HM1 - Building an Empire: United Fruit Company’s Habitual Influence Over Politics, Infrastructure, and Labor in Panama and Costa Rica, 1910s-1950s
Abstract
The United Fruit Company (UFCo), today Chiquita, was a massive transnational fruit corporation which began its operations in Latin America in the 1900s. The UFCo is infamous for its outsized role in the coup to overthrow a democratically elected president in Guatemala in 1954. While the coup has been well examined by scholars, less studied is how the UFCo came to influence politics and economics throughout its countries of operation leading up to the 1954 coup. Through the examination of documents held in the United Fruit Company Papers Archive at the University of Toronto Mississauga, this thesis argues that the UFCo relied on three everyday methods of control to consolidate its power in the region: political interference, infrastructural development, and labor control. By tracing these forms of power in Panama and Costa Rica from the 1910s to the 1950s, this research shows the larger corporate agenda implemented by the UFCo to build the influence that ultimately made the coup possible.
HM1 - Building an Empire: United Fruit Company’s Habitual Influence Over Politics, Infrastructure, and Labor in Panama and Costa Rica, 1910s-1950s
CASB 104
The United Fruit Company (UFCo), today Chiquita, was a massive transnational fruit corporation which began its operations in Latin America in the 1900s. The UFCo is infamous for its outsized role in the coup to overthrow a democratically elected president in Guatemala in 1954. While the coup has been well examined by scholars, less studied is how the UFCo came to influence politics and economics throughout its countries of operation leading up to the 1954 coup. Through the examination of documents held in the United Fruit Company Papers Archive at the University of Toronto Mississauga, this thesis argues that the UFCo relied on three everyday methods of control to consolidate its power in the region: political interference, infrastructural development, and labor control. By tracing these forms of power in Panama and Costa Rica from the 1910s to the 1950s, this research shows the larger corporate agenda implemented by the UFCo to build the influence that ultimately made the coup possible.