Banana Cultures

James’ assessment of Banana Cultures is spot on.  In From Silver to Cocaine Horacio Crespo’s essay mage very clear the sort of impacts that government policy has on commodity chains, but much of Banana Cultures avoids this type of analysis.  When John Soluri talks about the control of the fruit companies, he is talking about a sort of power that is possible because of the monopoly granted by the government.  If he wants to explore the relationship between the people and the fruit companies in terms of the lack of balance, he really needs to explain how that comes about. Soluri is probably trying to avoid a structuralist argument, but in the process he avoids discussing how the unbalanced relationship originated and continued to exist.  I don’t think he is arguing for a self-perpetuating monopoly, but he risks the appearance of that when he does not articulate his principles.  On page four, Soluri notes how others have challenged the Banana Republic method of analysis.  However, he does not follow up on their approaches to create a new understanding of how the Honduran government interacted with United Fruit.  Sometimes he gives the Hondas the upper hand, especially in the cases of land dispute, and in other instances he seems to follow much in the Banana Republic tradition, for example where he talks of how fruit companies controlled how people lived.  It is almost certainly the case that the relationship between the government and United Fruit varied across time, but variation is not the same as using whatever philosophical approach moves the story along the quickest.  Soluri does make clear that United Fruit are not the only growers active during this period.  Having pointed this out, he should have pursued this angle it in order to show the varying interests competing for government action.  This type of approach is certainly not outside of Soluri’s abilities, he clearly chronicles the changing interests of the workers, in a way that other writers have not done.  More than any other work we have seen so far, Banana Cultures shows what motivates the workers to join the large-scale operations, or remain on their smallholdings.