ProgrammedToChill
patreon
Premium Episode 134 - United Fruit Company, Blood Bananas and the Guatemalan Genocide pt. 1: Origins of the Octopus
🕑 Added 2024-02-15 21:49:11 +0000 UTCToday is the opening salvo for a 15-part series on the rolling waves of crimes involving the Octopus that is United Fruit Company, the banana trade, Guatemala specifically, and Central America more generally, culminating in the Guatemalan Genocide.
In this episode, I discuss the origins of the Octopus. aka Boston Fruit Company aka the United Fruit Company aka the New Orleans Banana Trust. I know for a fact that much of this history has not been pulled together in this way before.
I trace the official and sanctioned history of Boston Fruit Company via Lorenzo Dow Baker, Andrew Preston, and get into less savory types such as Henry Meiggs and JP Macheca. I cover how Preston and Meiggs used railroad construction as land-grab exercises which also necessarily required slave labor. This in turn spawned the Banana Wars including an approximate 28 different interventions/invasions in 11+ countries.
Along the way I go over the Innocenti and related quasi-masonic quasi-klan terrorist groups, the Reconstruction-era wars with the federal government, the growth of Italian/Italian-American organized crime, the Crescent City Lynchings, and how it all intersected with the fruit trade. Here we see con men and mafiosi in bed with Wall Street, fucking over Central America in unison. This sets the stage for what is to come.
Songs:
Banana In Your Fruit Basket by Bo Carter
I Like Bananas Because They have No Bones by George Elrick
Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas by Harry Chapin
Links:
https://programmed-to-chill.myshopify.com/
Comments
Kevin Walsh
It was part of the Russian Empire at the time of Zemurray's birth. It became part of Romania in 1918.
nickrychlik
Moldova was a part of Romania before WWII and bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union before Barbarossa
Shoe Manghorn
I was just wondering the other day why Gravity's Rainbow starts with a scene full of bananas. Maybe this series will contribute to an answer
