the only way between these countries largest trading
partner in the United States. Also side note, the United Fruit

(14:17):
Company started offering trips for about like 50 to 100 people
at this time to tour the Caribbean on one of these boats,
making them the inventor of the Caribbean cruise so you can
thank them for all. This the Royal Caribbean brought
to you by their United Fruit Company.
Basically, and you can thank them for all the norovirus
outbreaks at terrible buffets atsea today.

(14:37):
So there. You go, oh me, and I used to
want to go on a cruise so bad just because of the buffets.
And then I realized that that's really dumb.
I can just go to a buffet. Yeah, but this is a buffet where
you'll also get sick because of the motion of the boat that.
Way I don't have to push my fingers down my throat, I'll
just throw up on my own. Oh bro, this is you got to pay

(14:59):
for this kind of therapy. I can't do it, not for free at
least. I'm like the United Fruit
Company, I don't do shit for free.
So beep beep bump the brakes. the United Fruit Company also
created the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company in 1913, which
they used to build radio towers and other communication
infrastructure, which they againloaned out to the government as

(15:21):
well. Basically they developed these
nations, like all the infrastructure of these nations,
and then the United Food Companylobbied and often got large tax
breaks from their host countriesbecause they were doing this and
also negotiated to own as much land as possible.
Well, you know, it's really, when you break it down like

(15:44):
this, it's really, you can really then see how these big
companies end up quote, UN quotelike, well, not owning, but like
running these countries. They basically.
Are they are running these countries and this is how they
did it? And that's this is this is just
interesting because, you know, you always hear this and I never
really, it's not that I didn't understand, but I'm like, OK,

(16:05):
like, how so? Because I never did the research
to deep dive into it. But it's like, oh, this makes a
lot of sense on how they how like one company can get so much
control over such a small country as like Guatemala or
Costa Rica that doesn't have, you know, it's not like America,
it doesn't have millions and millions and millions of people
in it. Yeah.
You know, and they're making like these companies are making

(16:26):
so much more money. Like they literally the means to
be able to do this in the countries themselves do not.
So at the beginning they were like, this is mutually
beneficial. Like they're building
infrastructure. We, they bring business, you
know, to the, to the country andthen what?
We just give up a bunch of our land and, and, and we, we, they
don't pay us taxes. Sounds good to us.

(16:49):
Easy peasy. And Speaking of buying up land,
not buying up, They're also justgiven a lot of land.
At their largest, the United Fruit Company owned 20% of all
land in Guatemala, and much of the land they owned they didn't
even develop. They didn't build plantations on
it. It's just sat there.
Yeah, well, publicly they would announce they needed the land as

(17:09):
reserves in case their plantations were wiped out by
natural disaster or disease. But more likely it was mostly to
keep other companies from muscling in on their market
share. No other person can move in and
build up a banana plantation if they just own all of the land
where you could do that, even ifthey're not using it.
Yeah, that makes sense. And they only had bananas

(17:30):
planted on 15%, like 15% of the land they owned.
That's crazy. And they were just gobbling up
as much as they could. Cobbling up those bananas.
You know they must have been your relatives if that's a
heritable trait. In order to get government
concessions to be given this land, they not only use their

(17:52):
influence by the infrastructure they had built, but also
developed close relationships with officials which were more
than likely corrupt. Essential American governments,
once again, were fraught with dirty politicians and
instability. They greased pocketbooks to make
sure that what was good for bananas was good for
politicians. And simultaneously, while

(18:13):
they're doing this, while they're making the richest
people in the country richer andmore corrupt, they're also
treating the common people who actually do all the work on the
plantations like absolute garbage.
Oh well, why would they treat them like normal people?
Well. But I mean, who will help
enforce worker rights when your government is basically bought

(18:34):
by your employer? Yeah, the United Fruit Company
had their toes dipped in every part of the country's
operations, which led to their local nickname in these
countries being El Pulpo or the Octopus.
Because they had a tentacle in every part of your life, and
your life was not a good one if you worked for them.

