Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States

I very much enjoyed this book! It offers some interesting insights into the history of banana production in Honduras from an agro-ecological perspective. The impact of pathogens on patterns of production is not often highlighted, and this book does just that.However, this work also attempts to do too much and in the end (in this case, quite literally -- in the Conclusion), it doesn't do enough of all that it sets out to do. A tighter analysis on the role of the state in banana production would have improved the overall analysis. A sharper historical perspective would have also served this purpose. Furthermore, a wider discussion of the issue of memory in the Chapter on Prision Verde would have made a discussion of collective memory add a new and interesting dimension to the overall project.In sum, the book is very interesting and the moves the author makes (including the literary analysis, as well as his highlighting the trials of producers in the face of plant diseases, etc.) result in making this work a very interesting read! This book is worth having in any collection of works on Central America!

I ordered Banana Cultures by John Soluri. As you can see in the images, this is the book cover that arrived. The inside of the book is "Screenwriting is Rewriting" by Jack Epps Jr.

Not sure I could have been more bored. Thanks school, for wasting hours of my life.

Wonderful. An educational work that doesn't preach or proselytize on a subject that could easily become political and divisive.

Quick delivery and exactly what I needed.

I will never take bananas for granted now! A very good discription of how banana production evolved and how it affected Latin America.

The way I see it, this is a book that has taken an object study approach to explain how products as innocuous as the banana can be a lesson in transnational history. Soluri believes that Honduras is an under-examined area, as he writes that "with notable exception of Dario Euraque, historians working in the United States have focused their attention on banana enclaves located elsewhere in central America, notably Costa Rica and Guatemala." (8). His book is primarily about the story of several large corporations coming to set up Banana production in South America, and the relationship between them and the local populace, their governments, tropical diseases (such as Panama and Sigatoka), and how this shaped the development and economy of the region.From what I can discern, one of the interventions of Soluri is the agency and responses of the Honduran people to this corporate terror over the region. Of course, throughout his book he makes it very clear that at almost every turn, the United Fruit Company, the Tela Railroad Company, and other corporate powers had the upper hand due to the largesse of the Honduran government. Still, key piece of his work seems to push back against the idea that the Honduran people were at the complete mercy of a hapless government and predatory capitalism. As indicted by "the fact that hundreds of non-company growers sold some 4.7 million bunches as late as 1934", Soluri "suggests a need to revise historical narratives that emphasize the rupture between the pre and post United fruit eras in Honduras" (81). Later, he also writes that "the story of a drawn out struggle to control the soil resources of lot 19 does not readily conform to images of omnipotent fruit companies usurping the lands of small hapless fruit owners” (101), highlighting the fact that history is more complicated than the existing history suggests. I always appreciate nuance, and though I am not completely convinced by Soluri's argument that small fruit owners were not "hapless" (given the numerous tax deductions and subsidies their own government gave away), I appreciate the balance offered by this book.One of the things I would have liked to seen more of is a discussion of what type of role and responsibility the government in Honduras felt like it had to its citizens during this period of... well, what I would call corporate exploitation. Not to claim that there is no discussion of the government's thought process throughout these matters: Soluri makes it clear that the Honduran government calculus was driven mainly by self interest, and only seemed to go out of its way to help its own citizens when its back was against the wall, such as Carias' willingness to suspend negotiations with the United Fruit Company due to the "coming... of an election year" (170). Soluri is quick to point out however that bribes and heavy lobbying managed to undo this pretty quickly. When talking about the 1950s, Soluri again doesn't seem to have a strong opinion on the motivations of the government, since he qualifies the fact that President Galvez' 15% tax on the banana companies in the 1950 is due to the fact that the banana companies' power was already waning. It would have been nice to see him come down more firmly on what internal deliberations the Honduran government had amongst themselves when trying to come up with policies, and if they found it difficult to strike a balance between their responsibility to the people and generating revenue (for the state or for themselves).Interestingly, I can't help but thinking Banana Cultures sort of parallels this story I read a year ago about the avocado. Though it might seem like the rise of the avocado in the United States was a fairly organic phenomena over the past 20 or so years, a lot of work actually went into the product and our imagining of it before it wound up in your burrito bowl- in no small part thanks to marketing and PR companies like Hill and Knowlton. When you think about it, a lot of manoeuvring and money goes into selling these curiously shaped vegetables, such as the numerous, zany, "Avocados from Mexico" ads you've definitely seen during superbowl.

