BOOK REVIEW: Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolutionby Peter Chapman; Canongate Books; 224pp; €11.45
FOR ANYBODY with even a nodding acquaintance with the history of Central America, the United Fruit banana company emerges as a particularly nasty example of corporate practices - from the gross exploitation of workers to the bribery of governments and, at times, involvement in their violent overthrow. As the book's subtitle puts it, this was "a story of globalisation, greed and revolution".
For the author, Financial Timesjournalist Peter Chapman, the story of United Fruit illustrates the nature of corporate power in today's world. He claims that "the process of globalisation amounts to United Fruit's enclave write large". In writing the history of this "first of the modern multinationals", he presents it as setting "the template for capitalism".
The book therefore needs to be assessed on two levels. The first is the history of the company and the second is the extent to which it can be seen as an example of the multinational company in today's world. On neither level does it succeed particularly well.
The history of United Fruit is told in general and predictable brushstrokes. While its origins in Costa Rica and extension into Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia are told in detail, the account rests all too often on sweeping claims about the company's omnipotence and the craven attitudes of the region's governments towards it.
It would have helped if the author had examined more closely evidence that would have taken the account beyond such cliches. We are told, for example, that the level of bribery by United Fruit in Honduras in the 1920s prompted a debate in the US congress, yet the only details given are that it concluded "that that was the way business was done in such parts of the world".
The book's account of United Fruit's involvement in the overthrow of the progressive democratic government in Guatemala in 1954 and in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 offers nothing that is not already well known. The tendency to spread the tentacles of the company's power grows as the book advances. It comes to be associated with the assassination of president John F Kennedy, the Watergate break-in and the Pinochet coup.
The book's failure to adopt a more searching and critical approach to its subject means that the exact nature and reach of the company's influence is not delineated with any precision. For example, the account of the Santa Marta massacre of banana workers by the Colombian military in 1928 states that it was United Fruit that told the US embassy the number of casualties exceeded 1,000 when the earliest estimates were of about 50 workers killed. This suggests a rather more complex relationship between the company and the Colombian and US governments, which warranted more careful examination.
When describing the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979, Chapman adds the comment: "In the old days, United Fruit could have made a few calls and help would have materialised." Comments like this tend to inflate the power of the company and neglect the internal dynamics of the societies in which it was just one among many other powerful actors. It is regrettable that no more than a passing mention is made of the UPEB banana growers' cartel in the 1970s, which Chapman presents as "Central America . . . exacting revenge on United Fruit for the abuses of history".
Much is made in the final chapter of Costa Rica escaping "banana republicanism" through establishing its welfare state, only to find itself today being pulled back by the forces of globalisation. Again this shows the limits of United Fruit's power and the ability of Central American states to stand up against it, yet how and why this happened is not examined.
Inevitably, a book such as this devotes a lot of attention to politics, but it is perhaps best when examining the company's corporate strategies - its branding of the banana, its dietary and educational advice to US housewives, its buying out of competitors, its "rationalisation" of smallholder production, and its attempts to avoid the attentions of trust-breaking Washington politicians.
For example, United Fruit pioneered the use of PR techniques, making radio programmes and films and creating the cartoon character of Senorita Chiquita Banana. Rebranding Central America as Middle America in the minds of US consumers, it funded universities to undertake research on Middle America and opened the first school for the advanced study of agriculture by Central Americans. In Guatemala, it restored ancient Mayan archeological remains.
These are some of the ways in which Chapman fears that, as he puts it, "lately United Fruit's spirit has revived as a means of taking capitalism into areas as yet unconquered". Of course, he is referring to far more than PR techniques. Of particular concern to him are the flexible wages and working conditions that have become a feature of developed economies, political lobbying to win influence, and the links between such influence and US military adventures overseas, as evident in Iraq today.
While there is some validity to this, it adds up to far less than Chapman claims when he writes: "Today's advocates of multinational power would have us all as banana republics."
There is, however, one area of United Fruit's activities that is relevant today but which the author only treats in passing. This is the ecological impact of its intensive plantation agriculture. It created one brand of consumer-friendly banana, called the Big Mike, which became ever-more prone to disease and so required the ever-greater use of pesticides for its production. So serious has the situation now become that the author claims the banana is in danger of dying out. Certainly it was a major factor in United Fruit's decline. In a world where agribusiness plays such a major role, this may be the book's most salutary lesson.
Peadar Kirbyis professor of international politics and public policy at University of Limerick
