The Banana Massacre - Yep, bananas. Happy Thanksgiving 2021

So we're gonna get into something a bit different this week. Not really truecrime, not unsolved, but definitely crazy. This is another one we got from a listener that we had no clue ever happened. While the official death toll of this incident is usually put at around 45, some estimates say it could be up to 2000. Those bodies are said to either have been dumped in the sea or buried in mass graves. So what was the incident about you ask? Well, long story very short… Bananas. We're gonna dive into what is simply known as the Banana massacre, a crazy tale of a government squashing a banana strike with excessive force and what came after. Buckle up guys, here we go! Before we start, I want to acknowledge the great sources of info for this episode. 90% of the information on this week's episode came from two amazing sources that had tons of info that we couldn't find anywhere else. First a paper by Jorge Enrique Elias Caro and Antonino Vidal Ortega on the website scielo.org was our source for the actual massacre info while an article called Rotten Fruit by Peter Chapman on the Financial Times website was our source for the company history. So, let's start by talking about a fruit company. United Fruit company to be exact. United Fruit began life in the 1870s when Minor Cooper Keith, a wealthy young New Yorker, started growing bananas as a business sideline, alongside a railway line he was building in Costa Rica. Both ventures took off, and by 1890 he was married to the daughter of a former president of Costa Rica and owned vast banana plantations on land given to him by the state. The bananas were shipped to New Orleans and Boston, where demand soon began to outstrip supply.Keith teamed up with Andrew Preston, a Boston importer, and in 1899 they formed United Fruit. Bananas sold well for their tropical cachet: they were exotic, a luxury only affordable to the rich. But the rapidly rising output of United Fruit’s plantations brought down prices. The company created a mass market in the industrial cities of the US north-east and Midwest. The once bourgeois banana became positively proletarian. By the 1920s, United Fruit’s empire had spread across Central America. It also included Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In South America the company owned chunks of Colombia and Ecuador. It came to dominate the European as well as the US banana markets with the help of its Great White Fleet of 100 refrigerated ships, the largest private navy in the world. There are more than 300 varieties of banana, but United Fruit grew only one: the Gros Michel or ”Big Mike”. This variety suited most tastes; it was not too big or too small, too yellow or too sweet - if anything, it was a little bland. This was the forerunner of the transnational products we have today. But mass production took its toll. In 1903, disease hit United Fruit’s plantations in Panama. An array of pathogens kept up the attack, and the banana was discovered to have a genetic weakness. Its seeds are ill equipped for reproduction, so growers take cuttings from one plant to create another. The banana is a clone, with each inbred generation less resilient. Although the banana was diseased, United Fruit marketed it as a product that exemplified good health. Banana diseases did not affect humans, and the fruit was said to be the cure for many ills: obesity, blood pressure, constipation - even depression. In 1929, United Fruit set up its own ”education department”, which supplied US schools with teaching kits extolling the benefits of the banana and the good works of the company. Meanwhile, United Fruit’s ”home economics” department showered housewives with banana recipes. One of United Fruit’s most successful advertising campaigns began in 1944, designed to boost the banana’s profile after its scarcity during the war. It featured Senorita Chiquita Banana, a cartoon banana who danced and sang in an exuberant Latin style. Senorita Chiquita bore a close resemblance to Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer who, in her ”tutti-frutti” hat, wowed Hollywood at the time. Sales soon regained prewar levels. By the 1960s, the banana had become an inseparable accompaniment to the morning cereal of most American children. And today, in countries such as the US and Britain, it has ousted the apple as the most popular fruit. In the UK, figures indicate that more than 95 per cent of households buy bananas each week, and that more money is spent on them than on any other supermarket item, apart from petrol and lottery tickets. Soooo sounds like a pretty typical big business rise to power by providing a wholesome treat to the people right? Wrong… There was more going on than almost everybody knew. Over the years, United Fruit fought hard for low taxes and light regulation. By the beginning of the 20th century, troublesome anti-trust laws had been passed in the US to crack down on ...