"Honduras opens up new opportunities and hopes" - Looking back at the awakening of the "Banana Republic"
2024-08-15
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Reference News reported on August 15(Text/Zhao Kai, Jiang Biao, Xi Yue) More than a hundred years ago, the Central American country of Honduras was labeled a "banana republic." It was an "oasis" where American capital could do whatever it wanted, but it was a "green cage" for local workers. In 1950, a Honduran writer used his pen as a blade to protest and expose this history in his novel "The Green Prison."
73 years later, his name appeared in the mouth of the current President Xiomara Castro. In 2023, President Castro announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between Honduras and China and visited China. At the end of her visit to China, she said: "The historic journey is over. Honduras has opened up new opportunities and hopes in China."
This rich land has long been subjected to economic plunder and political interference by the United States, which has strangled the lifeline of economic development and made it a "country within a country." Today, it is accused of being an exporter of illegal immigrants. In the days of enslavement, oppression, and humiliation, the Honduran people have never stopped resisting and insisted on walking on the long road of awakening.
American fruit companies do whatever they want
"He took out an optical instrument from his toolbox and examined the banana like a diamond merchant, then cut it apart with a special small scalpel, weighed it with a pharmacist's scale, and measured its width with a gunsmith's foot gauge." In his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez described the Americans' novel reaction when they first saw bananas. In 1870, American Captain Lorenzo Baker brought back a shipload of bananas from Jamaica and sold them in New Jersey. This sweet tropical fruit became a bestseller in the United States.
Driven by the huge business opportunities, in 1899, the Vaccaro brothers, American fruit traders, obtained the first land concession contract in Honduras. Three years later, American Frederick Stritch leased 5,000 hectares of land in the country. Later, American banana merchant Samuel Semurai obtained the franchise of this land and founded the Cuyamel Fruit Company in Honduras. In December 1910, with his support, the former Honduran President Manuel Bonilla, who was in exile abroad, led a mercenary army back to Honduras from the United States, launched a rebellion and successfully regained the presidency. In return, Semurai not only no longer had to pay taxes on exported bananas, but also leased 10,000 hectares of land in northern Honduras.
From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, American capital gradually controlled the main economic sectors of Honduras. The United Fruit Company, Standard Fruit Company and Cuyamel Fruit Company occupied large tracts of land in northern Honduras, built large-scale banana plantations, and controlled economic lifelines such as transportation, electricity, and manufacturing. In 1913, more than 90% of Honduras' foreign trade was monopolized by the United States.
In July 1920, H.V. Ralston, vice president of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, wrote a letter to a lawyer for the United Fruit Company, detailing the means of acquiring Honduras' land and resources. He emphasized that the market should be monopolized through contracts, franchises, and privileges, avoiding competition, and using local politicians and privileged classes to achieve his goals. At the end of the letter, he wrote: "We should tear apart the country's fledgling economy and increase its difficulties in order to achieve our goals. We should prolong its miserable, precarious, and turbulent life."
In 1933, Semurai acquired the United Fruit Company. In Honduras, the company mainly operated through the Tela and Trujillo Railways, and acquired large tracts of land along the lines by building railways, and enjoyed privileges such as tariff exemptions. Eugenio Sosa, director of the Honduran National Statistics Bureau and sociologist, said: "In order to get these concessions, (American) fruit companies promised to build railways, but they did not fulfill their promises and only reluctantly built some lines. Honduras has never had a railway line running through the country."
"In addition, fruit companies also exert influence on politics. They can actually appoint and remove presidents. If a company has a bad relationship with the government, it will form a private army and support another political force. Election fraud will occur and the government will be overthrown. This brings a lot of political instability," said Sousa.
The reason why American companies can do whatever they want in Honduras is because of the military force of the US government. In 1904, then-US President Theodore Roosevelt declared: "Our interests are virtually identical with those of our southern neighbors... As long as they abide by the basic rules of civilized society, we can treat them with sincere friendship. Only when (they) are manifestly unable or unwilling to enforce justice at home or abroad, so that they infringe on American rights or invite foreign invasions that damage American national interests, will we intervene as a last resort."
This is not an isolated case. In neighboring Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman implemented land reform after becoming president of the country in 1951, which included distributing a large amount of underutilized land of the United Fruit Company to landless farmers, which aroused their strong dissatisfaction. Company executive Walter Turnbull approached Arbenz's opponent during the election and expressed his willingness to help him overthrow Arbenz. After that, the CIA formed a mercenary army and invaded Guatemala in June 1954, driving Arbenz out of office. The United Fruit Company has since regained large tracts of land. It is worth noting that the then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the CIA Director Allen Dulles were both executives of the United Fruit Company, and the mercenary leader Carlos Castillo Armas was also an employee of the company.
“We are the masters of this land”
Today, the banana plantations in Honduras are still lush and green, with heavy fruits hanging from them. But for the Honduran workers back then, this place seemed full of vitality, but in reality it was an inescapable cage.
Esteban Elvil, 91, once worked in a banana plantation in the Sula Valley in northern Hurricane Namibia. He recalled that the working conditions there were extremely poor, and workers were often beaten or even killed. "There was no way to complain, no one could complain, and nowhere to complain. The power of American company managers was even greater than that of the president."
He said that the American companies had full control over the banana plantations. They opened a store in each plantation, selling everything from sewing needles, hats, shoes to pistols, but they never allowed foreign merchants to sell anything. So the workers would receive their salary from the Americans this week and spend it in the store opened by the Americans next week.
Faced with all kinds of exploitation by the United States, the Honduran people never stopped resisting and went on strike many times to fight for higher wages and improved working conditions. According to the book "Devil's Contract: Banana Concessions in Honduras and Central America" by Mexican writer Edmundo Valades, in 1932, Tela Railway workers went on a large-scale strike because 800 workers were fired and their wages were reduced by 20%. But the United Fruit Company did not hesitate to form its own armed gang and arrested and kidnapped the most radical strike leaders.