(18:54):
I mean, And they were obviously the biggest employer by far, so
you likely did work for them. And just your average Jorge
working for the United Fruit Company would likely not have
enough money to afford his own place to live.
So the United Food Company wouldprovide them housing.
And while sometimes it might have been OK, the camps, which

(19:15):
they would usually have workers live in would likely not have
running water or medical care. You weren't allowed to leave, or
else they would just hire someone to take your place.
You were very expendable. And if you got like, let's say
you got sick or you got hurt, ifyou took time off because you
were sick, you weren't paid. If you if you left to go into

(19:38):
town to see a doctor, you were just, you were like, OK, you
abandoned your post and you would be replaced.
Wow. There was no compensation for
you if you got hurt or died. They would not support your
family if you died while working, which did happen.
Oh, it probably happened all thetime.
You know, so it's not great. On top of that, you would be

(20:01):
working A7 day work week, which is weird to say because that's
all the days that is every day and you could work up to 20
hours per day. And to top all of that off,
which is already bad, they weren't even going to pay you
real money. They paid workers in company

(20:21):
coupons which could only be spent at stores and other
businesses owned. By the United Fruit company so
they basically didn't pay you because every cent of your wage
was guaranteed to make its way back to the employer by design
and even then they still only handed it handed out like 100

(20:44):
pesos worth of this to to a worker a month which.
Even if it was, that's not a lotfor an entire month of work, No,
Yeah. But of course, it's not like you
could, as a worker, hope for thegovernment to step in.
Because. Because they are the government.
And even if, even if they did step in, then the government and
you would lose access to transportation by railroad, to

(21:06):
radio, maybe even your mail. You know, you lose all these
services that are supposed to berun by a government because
you're basically working for thegovernment that is exploiting
you to sell bananas to America. Nevertheless, workers eventually
got fed up and started to strike.
I mean, you can only do this forso long.

(21:27):
No, you're going to snap. There were multiple worker
uprisings, but one of the most infamous happened in Columbia
circa 1928. In 1918, workers had started
striking, but literally for a whole decade, pretty much
nothing had been done. So in October of 1928, the
workers provided a list of demands to the United Fruit

(21:48):
Company. And they are literally like the
saddest demands. Ever Yeah, it's probably going
to be like, can I just please have water on shift?
You're can I go to the bathroom like?
You're close. Yeah.
Among their list, it was included to only have a six day
work week. They're like one day off please.
They requested that there is compensation for workers who are

(22:10):
injured or killed on the job andthat they be paid actual money.
They only had 9 demands. That's like three of them.
And none of them are crazy. Yeah, the other ones were like
medical care. It's it's insane.
But the United Fruit Company sawthese demands and said, you know
what, that sounds like dirty communism.

(22:37):
They're like you communists. You want to get paid actual
money and have a day off. That's the most communist thing
I've ever heard of my life. Especially when they started
striking in mass, as in November, at least 25,000
workers participated. Whoa, That has got to be a large
percentage of their. I would think that'd be a large

(22:58):
percentage of their workforce. It was, and it scared the United
Fruit Company and the Costa Rican government, which
dispatched General Cortez Vargasas well as 700 military men to
keep order and control the situation. 700 against 25,000
does not seem like a very good ratio to control anybody.

(23:21):
It is when the 700 have guns. True.
The United Fruit Company being an American based company again,
also had the United States put pressure on the Colombian
government to protect American assets and lives that were at,
you know, 'cause American citizens are there running the
company or whatever. Very similar by the way, to what

(23:42):
we had seen during our episode of covering the annexation of
Hawaii. And on December 5th, 1920, eight
1500 United Fruit Company workers were camping out in the
town square of the town of Cianaga.
The army marched in and ordered everyone to leave immediately as
they began setting up their machine guns on the rooftops.

