''The Corporate Players Behind the Demise of the Caribbean Banana Trade''

From NACLA

''The corporate control over the entire chain of production and the brutality of the corporations during their reign in Latin America became the stuff of popular culture, as seen by Gabriel García Márquez’s retelling of the massacre of striking workers in Cienaga, Colombia, in 1928. But perhaps the most famous example of the power of the multinational fruit corporations comes from the role of United Fruit in convincing the Eisenhower administration that the election of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, and his plans of moderate land reform, would transform the country into a Soviet base.

Perhaps more importantly, land reform in Guatemala would affect the ability of United Fruit to maintain its monopoly on arable land and limit its ability to maximize profit through the exploitation of landless workers. As shareholders in United Fruit, Allen Dulles, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State under Eisenhower, were central to planning the 1954 overthrow of Arbenz, under Operation PBSUCCESS.''

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