Before Venezuela’s oil, there were Guatemala’s bananas.
U.S. policy in Latin America has long been shaped by business interests — but rarely with today’s level of openness (thread) ⬇️
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In the early 20th-century, Boston-based United Fruit controlled vast swaths of Guatemala, dominating land, labor and politics. Locals called it “the octopus.” Its power helped give rise to the term “banana republic.”
(United Fruit included the Chiquita brand of bananas) 🍌
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When Guatemala’s elected leaders in the 1940s who passed labor and land reforms, United Fruit condemned them as a communist plot — and lobbied Congress hard.
Lawmakers repeated the company’s talking points about communism.
(Here’s part of the memo from the lobbyist to Congress in 1949):
The campaign worked. In 1954, the CIA helped orchestrate a coup against Guatemala’s elected government using bribery, propaganda and psychological warfare.
The result: decades of dictatorship, repression and instability. Guatemala never recovered from the destruction of its democratic experiment — driven, in part, by corporate pressure over fruit.