(24:04):
The warnings lasted 5 minutes. Meanwhile, the United States had
a ship posted close off the shore to monitor the situation,
which General Vargas was well aware of.
The Americans had already said that they would intervene if any
worker dispute threatened the American companies assets or
lives of American citizens. Fearing this invasion of the US

(24:27):
troops, General Vargas, after the 5 minutes were up, ordered
his troops to fire into the crowd gathering for a Sunday.
Mass. Oh my God.
A crowd containing not only United Fruit Company workers,
but their families, the elderly,women and children, and they
kept firing until the next day, December 6th, 1928, in what

(24:50):
would become known as the BananaMassacre.
The exact number of bodies that were put into mass graves in the
following days is not exactly known.
General Vargas gave the officialcount as 47, but in the.
But in a fictionalized version of the massacre in Colombian
writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel 100 Days of Solitude, he

(25:12):
counts the dead as 3000. I'm going to say 47.
Doesn't seem like that's. It was not 47, but what the most
likely number is comes from a series of telegraphs sent from
the US Embassy in Colombia back to the Secretary of State Frank
Kellogg, one of which sent on December 29th, stated, And I
quote, I have the honor to report that the legal adviser of

(25:34):
the United Fruit Company here inBogota stated yesterday that the
total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military
authorities during the recent disturbance reached between 5
and 600, while the number of soldiers killed was one.
This number, though, was then amended a few weeks later in the
following telegram that was sent.

(25:56):
I have the honor to report that the Bogota representative of the
United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number
of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded
1000. They're bragging about it.
They have the honor. If that doesn't show you exactly
which side America has been on when it comes to respectable
working conditions for people, especially those that don't look

(26:20):
like us or and are in other countries, then I really don't
know what does. But that is only the second
worst thing that America did in partnership with the United
Fruit Company. The worst happened in the 1950s
in Guatemala. You see, the people of Guatemala

(26:42):
had just opposed a tyrannical dictator by the name of Jorge
Yubiko and they replaced him with their first democratically
elected liberal president, Juan Jose Arevalo, who enacted a
minimum wage and even built government owned farms to
provide jobs to to those withoutland and and those without jobs,

(27:07):
which obviously the United FruitCompany did not like.
That being said, he was actuallystill tough on communism,
probably to help their alliance with the United States.
But still, Arevalo had to last through 25 different coup
attempts during his tenure. As president, 25. 25 which he

(27:29):
did, and in 1950 he was succeeded by his defense
minister, Jacobo Arbenz, who continued to press for workers
rights. But what really pissed off the
United Fruit Company was when heannounced Decree 900, which was
aimed to take back large chunks of that uncultivated land that

(27:50):
was being held by the United Fruit Company.
And he wanted to take it and give it back to landless people
so they could actually build a living for themselves in
Guatemala. But even with all that, they
were going to pay the United Fruit Company for this land, and
it was an amount that was doublewhat they had originally paid
for it. So they were going to make a

(28:10):
profit on every every piece of land they sold back.
But it it wasn't really about the money.
We all know that. It was about keeping competition
at Bay. So this threatened them.
And at this time the United Fruit Company had some friends
in high places here in America. They were publicly affiliated

(28:30):
with the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and his
brother Allen Dulles, who was a former member of the United
Fruit Company's board, was the first citizen director of the
CIA. Oh my God, what?
Yeah, originally the OSS and they they became the CIA and he,

(28:51):
Allen Dulles let it up, who was previously a member of the board
of the United Fruit Company. So with these guys in their
corner, they also got the ear ofPresident Truman towards the end
of his presidency and then finally Dwight Eisenhower.
And they spun our bends as, guess what, a communist.

