Banana Cultures

I agree with Candace that the below discussions of vassalages and monopolies do not get at the real focus on Soluri’s book – the workers and banana plants of Honduras’ North Coast.  Soluri is trying to shift agency away from American corporations in order to blend the narrative of the workers and plants into the story, making up for the problems of modernization and dependency theories.  This is also why I disagree that this is a biography of the banana or that it is a history of shipping.  Banana Cultures places power in the hands (and voices) of the workers, who too often have been considered the passive players in traditional histories.  I was struck by how often the book references the ways people tried to improve conditions and situations that, on the surface, they would seem to have no control over, especially when going up against a behemoth corporate monopoly.  Honduran workers and banana growers, or their political representatives, seemed to constantly send letters and petitions to regional governors, fruit executives, and national authorities in Tegucigalpa.  They called meetings and formed societies and growers’ associations in order to overcome obstacles.  Realizing the power of these foreign companies, Hondurans petitioned for fair treatment in land titles and squatted on abandoned land when the companies moved to disease-free soil.  They even went so far as to create the “village” of La Paz, taking advantage of the two overlapping zones of owned by Truxillo Railroad Company, later selling the land back to the company.  When wages were cut arbitrarily they negotiated with formal unions like SITRATERCO, and “complained with their feet” (moved to another farm) when work conditions got too bad.  Women made ends meet by acting as camp cooks and laundry workers.   

As Soluri says, though, this story is much more dynamic than the traditional Marxist critique of “the emergence of a class-conscious proletariat disposed or organizing strikes, trade unions, and communist movements.” (9)  The story is not so simple nor so linear.  He shows us how important cultural context is for explaining the fluctuations in popularity of certain commodities through popular culture like songs and plays, as Nadine mentioned.  Soluri also does not ignore concepts like mass advertising that was used to foster the loyalty of consumers.  This is why he spends those chapters looking into changing perceptions of bananas in the United States and the branding of Chiquita banana in order to influence shoppers. Soluri also does not ignore the corporate viewpoint and the attempts of banana companies to mitigate problems and control land and disease pathogens.  Indeed, much of his source material comes from the archived collections of United Fruit or Standard Fruit.  But a majority of Banana Cultures gives a voice or at least action to the “invisible” actors like the Honduran workers and the pathogens who put pressure on the fruit companies.  This story is not one of corporate control but of corporate reaction to other forces.