We can imagine the atmosphere on the site

The massacre in Ciénaga, 1928 - several hundred Colombian strikers killed by the army - is it; the coup organized in 1954 against the President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, including land policy directly harmed its interests, it is still; financing, in concert with the CIA, the Bay of pigs operation organized in 1961 to overthrow Fidel Castro, it is always she! World's leading producer of bananas, the United Fruit Company - Ufco, now Chiquita Brands International - TIF for decades during the rain and the weather in Central America, most often with the tacit agreement of Washington. In the 1950s, it was even among its shareholders John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State to President Eisenhower and brother of the first Director of the CIA. Connections that proved very useful to overthrow President Arbenz. If the firm has now broken with these practices - the latest scandal to which she was involved back in 1997, date at which she was strongly suspected to finance paramilitary groups in Colombia to eliminate peasant leaders and trade unionists "troublesome" - it long remained the embodiment of the multinational "lawless", only concerns its interests and able to safeguard themwalking blithely on the right of peoples.

To understand the power of the United Fruit and its influence on the fortunes of Central America, he must go back to 1871. This year, comes to Costa Rica an American rail engineer responding on behalf of unjust Meiggs. The man is the guest of General Guardia, then prevailing with a hand on this small Central American State. If it is, it is to build the railway to connect the capital, San José, Puerto Limon, on the Caribbean Sea. Meiggs is not alone. He came with his nephew, the son of his sister, Minor Cooper Keith. Aged twenty-three years, the young man was already quite backpacked. Instead of working with his father, a prosperous timber merchant, he decided early to build a fate, working at sixteen in a Broadway shop, then settling as a conveyor of wood before you buy a ranch in South Texas. This is that he has received the offer of his uncle at Costa Rica. Already tired of caring for livestock and no little opportunities to enrich themselves therein, the young man immediately accepted the offer from its parent.

Having embarked two brothers with him, Minor Cooper Keith starts with passion in this adventure with the exotic taste has everything to seduce the. Uploaded by his uncle to recruit the workforce necessary to the achievement of the worksite, the young man appeals to veterans of the civil war, sailors in breach of ban and suspicious individuals found in bars or at the exit of the prisons of New Orleans. We can imagine the atmosphere on the site... The case, seems wrong committed. In 1873, reached by the stock market crash that occurred this year here and struggling to get paid by General Guardia, Einri Meiggs - who built ten kilometres of barely! -throws the sponge and returned to the United States. Minor c. Keith, he decides to stay. It must be said that, since some time now, a new project mobilizes his attention: bananas. As early as 1871, he has planted throughout the line with the idea of export, particularly to the United States. Great idea! North America has indeed never seen of bananas. But this fruit has a double advantage: it is extremely nutritious and has, as all fruits exotic, an excellent reputation. To export its first cargo of bananas to New Orleans, Minor c. Keith joins a steamer captain, Lorenzo Baker. The case proved to be juicy enough to consider the move to a more industrial stage.

But need him to do this, complete the line from San José to Puerto Limon that the crash was regrettably interrupted: thanks to it, Minor c. Keith could export cheap bananas not only to the United States, but also - man sees far! -so far in Europe. He therefore agreed to resume the service on behalf of the new contracting parties who succeeded to his uncle. For them, he hired several thousands of workers, including Italian, black and Chinese. Underpaid, shamefully exploited, working in appalling conditions, they die by the thousands - talking about 5,000 dead only for the first 40 km! Keith has cure. As and extent of the progress of the line, he planted hundreds of banana hectares, the production won New Orleans, and then the major centres of consumption Americans. And when in 1882, again unable to pay its contractors, the Government of Costa Rica offers him to resume his account the construction of the railway, Minor c. Keith does not hesitate: in exchange for loans that he himself negotiated with banks European and American, he gets more than 3,000 square kilometres of land free of all taxes and a 99 year concession to freely operate the railway between San José and Puerto Limon. The businessman is now free to engage fully in the banana trade. To do this, he joins forces with a major importer of exotic fruit based in Houston, Andrew Preston, and creates with him in 1899 the United Fruit Company (Ufco). It is necessary from the outset as the first banana company of the world.

Nicknamed "the King without Crown of Central America", married to the daughter of a former President of the Republic of Costa Rica, very well introduced in official circles that it rewards generously, Minor c. Keith began, from Costa Rica, from the conquest of Central America. Panama, Cuba, Jamaica, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala... In the 1900s, the United Fruit control tens of thousands of hectares in this part of the world. Vice-President of the company, passing most of his time on the ground when Andrew Preston, its President, simply to manage the firm from Boston, Minor c. Keith is the forced the heads of State of Central America, for most of the dictators. The scenario, each time, is the same: against the construction of railway lines, investment King in these early days of globalization and for which it is responsible for negotiating bank loans, the businessman asks, in payment, huge areas of land. Thus produced bananas will be used to finance the operation of the new railway lines - in which the Ufco systematically takes majority shareholdings - thus ensuring the firm of huge revenues. In addition to the trains, the United Fruit gets control of many public services: electricity, water, municipal transport... Some States such as the Guatemala become pure and simple of the Boston firm schedules. This country alone provides 25 of the profits of the Ufco. Acquired power with great corruption, threats, and fraudulent manoeuvres. Generously distributed money allows including the United Fruit, dubbed "the Octopus", to lay its hands on all the good land and to exclude competitors who would have the audacity to walk on his flower beds. When bribes are not sufficient, the Ufco manipulates the courts to ruin his competitors and buy good balance. The company also owns a huge fleet of ships, which is the link between Central America and major American and European ports.

Minor c. Keith died in 1929, rich million, without having previously founded the largest farming of chickens in the United States and left part of his fortune to a foundation for the study and safeguarding of the Maya culture. A few months after his disappearance, the United Fruit passes under the control of an unsavoury individual and which will eventually become President: Samuel Zemurray. Born in Russia in 1877 in a poor Jewish family, he came to the United States in 1892, fleeing the pogroms, at regular intervals, shaking the immense empire of the tsars. Installed at New Orleans, he started in the trade in bananas in 1899, buying cheap and selling with a comfortable profit of almost rotten bananas! Having amassed a handsome pay, he decided to invest in the production and turned its attention to the Honduras. Lacking capital, he moved to United Fruit, which he sold 60 of the shares of his company.

The Honduras, which Zemurray decided to make his hunting ground, then headed by General Manuel Bonilla, a dictator very well disposed toward foreign investors. It is on him that "banana Man", as were the already dubbed in the United States, has decided to build and, with the agreement of the Ufco. Las! In 1907, Bonilla is overthrown by a military coup and must go into exile in the United States. A hard blow for Zemurray, who has already raised funds from American financial and who, in good student of Minor c. Keith, intends to obtain land and exemptions for