(29:12):
And that if Guatemala fell to communism, the US feared that it
would provide an example for other Central American countries
to follow suit. And they ate that narrative up.
Oh yeah, I mean, that's not shocking at all.
We've been so afraid of communism in this country when

(29:33):
there was actually not a threat or it wasn't any of our business
if someone else was communist. Also like they were just holding
land and not doing anything withit.
It's obviously very detrimental to this country to keep doing.
That they. Were paying you for it, they
didn't. They are kind of like seizing
it, but they're paying you for it and they're paying you a

(29:54):
profit and you're not using. It you're literally not using it
they. They were also, I mean, they
were also upset about the minimum wage and then you had to
like, like pay them more and, and that you had to give them
benefits. Oh, treat them like humans,
yeah. Yeah.
So they were like, we have to treat our workers like people.
That's communist. And this sparked the US to start

(30:16):
the covert operation, Operation PB Success, which aims to take
which aim to back a coup of the Guatemalan government and
replace it with someone more amenable to crimes against
humanity. And they had just the guy.
This dude, Castillo Armas, had already been exiled from

(30:36):
Guatemala for attempting a coup,and he had some fighters with
him already. So they were like, hey, awesome,
this guy wants to take over the government.
He's got some people. So the CIA worked with Castillo
to plan the coup. They gave him $250,000 and
provided him with weapons and trained his soldiers.

(30:56):
They set up US backed training facilities in Nicaragua and
Honduras where they trained at least like 1500 soldiers to back
Castillo in his coup. They also gave him some planes
and some bombs which would laterbe used to bomb Guatemala City.
But they didn't have enough people to take on an entire

(31:18):
army, the entire army of Guatemala, so the US had to
employ some psychological warfare as well.
They launched a years long disinformation campaign leading
up to the coup that involved flying and dropping pamphlets in
Guatemala urging citizens to fight against the the Arbenz

(31:39):
communist regime. They sent death threats to part
to political leaders on Arbenz'sside.
And they did it like also super over the top this time in the
CIA. They were fucking crazy.
Also this is about MK Ultra period where they're like, you
know, mixing LSD into mashed potatoes at work.

(32:00):
Events, feeding them to people to see what would happen, yeah.
You know, there there's a lot ofcrazy stuff going on and in
order to send death threats to these politicians, they would
like send them little small wooden coffins or like nooses.
And I'm like, just send a letterbro.
Yeah, just it doesn't have to bethat ominous.
Just as scary to send a letter being like we're going to

(32:22):
fucking kill you. Yes, it is still just like open
up your mail. Well then they would have to
then someone. They would have to find someone
who knows Spanish and like. Well, they already know the
people who are delivering the mail.
So you think it'd be easy? Yeah, true.
Well, I mean, I guess that's howthey got the coffins to them
too. Just a tiny coffin.
I OK, I'm gonna lie. That'd be kind of cool.
If I, if I went by mail, there'sjust like a like a tiny replica

(32:43):
of a coffin. I'd be like, that's dope.
And be like. This is going on my mantelpiece
for sure, you know, But yeah, I guess it's worse when when
you're being feared that you're going to be.
They also had a list of like assassination targets, which
it's still very unclear if they ever assassinated them because
when these these documents were declassified.
So this is all very true and very proven, but they still

(33:06):
redacted the list of the assassination targets so.
Well, that means they definitelydidn't.
They said they didn't. Well, if they said they didn't,
they probably didn't, all right,You can believe them.
No, I'm sure they're living great lives, actually.
Actually, the senator just went to live on a farm.
He's so he's living his best. Life, he's fine.
The US also enacted a naval blockade of Guatemala, searching

(33:29):
all ships going into and out of Guatemalan ports, which I guess
was also I guess, against international law.
But they were searching like English and French ships coming
in, which was against international law.
But they looked the other way because they wanted America to
look the other way with some of the stuff they were doing.
Very quid pro quo stuff. They also even set up a fake

(33:50):
radio station, and this radio station named Lavoz de la
Liberacion, or the Voice of Liberation, was an act of
theater where hosts that were supposedly deep in the jungles
of Guatemala were acting againstthe communist tyranny, the
communist tyranny of the government by putting out this

(34:13):
radio broadcast. They were actually just in Miami
and they actually had to do likea bunch of crazy stuff like
recorded in Miami and then like like smuggle it into Guatemala,
Guatemala so that they could they.
Could play it on the radio station.
Yeah. So you could never trust the
media. This is what I'm learning this.
Whole operation cost America like $7,000,000.

