The
Bitter Fruits of American Neo-Colonialism
Over
the past two years, the border between the US and Mexico has been
flooded with thousands of unaccompanied children from Central
America trying to enter the United States illegally1.
There is compelling evidence that most of them are are being driven
by a fears of gang violence in their home countries - primarily
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador - fears powerful enough to make
them and their parents willing to accept the risks of a perilous
journey to the US. Because
of its past actions to suppress the development of democratic
institutions in each of these countries, the US bears a direct
responsibility for the breakdown in the rule of law
in each country that has generated the current flood of desperate
children seeking entrance to the US.
Anti-immigrant
zealots who complain so bitterly about the terrible burden these
child refugees impose on the US fail to understand that they are just
one more example of “chickens coming home to roost”, which is to
say that they are the long-term consequence of US interventions that
go back to the late 19th century in the case of Honduras
and Guatemala and to the 1980s in the case of El Salvador. The
first two countries were classic “banana Republics” where the US
intervened directly to suppress the development of political and
social reforms and supported oppressive military dictatorships in
order to protect the interests of US corporations. In El
Salvador, a tiny country with little in the way of exploitable
resources, American interventions were the product of US concerns in
the 1980's that communism was gaining a foothold in Latin America and
must be met with a vigorous response.
The Honduran version
of this story begins with Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray, a
colorful character who was born in Moldova in 1877 and emigrated to
America in 1896 ending up at the age of 19 on the docks of Mobile,
Alabama. After observing stevedores dumping over-ripe bananas into
the sea, he came up with the idea of taking those bananas, moving
them quickly to inland towns nearby and selling them at bargain
prices before they spoiled. By age 21, he had already banked
$100,000.
In 1910, he borrowed
half a million dollars, bought a steamship and sailed to Honduras
where he purchased 5,000 acres of land along the Cuyamel River2.
He continued to borrow money and accumulate land but soon found
himself over-extended and heavily in debt. Unfortunately for Sam, his
personal debt crisis coincided with a sovereign debt crisis on the
part of the Honduran government which had borrowed heavily from
American banks and was now unable to make its payments. The country
found itself under intense pressure from the US government to come up
with a plan to repay its debts and reluctantly agreed to impose a
package of excise taxes, the proceeds of which would go directly to
the American banks (J P Morgan being the largest) that held the
loans. The plan spelled disaster for Sam since the excise taxes would
have destroyed his banana exporting business. Even worse, the
repayment plan called for the direct oversight of the tax collections
by agents of the American banks, a provision that precluded any
opportunity to avoid the taxes with the usual expedient of bribing
local officials.
A desperate Zemurray
appealed to US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox for help but,
having considerably less influence than J. P. Morgan, he was
rebuffed. Sam then turned to Plan B - the overthrow of the Honduran
government. He enlisted the services of a pair of mercenaries, one
with the colorful name of "Machine Gun" Molony and
selected, as the future President of Honduras, Manuel Bonilla, a
retired General who had seized control of the Honduran government in
1903, served as president until overthrown in 1907, and was now
living in New Orleans. After formulating their plans in a New
Orleans whore house and with more than a little assistance from the
US Government, this ragtag posse of conspirators succeeded in seizing
power and Bonilla returned in triumph as President of Honduras.
Bonilla quickly
expressed his gratitude by awarding Zemurray 50,000 acres of prime
banana growing land. He also gave Zemurray a unique permit allowing
his businesses to import whatever they needed duty-free. Finally, he
authorized Zemurray to raise a $500,000 loan in the name of the
Honduran government, and use the money to repay himself for what he
claimed to have spent organizing the revolution. Like so many
revolutions, this one was financed by the citizens of the “liberated”
country.
“ Zemurray
liked to describe Honduras, which lies just across Nicaragua's
northern border, as a country where "a mule costs more than
a congressman." Over the ensuing decades, he bought plenty of
both, and a string of pliable presidents
as well. His Cuyamel
Fruit Company and two others-Standard Fruit and United Fruit
which he ultimately acquired - -came to own almost all the fertile
land in the country. They also owned
and operated its ports, electric power plants, sugar mills, and
largest
bank.
“After
Bonilla's death in 1913, [Zemurray] controlled a string of
presidents. In 1925 he secured exclusive lumbering rights to a region
covering one-tenth of Honduran territory. Later he merged his
enterprises with United Fruit and took over as the firm's managing
director. Under his leadership, United Fruit became inextricably
interwoven with the
fabric of Central American life. According to one study, it
'throttled competitors, dominated governments, manacled railroads,
ruined planters, choked cooperatives, domineered over workers, fought
organized labor and exploited consumers.'"3
In exchange for
the the early concessions granted by Bonilla,, the fruit companies
had promised to build a rail network that would tie the country
together. They never did. The only lines they built were the ones
they needed, connecting their plantations to Caribbean ports. The
Life Pictorial Atlas of the World, published in 1961, devoted exactly
one sentence to Honduras: "A great banana exporter, Honduras has
1,000 miles of railroad, 900 of which belong to U.S. fruit
companies." Strikes, political protests, uprisings, and
attempted coups racked Honduras for decades. To suppress them, the
country's presidents maintained a strong army that absorbed more than
half of the national budget. When the army could not do the job, it
called in the United States Marines.”4
Fast forward to
1958. A reformer, Ramon Villeda, is elected President of Honduras,
tries to pass a land reform law,
but is forced to withdraw under intense pressure from United Fruit.
In the 1963 Presidential election, the Liberal candidate seeking to
succeed Villeda vows to revive the law and to curb the power of the
army - admirable, if not very prudent campaign promises. Ten days
before the election, the army stages a coup, installs General Oswaldo
Lope Arellano as President, dissolves Congress, and suspends the
constitution.
Honduras
remained under military/United Fruit Company rule for the next 18
years. In 1981 the ruling general, Gustavo Alvarez, was more than
happy to accommodate Ronald Reagan by allowing the US to use Honduras
as a base for the anti-Sandinista rebels (Contras) who were
working to overthrow Daniel Noriega in Nicaragua. . From 1980 to
1984, annual United States military aid to Honduras increased from $4
million to $77 million and consolidated the military's grip on power.
Alvarez's successors established a secret squad called Battalion
3-16, trained and supported by the CIA, that maintained clandestine
torture chambers and carried out kidnappings and killings. The most
powerful figure in the country during this period was the American
ambassador, John Negroponte, who studiously ignored all pleas that
the US intervene to curb the regime's excesses.
“While the
contra war raged, progress toward democracy in Honduras was
impossible and citizens faced a frightening form of government
sponsored terror. The war had another effect, which did not become
clear until years later. Thousands of poor Honduran families,
submerged in grinding poverty and fearful of the military, fled the
country during the 1980s. Many ended up in Los Angeles. There, large
numbers of Honduran teenagers joined violent street gangs. In the
1990s many of these youths were deported back to Honduras, where they
faced the same lack of opportunity that had forced their parents to
flee. Soon they established in their homeland a replica of the bloody
gang culture absorbed in Los Angeles.”5
And so, thanks in no
small part to the United States and the United Fruit Company, we
again have the sad spectacle of thousands of children fleeing
violence6
in their homeland and seeking refuge in the United States. Honduras
has the dubious distinction of having the highest homicide rate in
the world6 and the US is dealing with a flood of children
who are literally fleeing for their lives.
2Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Zemurray
3Ibid.
p. 77
4Stephen
Kinzer, “Overthrow”, Times Books, New York, 2006. p. 100
5Ibid.
p. 102
6UN
Office on Drugs and Crime
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