About the Author
EVA SCHERRER (she/her)

Eva Scherrer is an undergraduate fellow in the Global Arts and Humanities' 2021-22 Society of Fellows cohort. She is a third-year student double majoring in history and political science with minors in Spanish and theatre. As an undergraduate research apprentice, Scherrer has studied Latin American history with a focus on labor relations and neocolonialism. She plans on attending graduate school to continue her historical research with the hope of conducting archival work in South America.

Project Overview

The brands we encounter in the grocery store may seem harmless enough, but few are aware of the nefarious pasts associated with these household names. The United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita Banana, has worked hard to silence the voices of the hundreds of laborers they massacred in 1928, but their stories persist nonetheless. This project seeks to uplift these voices and understand the mechanisms that operated to suppress them.

Defining Informal Imperialism

Informal imperialism involves the imposition of authority through a combination of political and economic channels by a variety of state and non-state actors to achieve political-economic dominance, and the United Fruit Company’s actions in Central and South America are one such instance of informal imperialism. Through specific commercial strategy, the creation of complicated, asymmetrical legal systems, diplomacy with domestic and foreign governments, and the repression of labor organization, the United Fruit Company created an informal empire in Colombia.

The Unionizing Effort

Workers chafed under the burden of this empire with its oppressive legal systems and harsh working conditions, prompting efforts for unionization. In 1928, after forming an official strike committee to coordinate the workers’ efforts, the newly-formed Unión Sindical de Trabajadores del Magdalena (USTM) submitted a pliego de peticiones detailing their demands, including:

1. Collective insurance
2. Indemnification for work-related accidents
3. Hygienic dwelling places and one day of rest every week
4. A 50% increase for lower-paid workers
5. Discontinuance of the company’s commissaries
6. Elimination of the use of credit slips in place of money
7. Weekly rather than biweekly payments
8. Replacement of subcontractors with direct contracts with the company
9. Establishment of hospitals in sufficient number and the proper sanitation of camps

The organization of workers threatened to cause serious issues for production which could result in great profit loss, so UFCO opted to employ its imperial capabilities and repress labor, utilizing surveillance and force to subdue the unions. Despite such efforts to derail the union’s endeavors, the workers persisted. After months of constant effort to seek an audience with UFCO higher-ups, manager Thomas Bradshaw finally agreed to meet with USTM representatives on November 10, 1928 but ignored them at the bargaining table. The strike was launched the next day. Work on United Fruit Company plantations was stalled in a peaceful manner, but the Colombian government nonetheless summoned the military on behalf of the company.

The Massacre

According to striker Sixto Ospino Nuñez, the government instructed the army to gather the demonstrators in Cienaga’s central plaza, offering the impression that he intended to discuss their petition. Nuñez conveyed the strikers’ hope for reconciliation: “The people firmly believed that the army wouldn’t fire and the governor would arrive.” However, such hopes would not come to fruition, and General Cortes Vargas announced to the gathered protesters that the decree “declared the strikers to be a ‘bunch of hoodlums’ and authorized the army to shoot to kill.” Soldiers ordered the crowd to disperse, and when they refused, the military shot into the crowd indiscriminately, “firing without cease.”

Violence continued through the night and for the next few days that followed with the goal of eliminating all remaining union leaders after the initial massacre. Nuñez recounted the haphazardness of the soldiers, stating that “the military fired against everyone anywhere without even asking what someone was doing. [...] That’s why bodies were found everywhere.” Accounts of how many people were killed in this period of time vary widely with some official sources putting the number as low as nine, while author Gabriel García Márquez placed it around 3000. Following the massacre, the dead were gathered and taken to the sea to be disposed of. Márquez described this phenomenon, noting that “those who had put them in the car had time to pile them up in the same way in which they transported bunches of bananas.” His juxtaposition of the dead strikers and the bananas frames both as assets to a company that were manipulated and controlled in the search for profit.

Profits Over People

For UFCO, the workers they employed and the conditions they existed in were not of relevance unless they were somehow threatening the company’s bottom line. Only when their organization jeopardized the company’s well-being were they an important consideration, and even then, their humanity was disregarded to find an easy solution to a difficult problem. UFCO clearly felt the need to control its workers to the utmost degree, so when the workers endangered that authority, UFCO did not hesitate to use deadly force to extinguish resistance and maintain control. This exercise of dominance, once again, displays the imperial nature of UFCO’s operations in Colombia.