20th Century Vassalage

            Building off of what Carol said concerning United Fruit and other corporations: the companies were very interested in using their vast networks of influence and control in these areas to create monopolies not only on labor but on market in the areas they dominated.  As discussed in Chapter 3, a worker migrating to the North Coast to work the farms not only had to lease the land and sell their product to the companies but also had to worry about requesting permission to grow their crops in the first place.  The experiences of Victor Medina Romero, expressed in his letter to the Honduran minister of development, show how “if the companies do not give their consent to work an abandoned farm, they won’t want to buy the fruit one harvests!” (75) The fruit companies in Honduras had the perfect combination to maximize their own profits; the companies controlled not only the tools of production by owning the land, but in essence they controlled the means of labor as well, since a worker who was not authorized could not make a living without the company’s consent.  This created a vassalage system whereby United Fruit could grant access to farming land in exchange for the rights to the harvest from those workers, in turn this was one of the very few ways for a laborer to make a profit.  As Carol also pointed out, when disease threatened the crops, or technology improved to increase production value, the average worker did not have the capital to invest, instead they had to lean on the fruit companies in order to save their farms.

(As an aside: Once again, fantastic job Carol!  I enjoy reading your posts and the insight they give to the topic.)