(34:37):
They had 100 CIA workers workingon this alone.
Just on how to bring down communism in Guatemala, Imagine
there is nothing better we coulddo here.
Imagine. I'm glad we covered that.
Imagine showing up to your day job at your office and be like
another day of trying to topple the government in Central
America. That's crazy.

(34:59):
And the coffee machine's broken again.
You'll be kidding me this. Sucks.
Who drank my Creamer? And this, this radio station,
they broadcast news constantly that large rebel troops were
marching to the capital, which demoralized the Guatemalan army.
They like, believed that it was coming, which is good because

(35:22):
Castillo led the attack finally with only 480 men when they
first started marching from Honduras into Guatemala and only
one a single military victory the whole time they were
fighting. They were beat back most of the
time before the Guatemalan army decided that they would just

(35:42):
rather be on the winning side. They were like, no, America's
backing them. Don't get us eventually like.
I mean, they had a point. I mean, I'm not, I'm not
agreeing with them. I'm just yeah, they.
Just sucks. Yeah, it sucks.
So they finally convinced Arbenzto resign on June 27th, 1954.
And after a brief time, like maybe about a month where they
like cycled through other people, like stepping up, like

(36:04):
first someone from our Benzit campaign was like, I'll take his
place and we'll continue the fight against them.
And then like someone else took over.
Finally, they elected Castillo Armas as president, of course,
after he banned all other parties and ran unopposed and
received 99% of the vote. Hey, he was elected, you know,

(36:25):
he was elected like Vladimir Putin was.
Elected. All of these times.
Or just like Kim Jong Un is elected?
Exactly. Armas then went on to round up
and execute 2 to 5000 people whowere deemed to be communist
sympathizers of the previous Arben's government.

(36:51):
I don't have anything to say to that A.
Lot of people and a. Lot of people.
This also kicked off decades of rule by dictators who are backed
by US by the US government and like US backed dictators ruled
Guatemala till 1996. 4 bananas. 4 bananas and these dictators

(37:12):
also committed numerous atrocities including just to
mention one the Guatemalan Mayangenocide which is also known as
the silent Holocaust where they killed like 150,000 Mayans like
targeted in a targeted genocide.For no reason.
There were reasons, but I'm not going to.
Get into it, it's a whole other thing.

(37:33):
Just take it, take my word. They did a lot of bad shit.
You know, it also kicked off a very anti American sentiment
from Central American countries because this was, they all kind
of knew like it was kind of above board.
I mean, they put the blockade, they knew it was America and
they knew which side they were on.
And it still persists to this day in a lot of these countries.
And I kind of agree. This is part of the reason that

(37:54):
Cuba doesn't like this, you know, because you know who was
at the bombing of Guatemala City?
I'm pretty sure that's where it was.
Fidel Castro. Che Guevara pretty bad.
In 1970, United Fruit Company was targeted for a hostile
takeover by a man named Eli M Black who merged the company
with his own kind of failing public meat packing company.

(38:16):
AMK hoping to incorporate some quick capital from taking over
this company and rebranded and rebranded the child company as
the United Brands Company. Terrible name.
When he got a look at their books, he instead found that the
banana business was not booming anymore.

(38:36):
Was not very appealing is what you're saying?
I was waiting for a banana pun. I thought you were going to do
it after the intro and I was going to call you hack again and
but you didn't do it and I was kind of proud of you until now.
So yeah, it wasn't appealing. You might know this already, but
bananas are actually just clonesof other bananas.
Every banana is a clone of another banana.

(38:57):
That's what allows them to grow without seeds.
The restriction, this restriction in genetic diversity
makes banana crops highly susceptible to diseases.
In fact, the bananas largely available today, which are
Cavendish bananas, those were not the most popular banana in
the world, at least until the 1950s.

