{"id":508,"date":"2026-04-22T18:59:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T18:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/?p=508"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:48:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:48:01","slug":"the-original-banana-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/the-original-banana-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Original Banana Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>United Fruit, Corporate Power, and the CIA-Backed Coup in Guatemala<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Do you know the history behind a Chiquita banana?<\/p>\n<p>Formerly United Fruit Company, Chiquita and its predecessor have dominated the banana industry for 100 years.<\/p>\n<p>Production was concentrated primarily throughout Latin America, chosen for its ideal climate and soil, cheap labor, and puppet governments which were all too eager for a meager kickback and a life of privilege and luxury, to sell off countries\u2019 land and enlist its population as ample labor.<\/p>\n<p>This monopoly, enjoyed by United Fruit, was challenged in 1953 when Guatemalan Presidential candidate Jacobo Arbenz ran on a platform that included rationalizing vast swaths of land then owned by United Fruit. He won the election, and in 1954 become the first populist democratic leader of the Republic of Guatemala. As a first step of his presidency, he passed a law which nationalized United Fruit Land, paying them the same amount that they valued the land at previously for tax purposes (which of course was dramatically undervalued on paper).<\/p>\n<p>United Fruit flipped. One of its Board Members, Allen Dulles, then also Director of the CIA, proposed an overthrow, a US Backed Coup. His brother, John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State, was an enthusiastic supporter, and easily convinced President Eisenhower. And so, Arbenz&#8217;s fate was sealed, a democratic government was deposed, which ushered in 40 years of dictatorship, a puppet government loyal to the US and ruthless towards its own citizens, genocide directed at the indigenous Maya, poverty and death, systematic oppression and injustice. And United Fruit continued to thrive at the cost of those on whose necks it kneeled.<\/p>\n<p>Hence was born the term: Banana Republic!<\/p>\n<p>In 1990, United Fruit Co became Chiquita Brands International. Since 2010, this agricultural giant has managed to extract over $23 million in taxpayer money for subsidies, as if it needed them, or was deserving thereof. And now, since a private acquisition in 2015, it doesn&#8217;t even have to post its yearly profits, since it is not publicly traded. And of course it doesn&#8217;t. But it&#8217;s good to know that in its last year prior to 2014, it reported total earnings of $3.1 Billion.<\/p>\n<p>Boycott Chiquita!<\/p>\n<p>Truth2Power!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United Fruit, Corporate Power, and the CIA-Backed Coup in Guatemala\u201d &nbsp; Do you know the history behind a Chiquita banana? Formerly United Fruit Company, Chiquita and its predecessor have dominated the banana industry for 100 years. Production was concentrated primarily throughout Latin America, chosen for its ideal climate and soil, cheap labor, and puppet governments [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}