When the author's first edition of this book was published 15 years ago, it received strong reviews from all corners of academia. Little wonder, as this work marked a highly original and eclectic approach that combined cultural, labor, ecological, food, and business history centered on banana cultivation in Honduras, the world's leading exporter of that popular fruit for nearly a century. The book also explored the role of US capital, technology, and management in the whole banana cultivation and marketing process as US fruit companies, mercenaries, government officials, and scientists shaped the trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries, one an ascendant hegemonic power, the other a supposedly powerless “banana republic,” small and pliable before the demands of empire.
What is unique about Soluri's analysis is that he deconstructs and reconfigures the various stereotypes regarding these relationships, devoting considerable attention to the agency of Honduran small-to-medium-scale planters; the diverse laborers and communities that exerted their needs through unionization, protest, and resistance—and even local politicians and competitors who often opposed and reshaped associations of dependency in surprising ways to defend their interests. Attention is also given to largely ignored participants in the banana trade, such as fruit jobbers, grocers, middlemen, advertisers, and the unpredictable consumer, who often purchased and viewed the fruit in ways that company executives failed to grasp.
A central factor that impressed so many readers about this book was the author's designation of nature and pathogens as key characters in the narrative. Once banana production took off in the late nineteenth century, it dramatically transformed the environment and social relations of northern coastal Honduras, bringing both the positive and negative consequences of modernization. Two deadly pathogens soon followed, first Panama Disease and later Black Sigatoka, which had a huge impact on plantations, communities, and laborers due to the increasing use of dangerous fungicides that damaged workers’ health. The use of fungicides also squeezed out the smaller producers who could not afford the expensive chemical spraying, thus aiding United Fruit and other foreign companies’ monopolies.
A shift from the Gros Michel variety to Cavendish bananas followed, as the latter were more disease-resistant. Even before this crisis, battles over rail lines, abandoned housing, mahogany extraction, and alternative crops influenced these highly contested conflicts as companies arbitrarily shifted the locales of their operations, often in response to disease. Soluri admirably gives voice to worker travails through oral interviews and keen interpretations of literary works, such as Ramón Amaya Amador's Prisión Verde. Yet, the author also complicates many of the clichés that have driven plantation agriculture interpretations by illustrating the opportunities and limited economic uplift such development brought to large numbers of black, mestizo, and indigenous migrants.
The place of the banana in US popular culture is also imaginatively explored through popular jingles, advertisements, recipe books, and of course Miss Chiquita Banana, who combined sensuality, humor, and marketing via Carmen Miranda's outrageous headdresses. In a final chapter, Soluri also incisively widens the already transnational scope of his work by showing similarities and differences in the mass production of sugarcane and coffee in the Caribbean, and citrus fruit, apples, grapes, and berries in the United States during the same and later periods, which also provoked massive environmental, labor recruitment, and hydrological change.
The second edition has no revisions to the original text but includes a new preface and a postscript to strengthen readers’ grasp of the book's main themes and address previously neglected issues. Here Soluri emphasizes the power of economic globalization in the banana trade and why he saw Honduras as a central example of this, as well as of the Cold War obsession with Central America in the United States. He reiterates the importance of oral interviews and his inability to access United Fruit archives, admitting that frustration took his study to other fascinating trajectories.
The complexities of race in Honduras and its key role in the banana trade should have been emphasized more, according to the author. Even though the book's original study ended in the 1970s, the new postscript takes the analysis up to more recent developments in the Honduran economy and politics, the growth of national campesino organizations, the shift toward textile exports in maquiladoras, and palm oil cultivation versus bananas—as well as the controversial 2009 military coup that overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya with little protest from Washington. The drug trade and increased immigration to the United States in recent years have further strained the relationship between the two countries. Gene editing and continued widespread pesticide use have also provoked a new “ethical food” movement that encompasses bananas from Honduras and the new mega-exporter, Ecuador. Soluri has taken an already classic and wonderfully accessible work and further enhanced it by bookending it with these two new thought-provoking and insightful essays. In doing so, he has only strengthened an already pioneering work.
