okay storytime. let's talk about the united fruit company because people keep saying "this is unprecedented' and it's really not. the us has been doing this to latin america for over a century. we just got less formal about it for a while
united fruit was an american company that grew bananas. sounds boring and harmless
it was not
by the early 1900s they owned massive amounts of land across guatemala, honduras, costa rica, panama, colombia, cuba. not just farms. railroads. ports. telegraph lines. the infrastructure