Bananas - Politics & More

Bananas have been a staple of my diet for as long as I can remember. I'd never thought much about how or where they are grown and certainly had never thought about the politics of bananas. They've just always been available, nutritious, and economical. 

"The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King" by Rich Cohen has changed how I look at bananas.  

This is the story of Sam Zemurray, an immigrant who came to this country with nothing and eventually took over United Fruit. Along the way he changed the American diet, changed Central American governments, and was very involved in the formation of Israel. 

From a review in the Smithsonian magazine: “It’s difficult today to imagine the power of United Fruit. It was one of the first “truly global” corporations, writes Cohen, as prevalent as Google and “as feared as Halliburton.” A revolving door between its executive suite and the U.S. government made it “hard to distinguish United Fruit from the CIA” in the 1940s and ’50s. When the company sensed hostility in Guatemala—where it owned 70 percent of all private land by 1942—it mounted a PR campaign warning of a dangerous Communist presence. Not long after, Guatemalans bid farewell to their democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz—“Operation Success” the CIA called it. In 1961, the U.S. government borrowed United Fruit’s guns and ships when it sent a band of Cuban exiles into the Bay of Pigs. The company’s 115 ships, Cohen writes, made up “one of the largest private navies in the world.”

This is an interesting story that touches on themes that are current today 

- story of immigrant success

- connection between global corporations & governments

- national and international consequences of those connections 

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Did You Know?

A banana plant is technically an herb or grass. It’s not a tree because its stalk contains no woody tissue. The plant grows from a rhizome, not a seed - much like potato does. In the scientific scheme the banana is a berry, a single fleshy fruit without a stone. Also classified as berries are kiwi, coffee, currant, passionfruit, pepper and tomato! There are many categories of fruit. 

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Note: One reviewer faults Cohen on his sourcing, saying there was too much “clever writing” and not enough scholarship. It definitely is not an academic work. It is an engrossing story.

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