The Banana Republics

[Music] hey kids do you like fashionable high quality apparel at an affordable price well too bad because that's not what we're talking about today I'm gonna learn you all thing or two about the real banana republics our story begins during the turn of the 20th century in Central and South America agriculture is kind of a big deal right now you've got a ton of little plantations all over the place growing bananas sugar pineapples that kind of thing and they're doing all right for themselves no big deal but then refrigeration happened and it changed everything because now produce could be kept fresh for way longer in transit meaning the fruit companies could suddenly open up their business to the international market their biggest new trade partner being the United States this massive opportunity gave rise to three main companies known as the United Fruit Company oyamel Fruit Company and the Vacarro Burroughs by growing shipping and selling fruit these three firms may just obscene amounts of money a lot of which went towards buying out smaller family-owned farms and plantations this allowed them to make even obscene er amounts of money until eventually the only competition that remained was eachother men [ __ ] got real the year is 1910 one of the companies I mentioned COI ml was doing most of its business in the country of Honduras when the president of Honduras Miguel Davila decided to give a land grant to the vacarros in exchange for helping to build some roadways in doing so they basically stole a bunch of koi imel's potential plantations and gave them to a competitor so Samuel is a Murray owner of COI ml said to himself dang I hate those guys if only there was some way for a guy like me to significantly influence the world around him for his own personal gain wait a minute so used a portion of his McDuck ask fortune to hire a mercenary army which he gave to one of his friends former Honduran President Manuel Bonilla and together they overthrew the entire [ __ ] government of Honduras yeah should have called a queen email anyway Bonilla took power and gave very generous concessions to coy ml and United as thanks but then America sought this and they were like hey that's not very freedom of you young man to which is Emery replied it's okay we're gonna help this country succeed after all politics and business are essentially the same thing while I suppose it's not our place to be policing the governments of other nations yet still though MIMO also also nanners all right I'm sold do what you want so with their interest secured the businesses continued to thrive and expand but since they got cut so many breaks by the government very little of their commerce actually ended up benefiting Honduras as a whole in fact the national debt of Honduras got so bad that the government ended up not being able to perform a lot of its functions so in response the three Fruit Company stepped in and said no worries we got this and decided to basically build the nation's infrastructure for them including roads railways shipping lights Telegraph's telephone lines radio towers they even switched the whole country off to the US dollar keep in mind this wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts it was mostly just to make their own businesses function more efficiently but it was helpful either way anyway now not only did they have total power over their plantations but also a monopoly over nearly every major industry in the country many other Central American nations soon followed this pattern creating a corrupt sort of symbiosis whereby the fruit companies get huge tax breaks and land grants in exchange for a modernized infrastructure and payoffs to the rich minority and so the banana republics were born sounds like a pretty sweet gig right and it was for the upper 5% of the populations who happen to hold some direct share in the plantations of shipping lines for your average Jose though life mostly consisted of working on land that wasn't even theirs in exchange for dirt poor wages so that's how things were for like a decade and a half at some point coin ml was bought out by United but then Zamora became the owner of the whole thing somehow and the Vacarro company was renamed as standard fruit then one day in 1944 the country of Guatemala had a democratic revolution and the newly elected leader Juan Jose adovada wasn't happy with how the companies treated his people so he implemented several reforms like a minimum wage law in the universal suffrage and while the populace got a lot of benefit out of this United Fruit most certainly did not because more rights for their workers means less profits for the business as a whole then Guatemala got a new president Jaco Bo advant and he continued these reforms and united continue to get the metaphorical shaft until finally in 1953 they decided to go to the USA for help oh Eisenhower it's up this huh Cobo guy he's making us pay minimum wages well that doesn't sound very good for business that's not although he's also taking our unused land and giving it back to the people does that sound familiar oh dear you don't think by the way it's looking Dwight I say he's a dirty Oh God collectivizing no commie commie holy [ __ ] you actually did it that's lark and from that point onward Guatemala was ruled by a series of us-backed dictatorships all the way up until 1996 this kind of situation happened in several other places and times as well almost always driven by some combination of red fear and yellow love I won't give any more details for the sake of time but that doesn't mean they weren't big deals so you might be wondering where did these companies go surely the clan of banana shenanigans can't still be around today well that's where you're wrong they're still in operation just under different names standard fruit changed their name in 1991 to become none other than dole Food Company you know when I was a kid I used to play a lot of Super Monkey Ball and I used to wonder what kind of cruel tyrant would just stick an ape in a ball for their own amusement well now I know those bastards as for United one day in 1976 their CEO decided he couldn't take the heat anymore so he jumped out the [ __ ] window that's a real thing look it up but some other guy bought the company and renamed it to drumroll please Chiquita banana that's right ladies and gentlemen the face he once knew as an innocent fun-loving dancer slash fruit merchant is actually a ruthless tyrant who overthrows democracies and undermines basic human rights for her own profit anyway that's all for today till next time I'm salmonella and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Sam O'Nella Academy

Views: 8,448,228

Rating: 4.9472733 out of 5

Keywords: dole, cuyamel, standard fruit, vaccaro, fruit, united fruit, chiquita banana, eisenhower, guatemala, honduras, central america, cia, overthrow, revolution, dictatorship

Id: QgydTdThoeA

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/PaulagBalderas]

the more you know the worse your view of the world becomes.....

[u/LinkUnseen]

Okay, so what I took from this...

Don't buy Dole. Don't buy Chiquita Banana.

How do I fruit?

[u/guidedlight]

Australia actually has an import ban on Bananas.

This actually caused the price of bananas to reach $8 per pound, when a cyclone damaged several Banana plantations in Australia.

[u/Busti]

"COMMIE"
"COMMIE"
"REEEEEEEEEEEEE"
I fucking lost it!

[u/swizzler]

Guys.. I think we're the baddies.

[u/landaaan]

This video actually downplays the horrors of the Guatemalan coup d'etat. The reality is like some fucking dystopian nightmare level shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

tl;dr literal slavery. It was "illegal" to be unemployed. The punishment for being unemployed was forced labour. They just went into villages, took all the land, then declared that all the villagers were unemployed, then forced them to work on the plantation, and beat them or killed them if they resisted.

Which is why I find it funny when people say things like "there aren't any smartphones in Cuba." Yeah, no shit, they haven't stooped so low as to use literal child slaves to manufacture and harvest their creature comforts.

[u/[deleted]]

"-Oh also, also... 'nanners."

This shit murdered me.

[u/AiyyoIyer]

inb4 mods remove it for political reasons

[u/benjamimo1]

"That's not very freedom of you" lmao