The period after WWI brought a significant increase in Labor demand and supply for the United Fruit Company, particularly in Cuba. The company’s expansion across South America and the Caribbean meant the allocation of more acres of land and thus the increased need for labor. Cuba’s peasant farmers were not alone enough to fill the demand created by new banana and sugar plantations. Therefore, United Fruit Company managers sought out labor from Haiti and Jamaica. By the time 1920 rolled around, the UFC had imported perhaps 3,000 Jamaican and Haitian laborers.¹ The company was also willing to exert a high degree of control over these workers. The UFC also sought to reduce costs by housing these in stark and often unhealthy conditions. United Fruit was able to avoid condemnation for these practices because these “third-country laborers” were isolated from their home countries and without any political representation, and were therefore less likely to participate in any sort of protest or labor organization. This situation also caused laborers to be completely dependent on the company for even their most basic needs.²

United Fruit’s reputation really came into its own starting in September 1920 with the first attempt in Colombia to sell bananas to a different foreign fruit company. The UFC had been incrementally increasing planters’ obligations and decreasing the price paid for the fruit in Santa Marta, Magdalena. Local producers did not want to stand idly by and be taken advantage of. As a result, local banana entrepreneur Juan Calderon and president of the Cienaga Municipal Council reached an agreement with the New Orleans based Atlantic Fruit Company to deal with a local firm, Alejandra Angel & Compania. Their attempt to export and break United Fruit’s local monopoly was derailed as soon the shipment arrived in New York. United Fruit, claiming contract violations, was able to persuade local officials to seize the cargo.³

The UFC also implemented a number of technological innovations during this period. On August 12, 1921, the United Fruit Company in collaboration with Workman, Clark and Company launched the SS San Benito, a refrigerated banana boat which is noted as possibly being the first cargo ship constructed with turbo-electric transmission.⁴ Also, in 1922, as fruit drying techniques began to become more advanced, the United Fruit Company perceived this as a new opportunity to market bananas or plantains that would have otherwise been discarded. Thus, the banana chip was born.⁵

But 1922 also proved to be a difficult year for workers of the UFC. Those workers that had not been able to build an immunity to diseases associated with life in the Panama, South America and Caribbean regions were plagued with horrible illnesses and even death. However, the UFC continued to blame on the unpleasant environment or the ignorance of the workers themselves rather than the poor health care provided by the company. Notably, a United States medical department official blamed the high mortality and illness rates on the company’s purchase and planting of over 40,000 acres of land in one year. This official proposed that the UFC was biting off more than it could chew, environmentally speaking. It was overworking and overexposing its workers at a rate that the medical personnel were unable to keep up with.⁶

The year of 1922 was a point where United Fruit flexed power and dominance over its competitors. These actions also shed light on why competing against the UFC was seldom successful. One of the tactics used by United Fruit to discourage competitors was land ownership. At the start of the company in 1899, the UFC owned roughly 325,000 acres of land and by 1922 it was estimated to own roughly 1.5 million acres. Yet only about 24% of this land was used to cultivate bananas. The balance was held as “security” and to discourage the acquisition of land by the UFC’s competitors.⁷

If the United Fruit Company had one thing going for it, despite all of its downfalls, it could successfully market a banana. In 1923, with the help of Frank Silver’s song, “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the banana took the United States by storm. These forms of marketing helped to infiltrate and set the American standard for the banana as not only a staple baby food, but also a delicious choice to serve over top of breakfast cereal.⁸ This marketing move transitioned into 1924 as well when the UFC’s test kitchen released a report that bananas with corn flakes made the best breakfast for families.⁹ The UFC pushed to present the banana as a “powerfully healthy” superfood especially for the youth of America.

In 1924, the UFC hosted a conference on tropical medicine in Jamaica. The company’s doctors felt it their great responsibility to share their knowledge and expertise on sanitation and treatment methods for these tropical diseases around South America.¹⁰ This conference was attended by 78 members from all over Central American as well as officials from the United States government, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the British Colonial Office.¹¹

Panama was known for labor strikes against UFC banana plantation owners. Each time, the United States military was brought in to bring back order and quell the strikes. After another strike in 1925, the military was brought back in again to reinstate order. The United States argued that such military interventions were undertaken in order to “protect” the country.¹² It was clear that little could be done in Central America without United States intervention, a reality that only served to perpetuate the UFC’s reputation in Central and South America during this time.

