In Banana Cultures, John Soluri rethinks the banana’s transformation from a tropical plant to a food commodity.[1] Prior scholarship contended that “omnipotent U.S. banana companies” created markets for agro export commodities on their own. But Soluri challenges these assumptions by explaining how cultural, economic, and social processes gave rise to mass markets for bananas in the United States that were often shaped by their interactions with banana plants, pathogens, and working people on the North Coast of Honduras.[2] He argues that export banana farms were “simultaneously linked to international commodity chains and a web of agroecological relationships that constrained, resisted, and confounded the power of the fruit companies and their allies.”[3] Soluri concludes that the dynamics of mass production and mass consumption and their connections to social and environmental change shaped the historical trajectory of export banana production in Honduras and elsewhere.[4]
John Soluri describes how interactions among banana growers, exporters, consumers, and the Honduran state favored the Gros Michel banana in U.S. markets. As multinational corporations like the United Fruit Company gained key railroad and tax concessions from the Honduran government, they converted huge swaths of state land into Gros Michel banana monocultures. These monocultures fell prey to fungal pathogens like the Panama Disease that “invaded the North Coast” between 1910 and 1940.[5] Reluctant to export a banana that did not resemble the wildly popular Gros Michel banana, U.S. fruit companies simply abandoned diseased farms and relocated to pathogen free soils. This strategy brought them into conflict with one another, the Honduran government, and local cultivators.[6]
While Soluri demonstrates that migrant day laborers at times contested big fruit’s hegemony, they could not sustain the onslaught of the Sigatoka disease. U.S. fruit companies combated the Sigatoka disease by creating a capital and labor-intensive control system that cut jobs and depended on heavy irrigation and chemical spraying that priced out small farmers. After pathogen-free soils were exhausted, the United Fruit Company crossbred several varieties to create the Cavendish banana. Advertising agencies quickly recognized the importance of “branding” export bananas and created a subjective discourse of “quality” that “inculcated consumers with the idea that not all bananas were the same.”[7] The Cavendish banana, christened the Chiquita Banana in 1963, triggered a massive increase in United Fruit’s profits from $1.7-$25 million between 1963 and 1966.[8]
John Soluri challenges dependista historiography that largely accepts the monolithic role of U.S. fruit companies in creating markets for agro export commodities on their own. Soluri’s survey of agroecological change in Honduras’ North Coast suggests instead that the United Fruit Company and its rivals were, “entangled in a dynamic relationship with processes of mass production.”[9] Soluri’s examination of the interactions between banana plants, pathogens, and working people reveals how cultural and biophysical processes shaped economic institutions (including corporations and markets) and vice versa.[10] Viewed from the ground level, “export banana production appeared more like a series of improvisations (both creative and destructive in nature) than a well-scripted global power play.”[11]
John Soluri’s comparison of banana markets with those of other agro exports commodities precludes him from further investigating export banana production in the 1990s and the last decade. He mentions, but does not analyze, the emergence of popular organic food and fair trade movements that would have strengthened his argument concerning how cultural processes and complex agroecological systems affect mass production and mass consumption. Nevertheless, Soluri provides fascinating research that challenges the privileged role given to U.S. fruit companies in shaping export markets. First, he demonstrates how local cultivators dominated the market in the late nineteenth century. Second, he pays attention to marginalized actors like the poquitero squatters of Lot 19, La Paz, and how United Fruit’s relocation strategy inadvertently fostered expressions of Honduran nationalism that “did not readily conform to images of omnipotent fruit companies usurping the lands of hapless smallholders.”[12] Finally, Soluri skillfully uses oral histories to describe working life on banana plantations, not just of weed pickers and day laborers, but also of foremen and chemical sprayers. Soluri’s study of the devastating ecological effects of monocultures challenges neoliberal development models that encourage capital investment in agroexport commodity economies.
John Soluri describes how interactions among banana growers, exporters, consumers, and the Honduran state favored the Gros Michel banana in U.S. markets. As multinational corporations like the United Fruit Company gained key railroad and tax concessions from the Honduran government, they converted huge swaths of state land into Gros Michel banana monocultures. These monocultures fell prey to fungal pathogens like the Panama Disease that “invaded the North Coast” between 1910 and 1940.[5] Reluctant to export a banana that did not resemble the wildly popular Gros Michel banana, U.S. fruit companies simply abandoned diseased farms and relocated to pathogen free soils. This strategy brought them into conflict with one another, the Honduran government, and local cultivators.[6]
While Soluri demonstrates that migrant day laborers at times contested big fruit’s hegemony, they could not sustain the onslaught of the Sigatoka disease. U.S. fruit companies combated the Sigatoka disease by creating a capital and labor-intensive control system that cut jobs and depended on heavy irrigation and chemical spraying that priced out small farmers. After pathogen-free soils were exhausted, the United Fruit Company crossbred several varieties to create the Cavendish banana. Advertising agencies quickly recognized the importance of “branding” export bananas and created a subjective discourse of “quality” that “inculcated consumers with the idea that not all bananas were the same.”[7] The Cavendish banana, christened the Chiquita Banana in 1963, triggered a massive increase in United Fruit’s profits from $1.7-$25 million between 1963 and 1966.[8]
John Soluri challenges dependista historiography that largely accepts the monolithic role of U.S. fruit companies in creating markets for agro export commodities on their own. Soluri’s survey of agroecological change in Honduras’ North Coast suggests instead that the United Fruit Company and its rivals were, “entangled in a dynamic relationship with processes of mass production.”[9] Soluri’s examination of the interactions between banana plants, pathogens, and working people reveals how cultural and biophysical processes shaped economic institutions (including corporations and markets) and vice versa.[10] Viewed from the ground level, “export banana production appeared more like a series of improvisations (both creative and destructive in nature) than a well-scripted global power play.”[11]
John Soluri’s comparison of banana markets with those of other agro exports commodities precludes him from further investigating export banana production in the 1990s and the last decade. He mentions, but does not analyze, the emergence of popular organic food and fair trade movements that would have strengthened his argument concerning how cultural processes and complex agroecological systems affect mass production and mass consumption. Nevertheless, Soluri provides fascinating research that challenges the privileged role given to U.S. fruit companies in shaping export markets. First, he demonstrates how local cultivators dominated the market in the late nineteenth century. Second, he pays attention to marginalized actors like the poquitero squatters of Lot 19, La Paz, and how United Fruit’s relocation strategy inadvertently fostered expressions of Honduran nationalism that “did not readily conform to images of omnipotent fruit companies usurping the lands of hapless smallholders.”[12] Finally, Soluri skillfully uses oral histories to describe working life on banana plantations, not just of weed pickers and day laborers, but also of foremen and chemical sprayers. Soluri’s study of the devastating ecological effects of monocultures challenges neoliberal development models that encourage capital investment in agroexport commodity economies.
Edward Shore is a first year graduate student in the History Department at The University of Texas at Austin.
[1] John Soluri, Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 7.
[2] Ibid 13.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, 218.
[5] Soluri 14.
[6] Ibid, 14, 72.
[7] Ibid, 187.
[8] Ibid, 191.
[9] Ibid, 232.
[10] Soluri, 217.
[11] Ibid.
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