(39:20):
Before that it was a banana called the Gross Michel banana.
But that banana was a frickin wiped out by a fungal infection
known as Panama disease. So now we only eat Cavendish
bananas. Were they smaller?
I forget the actual comparison. They were actually.
They were actually larger I believe, and I think they were
said to have a sweeter flavor. Pretty much everyone agrees that

(39:43):
the Gross Michelle banana was better than the Cavendish
banana. Interesting.
But the Cavendish banana didn't die the Panama disease as
easily. Do we have the gross Michelle
banana? They do still make them in very
small. Areas.
They're very hard to get and they're very expensive, but you
can get them if you want. There's actually a bunch of

(40:03):
kinds of bananas. It's just that the Cavendish
bananas. Is the popular that's.
What they grow in Central America.
So that's the ones we. See, we see.
OK. So diseases such as this, by the
way, the Cavendish bananas are also being threatened by another
fungal disease that's going around right now.
So great. The the the eggs, the bananas.
What's next? They think in maybe like 20

(40:24):
years we might have a different banana.
Interesting. So diseases such as this had
wiped out a lot of the profit from the United Fruit Company,
and they had also taken on a lotof debt because of this.
So it really wasn't the cash cowthat Black was looking for when
he did the hostile takeover. Then in 1974, a lot of their
Honduran plantations were wiped out by the unfortunately very

(40:48):
benign sounding hurricane Fifi. Who would not not Hurricane
Fifi. If you're naming a hurricane
that's going to devastate a country and kill multiple
people, you cannot name it. Fifi, no, you cannot.
Just don't do that. Scientists, whoever chooses the
names for hurricanes, don't do that.

(41:11):
Name it. Name it something scary.
Please. I'm I can't get killed by
Hurricane Fifi. No, I absolutely cannot.
That would be a mar on my legacy.
So this LED Black to try and bribe the Honduran president
with with $1.25 million to completely exempt them from
taxes. And he had also guaranteed
another $1.25 million later if he granted it.

(41:34):
So Black must have been really worried about the lack of money
or about, you know, this bribe being discovered and him being
put in jail. Because on February 3rd, 1975,
he walked into his office on the44th floor of the New York City
Pan Am building, broke the window with his briefcase, and

(41:55):
leapt to his death on the streetbelow.
I feel like there was such an easier way to do that.
Well, it's dramatic at. Least that is so dramatic.
Broke the window with his suitcase.
What was it built out of? Briefcase?
Sorry or sorry? Briefcase.
Don't know Like wood and leatherbriefcases are normally built.
That had to be hard to break thewindow with that.

(42:15):
You have the strength of a dying.
Did they not double pane that window?
That's crazy. I.
Mean it's the 70s, so probably not.
Probably not. You'll probably just jump
through a window and just whatever.
That was such a long fall. 44 stories.
Probably the 80s when a bunch ofpeople, you know, like after the
80s when the crash happened, they were like double pane
windows on businesses. So following Black Suicide,

(42:37):
United Brands was bought by a Financial Group and renamed
Chiquita Brands International. A name that they have been using
or a name that they had been using specifically for their
bananas. The Chiquita banana brand
existed already. They've been using that since
1944. And that woman with a fruit hat
used to just be a banana, a banana woman with a fruit hat.
But it was a it was like an anthropomorphic banana woman

(43:00):
with a fruit hat. And they were like, let's just
make her a woman. So they've been using that since
1944. And since they became Chiquita
Brands International, they did alot of work trying to distance
themselves from their bloody past.
They also bought A&W restaurantsat one point.
That's random. So just.
Crazy. See how well those are doing?