"The foremen treated the workers like animals," Elwell said. "The workers didn't have their own unions, and if they proposed to form one, they would be thrown into prison. In the worst case, the person was never found again, and after a while, his body was often found in the Ulua or Chamelecón rivers."
In April 1954, workers at the Tela dock threatened to stop work over salary issues. In May, workers from the banana-growing areas in northern Honduras also joined in. The strike lasted for more than 60 days and was ultimately victorious. Andres Alvarez, an 87-year-old retired Honduran train driver, still remembers it vividly: "The 1954 strike was another independence for our country after the declaration of independence in 1821. I think this time it is more important and more thorough. It was a complete lie to say that Honduras was an independent sovereign country before. We have always been controlled by others, like slaves, and American companies dominate everything. But after the strike, the workers stood up, and working conditions and treatment have been greatly improved."
Subsequently, starting in 1975, the Honduran government announced the abolition of the franchises and contracts of these American companies, took over the railways and docks controlled by them, nationalized some of the land they controlled, and gradually took control of the production, transportation and sales of bananas. Thus, Honduras took the first step to get rid of the control of foreign capital and develop the national economy.
In the center of El Progreso, Yoro Province, there is a square commemorating the general strike of 1954. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the general strike, and the Honduran government held a special seminar to commemorate this important historical event.
Sandra De Las, head of Nana Banana, one of the country's largest banana producers, said that Honduras has more than 50,000 hectares of banana fields, most of which used to belong to American companies. Now most of the banana business is run by Hondurans. "We are the owners of this land and the banana planting resources. We always put the interests of the Honduran people first." Currently, most of the bananas produced by this company meet the domestic market demand.
"Our people's anti-imperialist struggle is historic and closely linked to the workers' movement. Today's Honduras was born from this," said Manuel Zelaya, former president and adviser to the Honduran president, in an interview.
Refusing to bow to foreign interests
The injustice did not end there. In La Lima, near San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras, there is a reception center for deported immigrants. Here, more than a hundred Hondurans deported by the United States are received almost every day. When they get off the plane, most of them have blurry eyes and thin bodies, and some are still wearing handcuffs and shackles.
"I felt like I was kidnapped. I stayed there for 17 days and my family didn't know about my situation. They (the US side) didn't allow me to make phone calls, and I was isolated from the outside world. I slept on the floor every day and didn't see the sunlight until I was released today," said 25-year-old Bernard.
"Americans enjoy life in our country, but we are treated like dogs when we go to the United States. This is totally unfair," Juan Guerra said, tears welling up in his eyes. He lived in the United States for five years before being deported recently.
They are all Honduran immigrants who were sent from the United States to the La Lima Deportation Reception Center. The center's director, Idalina Bordignon, said that most of these Hondurans are simple and kind, and they just want to improve their lives. "The United States should treat (Latin American immigrants) more fairly, pay reasonable wages, and provide fair opportunities."
"What did American companies leave behind in Honduras? Poverty, disease, weakness... That's what they left behind," Elwell said. "They did build the railway, but that was to transport bananas to the port and then to the United States. Although regulations required that the fixed assets of the railway be left behind, the United States did not comply. They took away the carriages, the rails, and even the sleepers."
On June 28, 2009, a military coup took place in Honduras, and then-President Zelaya was forced to step down. For nearly half a year, Honduras' political situation has been in a state of turmoil. The United States is still behind this. Dana Frank, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote in "The Long Night in Honduras": "By taking over Honduras, (the United States) is promoting an economic agenda that benefits Honduran oligarchs and (American) multinational corporations. Its purpose is to squeeze the hard-earned money of teachers, factory and plantation workers, and those who take to the streets to defend their land rights."
After the coup, the Honduran people who launched the rebellion were suppressed, many people were displaced, and violence and poverty forced some people to go to the United States. Frank said that conservatives and liberals in the United States do not admit that the United States is destroying the livelihoods of Hondurans and does not admit that the United States is responsible for the influx of immigrants.
Zelaya said many of the coups that took place in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 20th century were linked to transnational interest groups in the United States.
At the end of 2021, Zelaya's wife Xiomara Castro was elected the first female president in Honduras' history. Zelaya said that after two election frauds in 2013 and 2017, the Honduran people finally won in 2021. This is a "great conquest and an awakening."
After coming to power, Castro refused to bow to foreign interest groups. Internally, she set out to change the oligarchic political situation supported by external forces, rebuild a national system with fiscal sovereignty, vigorously combat corruption and organized crime, and promote reforms in infrastructure, energy, environment and other fields. Externally, Honduras withstood US pressure and formally established diplomatic relations with China in March 2023. Castro said: "I came with the expectations of the Honduran people. Recognizing the one-China principle, establishing diplomatic relations with China and cooperating with China can bring development opportunities to Honduras."
In March this year, Honduras became the rotating chair of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Castro promised to strengthen regional integration, democracy and advocate the construction of a more just, equitable and prosperous region. Honduras actively spoke out on issues such as opposing external interference in the Haitian crisis and mediating the diplomatic dispute between Ecuador and Mexico. In the face of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Honduran government advocated a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor and the launch of peace talks.
In Zelaya's view, Castro's election as the first female president of Honduras and her adherence to independent domestic and foreign policies "means the beginning of a new era". The Honduran government "has shown a courageous stance in condemning the (US) blockade against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and has a great vision when talking about independence and coexistence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our country is participating in the development of the global South".
On June 5, a local worker worked in the banana plantation of the Nana Banana Company in Honduras. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency)