This book contains much valuable information for anyone interested in the business/corporate culture of Honduras, and the way that American government and business interests have negatively affected the lives and well-being of the Honduran people.The author does an excellent job of explaining the problems with banana fungus and how the wonder treatment from the West - pesticides sprayed through high-powered hoses, the bananas then dipped into acid baths to take off the residue of the pesticide, had a long-term impact on the Honduran agricultural workers. Some of them claim that they sweated blue dye from their pores, ruining mattresses, sheets and clothing - the health problems were far more dire, including early death from respiratory illnesses.

John Soluri's work "Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, & Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States," adds a Central American geographic dimension to the historiography of transnational environmental literature. He not only introduces us to an export economy based solely on a single commodity, he also describes the radical environmental impact on Honduras. Soluri adds another layer of analysis by investigating the marketing and consumption of the commodity (particularly in the U.S.). The Soluri narrative describes how the growth in U.S. demand for bananas initially fueled an indigenous based market of production and export. He goes on to document how this market it was soon monopolized by large American multinational corporations. Soluri further demonstrates how the increased reliance upon capital intensive science and chemistry to combat an assortment of tropical maladies attacking the banana crop eliminated non-corporate growers. As in Cronon's description in "Nature's Metropolis" of the expansion of the highly capitalized railroad system in the United States, Soluri illustrates a similar pattern in Honduras. Soluri writes:"Throughout the Americas, the expansion of export commodity production went hand in hand with railroad construction. For example, between 1834 and 1837, Cuban sugar planters financed the building of the first railroad in Latin America (and the seventh built in the world). In Costa Rica and Guatemala, coffee interests financed the building of railroads that in turn stimulated export banana production along the Caribbean Coasts of those two nations. United Fruit's two Honduran subsidiaries were tellingly named "railroad" - not banana- companies. Finally, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the United States [and in Canada] helped to make possible the rapid overland transport of bulky commodities from California to Midwest and Eastern markets" (Cronan, 226).Soluri documents how Honduras's export economy at first co-opted native Honduran growers into the banana market, and eventually forced them out as producers. As production spread and more land was needed for the multinational corporations, Hondurans were expelled from their ancestral lands. Finally, he shows how the labor of Honduran men and women itself became commodified and they were forced into virtual peonage by the export economy. Soluri additionally demonstrates how U.S. consumption was manipulated by the monopolistic multinational corporations through pricing and advertising. Soluri credits all these environmental consequences and economic conditions in Honduras to modern international capitalism. This is capitalism which has moved offshore and into developing countries to maximized production and profits. The forces at work in the Honduran banana culture are very well organized highly capitalized American multinational corporations (e.g., United Fruit Company). In Honduras the force of international monopoly capital manifested itself in the complete control of the country from the political institutions to the natural environment. Corporations controlled the railroads, altered the landscape, and even put the health of Honduran workers at risk. Attracted by the genetic vulnerability of the banana monoculture, diseases such as Sigatoka could only be controlled with the massive use of chemicals. Sprayers came to be known as "veneneros" or "poison applicators." Soluri reports that after long-term exposure to chemical spraying, workers reported: "respiratory problems, weight loss, and in some cases death" (125). In keeping with the doctrine of "capitalism sauvage," Honduran workers were not given any protection against the toxic chemicals. Soluri reports that in 1950 a Honduran government committee (co-opted and controlled by U.S. corporations) spent all of one week investigating work conditions in the banana business.This book is a must-read for students and mavins of environmental history, international business, and perhaps students of diplomatic history.