Peeling Back the Truth on Guatemalan Bananas

• More people eat bananas than apples and oranges combined
• Bananas are one of Guatemala’s five main export items
• Guatemala is the second most dangerous country in Latin America for trade unionists (July 2009, International Trade Union Confederation)

“Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it”

The banana outsells apples and oranges combined.1 Ubiquitous in homes and supermarket shelves throughout the United States, the cultivation and distribution of bananas entails a grim reality of cartels, unions, and governments entangled in human rights abuses, price wars, and trade disputes. This is a familiar setting where the strong international buyer rules over the weak provincial seller. In Guatemala, for example, deeply entrenched multinational companies (MNCs) have continuously dominated trade while disadvantaged banana campesinos since the early 1800s have labored under miserable conditions and for wretched pay. This has prevented a truly free market in which farmers and workers would be allowed to bargain in good faith or with the same freedom and privileges as the MNCs.

Commonly known, for good reasons, as Banana Republics in the 19th century,2 Central American countries like Guatemala granted companies from the U.S. and other Western nation’s market access to develop the banana trade, yielding huge profits to Western producers.3 Powerful multinational fruit companies, such as U.S.-based Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita, began heavy, often fraud-laden operations in Latin America, gaining control over much of the farmlands, manipulating government officials, and influencing the media, all within a cloud of secrecy. For Guatemala, the banana trade set the stage for a grossly unbalanced land distribution pattern for farmers who suffered a low standard of living and a harsh dependence on a single crop.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate BB Sanford