(43:20):
I don't think they make them anymore, which is great because
of God. I love A&W root beer.
So good. Best root beer?
I like barks myself, but. It's it's so vanilla Y in A&W.
Anyway, is this interesting you guys?
Like should we do a root beer? We have a root beer podcast.
Oh. My God, that's the worst.
In June of last year, Chiquita was found liable for financing a

(43:44):
group called the United self-defense Forces of Colombia,
or AUC for short. This is or was they disbanded in
2006? This was a Colombian
paramilitary group that was actually deemed a terrorist
organization by the United States in 2001.
Yeah. The AUC had a long standing

(44:05):
history of drug trafficking and extortion and have killed
numerous civilians in Colombia. They're they're basically a
cartel. An investigation proved that
Chiquita had paid at least $1.7 million to the terrorist
organization between 1997 and 2004 for what they deemed.
And they didn't. They claimed to not know what

(44:25):
their other things were, that they just provided security for
their plantations. But it was later revealed that
they were actually paid for intimidation tactics to keep
their still very exploited workers in line.
You know, yo, you're going to gotalk to the government or, or
sue us or something, then we're going to send the AUC to your

(44:47):
door. Yeah.
Think about it again. Yeah.
Let me get you a. Coffin sent to your door.
Yeah, or a noose something, really.
Something really over the town. Internal memos even showed that
although the government had deemed them a terrorist
organization and Chiquita BrandsInternational's internal legal
team advised them to stop makingthese payments, that higher ups

(45:11):
at Chiquita declined and willfully still paid the
terrorist organization to keep ahold of their most profitable
area in Colombia they just don'treally care about.
Anybody. It's it's actually crazy.
Nope. And the class.
Action lawsuit brought against them by families of victims was
settled when Chiquita Brands agreed to plead guilty to 1

(45:33):
count of doing business with a terrorist organization and also
agreed to pay a $25 million fine, which is nothing to them,
no. But.
Also, part of this plea agreement was that they were
allowed to keep all the top executives that were actually
involved in the payments anonymous.
So we still don't know. We don't know who they were.
We don't know who they were. How can you?
Sleep at night after. Doing shit like that, that's

(45:55):
what's crazy is how do all thesepeople sleep at night knowing
what they're doing? They're rich, man.
I don't know. They don't care.
I. Don't know.
Crazy they're off a drinking. Dom Perignon or some shit in a
limo. So that is where I'm ending it
today. But just so you know, this

(46:18):
rabbit hole goes deep. American short story author
William Sidney Porter, writing under the name O Henry, coined
the term Banana Republic around the United Fruit Company, but
has grown to represent any unstable country reliant on the
export of natural resources and therefore usually a a company

(46:41):
for their survival. This is where the country
becomes and is operated as if itwas a private commercial
enterprise exploiting its workers for the profits of this
one or a few exports that they sell to other countries.
But the United Fruit Company wasn't even the only Banana
Republic focused on bananas, TheStandard Fruit Company, which

(47:05):
was previously the Vaccaro Brothers Company and later
became Dole. Also from the Annexation of
Hawaii episode, there's a lot ofparallels.
Yeah, a lot, a lot of. Fruit companies have taken.
Over sovereign nations. It's really crazy.
But Dole was another that held land in Central America along

(47:26):
with countless others. There's the the Koi ML Fruit
Company, many there, there were many, but you just hear about
the United Fruit Company the most 'cause they were the
biggest and and maybe you could argue the worst today also
wasn't an extensive list of the awful things that United Fruit
Company has done. And there's actually a whole

(47:47):
nother terrible story more recent involving the knowing use
of a pesticide or a fungus, a fungicide, whatever that is
causing men to be sterile. They knew it was causing men to
be sterile and also is causing many children to be born with
birth defects. Is that happening right now?
I think they might still. Be using it yeah.

