From the American fruit companies that threw their weight around in Central America
By T.W.
VIOLENT, poor and politically wobbly, Honduras meets most people’s definition of a banana republic. On Sunday it will hold a closely-fought presidential election, four years after a coup in which the then president was bundled out of the presidential palace in his pyjamas and put on a military plane to Costa Rica. Its murder rate is the highest in the world; its economy is in a pickle. Its problems are not new: the turbulent country has the dubious honour of being the place that first inspired the description “banana republic” more than a century ago. But where did the phrase come from, and what exactly does it mean?
It was coined in a 1904 book of fiction by O. Henry, an American writer. Henry (whose real name was William Sydney Porter) was on the run from Texan authorities, who had charged him with embezzlement. He fled first to New Orleans and then to Honduras where, staying in a cheap hotel, he wrote “Cabbages and Kings”, a collection of short stories. One, “The Admiral”, was set in the fictional land of Anchuria, a “small, maritime banana republic”. It is clear that the steamy, dysfunctional Latin republic he described is based on Honduras, his jungle hideaway. Henry eventually returned to the United States, where he spent time in prison before publishing his short stories and then hitting the bottle, leading to an early death.
His phrase neatly conjures up the image of a tropical, agrarian country. But its real meaning is sharper: it refers to the fruit companies from the United States that came to exert extraordinary influence over the politics of Honduras and its neighbours. By the end of the 19th century, Americans had grown sick of trying to grow fruit in their own chilly country. It was sweeter and cheaper by far to import it instead from the warmer climes of Central America, where bananas and other fruit grow quickly. Giants such as the United Fruit Company—an ancestor of Chiquita—moved in and built roads, ports and railways in return for land. In 1911 the Cuyamel Fruit Company, another American firm (which was later bought by United), supplied the weapons for a coup against the government of Honduras, and prospered under the newly installed president. In 1954 America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a coup against the government of Guatemala, which had threatened the interests of United. (Historians still debate whether the CIA's motive was to protect United or, as many now believe, to nip Communism in the bud.) Hence the real meaning of a “banana republic”: a country in which foreign enterprises push the government around.
In Honduras that remains the case—but the product in question is no longer fruit. Bananas remain an important part of the economy, and workers still have complaints about their foreign employers. But these days the pushiest businessmen are those who sell another agricultural product aimed at American consumers: cocaine. Honduras’s position on the trafficking route from South to North America means that most of the cocaine bound for the United States passes through its borders. With that trade come the violence and corruption that have marked the run-up to Sunday’s election. Honduras may no longer be a classic banana republic. But it is in danger of becoming something far worse.
