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Een bananenrepubliek is een staat met één of meerdere korrupte regering(en) die door multinationals beïnvloed worden.
Voor de hand liggend is dat er tussen die twee zaken een direct verband bestond. In heel Midden-Amerika was de bananenindustrie namelijk ruim een eeuw lang in handen van een oppermachtig Amerikaans bedrijf, dat eerst United Fruit Company heette, toen United Brands en vervolgens Chiquita Brands International. Het bedrijf had eigen plantages, treinen en schepen en een eigen telefoonnetwerk. Het kocht op grote schaal politici om en het financierde en ondersteunde coups. Zo leverde United Fruit in 1954 schepen aan de CIA om de regering van de Guatemalteekse president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmàn omver te werpen. Die wilde de Amerikaanse plantages nationaliseren. Het bedrijf stelde ook schepen ter beschikking voor de mislukte invasie in de Cubaanse Varkensbaai in 1961. United Fruit is wel eens ‘de enige werkelijke machthebber in Midden-Amerika’ genoemd. In ieder geval riep het bedrijf een nieuw staatsvorm in het leven: de instabiele bananenrepubliek.
The workers of the banana plantations in Colombia went on strike in December 1928. They demanded written contracts, eight-hour work days, six-day work weeks and the elimination of food coupons. The strike turned into the largest labor movement ever witnessed in the country until then. Radical members of the Liberal Party, as well as members of the Socialist and Communist Parties, participated.
Massacre
The workers of the banana plantations in Colombia went on strike in December 1928. They demanded written contracts, eight-hour work days, six-day work weeks and the elimination of food coupons. The strike turned into the largest labor movement ever witnessed in the country until then. Radical members of the Liberal Party, as well as members of the Socialist and Communist Parties, participated.
An army regiment from Bogotà was dispatched by the government to deal with the strikers, which it deemed to be subversive. Whether these troops were sent in at the behest of the United Fruit Company did not clearly emerge.
The troops set up their machine guns on the roofs of the low buildings at the corners of the main square, closed off the access streets, and after a five-minute warningopened fire into a dense Sunday crowd of workers and their wives and children who had gathered, after Sunday Mass, to wait for an anticipated address from the governor.
General Cortés Vargas, who commanded the troops during the massacre, took responsibility for 47 casualties. In reality, the exact number of casualties has never been confirmed. Herrera Soto, co-author of a comprehensive and detailed study of the 1928 strike, has put together various estimates given by contemporaries and historians, ranging from 47 to as high as 2,000. Survivors, popular oral histories and written documents give figures 800-3000 killed, adding that, the killers threw them into the sea.
Among the survivors was Luis Vicente Gomez, later a famous local figure, who survived by hiding under a bridge for three days. Every year after the massacre he delivered a memorial service over the radio.
Heden ten dage zijn er nieuwe ‘bananenrepublieken’, waar geen bananen groeien, maar waar de korruptie en het onrecht even welig tiert.
Honni soit qui mal y pense. Bron : Wikipedia
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