banana cultures THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Banana Cultures Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States john soluri UniversityofTexasPress Austin Copyright©2005bytheUniversityofTexasPress Allrightsreserved PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica Firstedition,2005 Requestsforpermissiontoreproducematerialfromthisworkshouldbesentto: Permissions UniversityofTexasPress P.O.Box7819 Austin,TX78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html (cid:9)Thepaperusedinthisbookmeetstheminimumrequirementsof ansi/nisoz39.48-1992(r1997)(PermanenceofPaper). libraryofcongresscataloging-in-publicationdata Soluri,John. Bananacultures:agriculture,consumption,andenvironmentalchangein HondurasandtheUnitedStates/JohnSoluri.—1sted. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. isbn0-292-70957-9(cloth:alk.paper)—isbn0-292-71256-1(pbk.:alk.paper) 1.Bananatrade—Honduras. 2.Bananatrade—Socialaspects—Honduras. 3.Bananatrade—Environmentalaspects—Honduras. 4.Bananatrade—United States. 5.Bananatrade—Socialaspects—UnitedStates. I.Title. hd9259.b3h678 2005 306.3'49'097283—dc22 2005015808 ForAmalia THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi introduction LinkingPlacesofProductionandConsumption 1 chapter 1 GoingBananas 18 chapter 2 SpaceInvaders 41 chapter 3 AlteredLandscapesandTransformedLivelihoods 75 chapter 4 Sigatoka,Science,andControl 104 chapter 5 RevisitingtheGreenPrison 128 chapter 6 TheLivesandTimeofMissChiquita 161 chapter 7 LaQuímica 193 chapter 8 BananaCulturesinComparativePerspective 216 Notes 247 Bibliography 293 Index 315 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Preface This book began as a research question focused on the relationship betweensocialandenvironmentalchangeinHonduras.Overmanyyears, it has evolved into a study of the mass production and mass consump- tionofbananas—themostfrequentlyconsumedfreshfruitintheUnited States.The title refers both to the tropical places where export bananas grewandtheculturalspaceswherebananaswereconsumed.WhenIfirst becameinterestedinthetopicasanundergraduateinthelate1980s,events takingplaceinHondurasandCentralAmericaroutinelymadeheadlines intheUnitedStates.Today,theU.S.government’slatesteffortto‘‘install democracy’’hasshiftedpublicattentiontootherplacesandcommodities. InHonduras,thevalueofexportsofapparelnowdwarfsthatof banana exports.However,thisoughtnottodiscourageseriousreflectiononthe historyofbananas—animportantinternationallytradedcommoditythat gave rise to, among other things, the United Fruit Company, one of the first and most powerful transnational corporations of the past century. Livinginanerawhenmanypeopleseematalosstoimagineaworldnot dominated by corporations and mass markets, it strikes me as impera- tivetoreexaminethehistoricalprocessesthathaveshapedplaceswhere commoditiesareproducedandconsumed. If this book has an overriding message, it is the need for people to think and act in ways that acknowledge the dynamic relationships between production and consumption, between people and nonhuman formsof life,andbetweenculturesandeconomies.Ultimately,Ibelieve thatmanytwentieth-centurymodelsandideologiesofdevelopmentand conservationareflawedbecausetheyshareunderlying(andunexamined) assumptionsthatnatureandcultureareeitherstaticorchangeinpredict- ableways. However, there is little that is timeless about nature—human orotherwise. On a less lofty level, this book seeks to answer (finally) a question thatfriends,familymembers,andacquaintancesfrequentlyask:‘‘Doyou