I chose my topic from watching a Johnny Harris video where he explains the history of bananas. Originally I was interested in doing the banana massacre but as I watched the video a second time to prepare for this project I realized that I wanted to do the coup d’etat in Guatemala. The theme was about frontiers in history and I think my topic works really well with that. The frontier that United Fruit and Jacobo Arbenz were fighting on was control of a country and the more general frontier was the people vs big business. Of course in this scenario big business won. I conducted my research by looking for quotes of people who were involved in the event. The first being Jacobo Arbenz. Then I was given more names of people who had to do with the coup d’etat so I began to find quotes of theirs as well. Then once I couldn’t find a good quote from those people I went back to Jacobo Arbenz. I created it by seeing something that I wanted to do. Once I got the background information with some help from my teacher I found quotes and then put everything on the website which I wanted to be a secret United Fruit website but it turned out to just be a test on if you think they should be forgiven. I argued that United Fruit destroyed the country of Guatemala and even to this day Guatemala is a poor, dangerous country. I also argued that big business was in charge of the world and that they still are in charge of the world. My topic is significant because it is not one of those topics where the U.S is the good guy, it's a topic where the U.S is being manipulated to be a bad guy and you don’t see that often in history.
Primary Sources
Resignation Speech, Jacobo Arbenz
Quote on Allen Dulles, David Talbot (Expert from interview with Amy Goodman)
Quote from Allen Dulles, Speaking to President Kennedy
Quote from John Foster Dulles, Speaking about forgiving the Japanese
Expert from Jacobo Arbenz Resignation Speech
Secondary Sources
TEDEducation and John Soluri, directors. The Dark History of Bananas. YouTube, YouTube, 2 Nov. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esvycD1O3cM. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.
I used this for background information on the history of bananas in Central America.
Harris, Johnny, director. How the US Stole Central America (With Bananas). YouTube, YouTube, 8 Dec. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWBCl8huNMA. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.
I used this to learn about the history of United Fruit. This is also the video in which I discovered what I wanted to do for history fair.
Norouzi, Ebrahim. “The Dulles Brothers: How to Wreak Havoc in Guatemala and Iran.” The Mossadegh Project, 7 Apr. 2010, https://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/dulles-brothers/.
I used this for background research and to see who was involved in United Fruit and the U.S government.
Thomas, E. (1995, October 22). 'You can own the world'. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1995/10/22/you-can-own-the-world/c772e3f1-2634-4fb1-a223-b681d63a539d/
I used this to research Allen Dulles and the coup in Guatemala.
Photos are all in the public domain besides map of GuatemalaGeography.com. “Guatemala Map Image.” Geography.com, Geography.com, 2018, https://geology.com/world/guatemala-satellite-image.shtml. Accessed 5 Feb. 2023.