On May 2, 1927, a contract drawn up by the government of Guatemala and the United Fruit Company was officially approved by Congress and signed by Guatemalan President Chacon. This contract entitled the UFC to land in the Department of Izabal for the purposes of establishing a port in the Amatique Gulf. The company had the rights to build whatever was needed (e.g. railway, telephone, car lines) and was exempt from government taxes and duties. In return, the UFC would have to pay $14,000 a year to rent the land, $12 for every mahogany or cedar tree that would have to be cut down in the process, and 1 cent per bunch of bananas exported.¹³ In the same year, United Fruit purchased the California-Guatamelan Fruit Corporation. The Fruit Corporation exported fruit from Guatemala to the western region of the United States.¹⁴ This move was yet another effort to limit competition and strengthen their monopoly on fruit exports from Central and South America.

The year of 1928 would go down in history for the United Fruit Company, but not for positive reasons. Agricultural workers in Columbia were becoming more and more frustrated with the company’s labor practices. In protest of their working conditions, on November 12, 1928 laborers organized a strike. An estimated 25,000 plantation laborers participated, all in demand for a more humane work environment. The goal for the strike was to put pressure on the company to validate contract conditions for laborers. Unfortunately, the laborers’ pleas were brought to an abrupt silence on December 6, 1928 in Cienaga, Magdalena, when Colombian armed forces brutally massacred the congregated protestors.¹⁵

In January of 1929 a US State Department Cable suggested that the number of strikers massacred exceeded one thousand. The US embassy praised the work of the Colombian army’s fast work dealing with the “dangerous” strikers. The UFC was convinced they had been faced with a sort of “revolution” such as seen in Mexico or Russia during the time. However, the true number of slain workers was never confirmed and the exact number will probably never be brought to light.¹⁶

As Samuel Zemurray’s Cuyamel Fruit Company grew to become a significant competitor for United Fruit, Zemurray was bought out by United Fruit in November of 1929 after an price war. Soon afterwards, however, Zemurray would became the largest shareholder of United Fruit.¹⁷

During 1929 Fruit Dispatch, a subsidiary of United Fruit, conducted research on banana consumption in the United States. They discovered that the majority of banana consumers were middle class Americans who believed it was a healthy food for babies. Upon discovering this information, United Fruit increased the budget for advertising and Fruit Dispatch launched a campaign in magazines and newspapers targeted towards American middle class families.¹⁸

Not every political and government official was wholeheartedly supportive of the United Fruit company, during this time. In 1930, Louisiana governor Huey Long belittled Samuel Zemurray as a “banana peddler” and for his association with United Fruit and its “corrupt practices.” Long also openly disapproved of sending American soldiers to Central America to defend Zemurray and his corrupt business interests.¹⁹

Even after the major tragedy of the “banana massacre” of 1928, strikes continued throughout the 1930s. One notable strike in particular was in Honduras. The Action Committees of the Federación Obrera Hondureña (Honduran Labor Federation) launched a strike deep within the banana plantations of Honduras. However, the strikes were quickly put to an end and met with an insufficient amount of local support.²⁰

1Sullivan, Frances Peace. “”Forging Ahead” in Banes, Cuba: Garveyism in a United Fruit Company Town.” Page 235.

2Sullivan, Frances Peace. “”Forging Ahead” in Banes, Cuba: Garveyism in a United Fruit Company Town.” Page 236.

3Bucheli, Marcelo. “Enforcing Business Contracts in South America: The United Fruit Company and Colombian Banana Planters in the Twentieth Century.” Page 191.

4Roberts, Stephen S (15 September 2001). “Class: Taurus (AF-25)”. U.S. Navy Auxiliary Vessels 1884-1945.

5Unitedfruit.org. 2001. United Fruit Company – Chronology.

6Morgan, L., 1993. Community Participation in Health. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 22.

7Morgan, L., 1993. Community Participation In Health. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 22.

8Johnson, L., 2010. The Maverick: Dispatches From An Unrepentant Capitalist. Harriman House, p.155.

9Koeppel, Dan. Banana. The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. New York: Hudson Press, 2008. p. 75

10Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Problems In Tropical America, Kingston, Jamaica

11UFCOMD statistics contained in Annual Reports 1921-1931; and William E. Deeks, “Activities of the Medical Department of the United Fruit Company,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Problems In Tropical America, Kingston, Jamaica

12Hancock, J., 2017. Plantation Crops, Plunder And Power. Routledge, p.42.

13Abebooks.com. 1927. Bulletin Pan American Union – Abebooks, p. 919.

14Unitedfruit.org. 2001. United Fruit Company – Chronology.

15Elias Caro, Jorge Enrique; Vidal Ortega, Antonio (2012). “The Worker’s Massacre of 1928 in the Magdalena Zona Bananera – Colombia. An Unfinished Story”, p. 23-25

16Chapman, P., 2014. Bananas. Edinburgh: Grove Atlantic.

17 “Chronology”. United Fruit Historical Society.

18 “Chronology”. United Fruit Historical Society.

19Whitfield, Stephen J. “Strange Fruit: The Career of Samuel Zemurray.”

20“Chronology”. United Fruit Historical Society.