The United Fruit Company's record in Guatemala and in South America is long and eventful. UFCO specialized in growing bananas in Central America. (Britannica)
Logo of the United Fruit Company(Kurtz-Phelan)
The Guatemalan government gave UFCO control of the post office in 1901. Through the next few decades and into the 1930s, United Fruit had an enormous role in the economies of not just Guatemala, but a large chunk of Central America. The nation's industry was solely run, built, and maintained by United Fruit. UFCO had immense holdings in which they developed numerous radio stations. Extensive rail systems were also constructed. (Marcelo)
Map of UFCO holdings in Central America (LIFE magazine)
"The company was so powerful, it could veto presidents and dictate government policy, and for this reason the small nations of Central America became known as banana republics."
-Grace Livingstone in America's Backyard
The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror
"If Ubico behaved as though he were half-mad, he was also monstrously efficient. He froze wages at levels so low that the poor still remember the hunger of those days...Ubico instituted a vagrancy law that mandated a minimum amount of land. All males between eighteen and fifty were required to serve on the plantions and public work projects."
-Cindy Forster in The Time of Freedom: Campesino Workers in Guatemala's October Revolution
Guatemalan peasants unloading bananas for UFCo (Guatemala Human Rights Commision)
This unusual reliance on a corporation to run a nation gave immense power to United Fruit to exploit and leave workers underpaid and starving. This was all enabled by American-backed dictators. One such being Jorge Ubico, who passed the 1934 Vagrancy law—keeping peasants stuck on their land making labor cheap. (Forster, 29)
Soon after he was elected as President of Guatemala, Arbenz instituted Decree 900, an agrarian reform distributing land that was previously owned by UFCO to peasants. (State.Historian)
“President Arbenz delivers on his promise — Farmers: here is your land. Defend it, care for it, cultivate it.”1953 (Capa)
"The United States was determined to oust Arbenz and thereby halt the agrarian reform - an agrarian reform that the State Department admitted was singularly successful. The United States was willing - indeed eager - to subvert the most successful reform programme in Central America not just to protect its economic interests."
-Piero Gleijeses in The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz