Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas

In South America, specifically Colombia and Ecuador (the world's largest banana producer), production was in the hands of foreign multinational corporations at the beginning of the twentieth century, but by the 1960s banana production was in the hands of local peasants and commercial farmers who sold their crops to the multinational corporations. The plantations in Colombia and Ecuador, therefore, are larger than those in the Caribbean, but smaller than those in Central America. Striffer examines the role of UFCO in Ecuador during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. These broad generalizations, however, are subject to change. Recently, production in Belize has shifted from the Central American pattern of large scale production geared toward export to the United States to Caribbean style production geared toward Europe.

Although the majority of essays included in the book are historical, Laura T. Reynolds, an associate professor of sociology at Colorado State University, examines the contemporary importance of Latin American and Caribbean banana exports. In her essay, Reynolds examines the so-called banana wars, the international trade dispute between the US banana corporations and their allies in Latin America against the European corporations and their allies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. As such, Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas is a timely study that enlightens the reader on how bananas transformed, and continue to transform, the physical, cultural, and economic landscape of much of Latin America. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of the essays, the book should be of interest to anyone interested in the impact of commodities on history and culture.

Michael R. Hall Armstrong Atlantic State University

Copyright Association of Third World Studies, Inc. Spring 2008
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