(48:09):
And that's even worse because it's making the men sterile and
literally like in response, likethey someone recorded an
American senator being like wellgood, they need birth control
down there. Yeah, it was yeah, basically.
I mean, we're here. I'll give you the brief we're at
the end so I can throw it in. Basically, it was a a fungicide

(48:33):
that it was being manufactured by the Dow Chemical Company.
They had tested workers that were producing it and found that
20 of the 50 male workers that they tested were sterile.
The first seven they tested, 7 out of seven were sterile.
And they were like, that's weird.
And then they found that they had done a study in rats, and

(48:54):
they found that rats, when exposed to high amounts of it,
had testicular atrophy. Their balls got small.
And they just said, oh, yeah, wejust never, we never thought to
correlate that with possible sterility.
So America banned it. They were like, you can't use it
here. But all these other countries
didn't ban it. And actually, like, Dow was

(49:15):
going to stop providing it to what was then United Brands.
And they threatened to sue them for breach of contract if they
didn't keep selling it to them because it worked so well.
They were like, we don't care. Like, we'll sue you for breach
of contract if you don't. But wouldn't that also hurt us
to eat? Those bananas?
No, I don't think so. It's sprayed on the top, it's

(49:35):
like washed off later. But what it who it does hurt is
the people who are directly in. Contact with it, well, they were
fighting to their workers and they weren't telling.
Them that's what they were using.
So they thought they gave them spray bottles and there was a
guy who was like, I literally thought it was water.
Like I thought I was watering the plants.
We drank it and not and, and they said at the end of the day,

(49:57):
like like towards sundown when it was hot, they were using it
to miss themselves. Oh my God, because they didn't.
Know. And now and then they were like,
yeah, like we're sterile. And they're, they, it was a
documentary I watched. And they literally had like,
like crop duster planes, like flying, like spraying it over
bananas. And there was like a school

(50:18):
right next to it. And they were like, this is a
school for like special needs children.
And they were like, yeah, we've seen like a huge uptick in, in
children with special needs being born.
And it's probably this. And they like zoom out and
there's like a plane and like all of it's like falling on all
the kids. I was like, Jesus Christ.
So yeah, it's bad. But that was when I left out

(50:38):
because I had to get to, I had to talk about the thousands of
people that they've led to the death sub So God.
You weren't kidding when you said this episode was sad.
Yeah. So United Fruit Company.
You might never eat a banana again, and that's where we're
at. So thanks for listening, I
guess. Well, if you like.

(51:00):
More where that came from. Yeah, man.
Yeah, we're going to leave. I've I've never been happier.
The bananas upset my stomach. Thank you so much for listening.
If you want to support us, please feel free to do so by by
leaving us a review. You can do so on Apple podcast.
You can use words. You can shout out how much you

(51:22):
fucking hate Dole and and Chiquita on there.
Go ahead, please do. If you want to watch the video
that is available, we are on video on Spotify or on YouTube
at white Collars red hands. If you want to watch shorter
videos because your brain is burnt out by the Internet like
mine is, we also are on TikTok at white Collars red hands.

(51:43):
If you want to contact us you can message us on there or
actually any of our socials. It's facebook.com/white collars
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at white collars pod. You can support us by buying
some merch if you want. If you want a hat or a shirt or
something that has our logo on it you can Rep You can go to our
website whitecollegeredhands.comclick on the button that says

(52:04):
check out our merch. You can buy something there from
T public. While you're there you can also
suggest an episode. We try to do a fan submitted
episode every single season. Submit something more light
hearted please. We can only do so many Jesus
Christ. We only do so many of.
These. But before I completely lose
faith in humanity. So send it there through the

(52:28):
Contact Us button on our website.
Or you can send it directly to [e-mail].
You can support by telling a friend.
You can, you can, you can. Word of mouth is the best way to
to spread podcast news. And I know stuff like this is
what really gets me talking to people be like.

(52:49):
But if you see a random strangeron the bus or the train or at
work eating a banana, feel free to info dump this entire hour
episode to them. Here I have something you can
listen to. While you eat that banana.
Yeah, just providing the Spotifylink be like I.
See, you're eating a banana and I don't want this to be weird,
but you should listen to this. That'll go over well.

(53:09):
Try it for sure. You should.
I think you should. And I is that everything?
I think so. All right, Well, thank you guys
for listening, and we'll see younext week on another episode,
the season finale of White Collars, Red Hands.

(53:48):
The.