Tag: bananas

A Plague Of Forgetting

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This story begins in 1928 with bananas.  On the Caribbean coast of Colombia, campesinos who are employed by United Fruit are paid less than $1 per day for backbreaking work.  They live in filthy hovels.  And they die of malaria and tuberculosis.  Then they form a union.  Then they go on strike and paralyze the exportation of bananas.

General Carlos Cortez Vargas announces in Aracataca at a dinner put on by United Fruit that he will end the strike.  

The workers are told that a manager of United Fruit will arrive to accede to their demands, so they gather together to hear the announcement of their victory.  Instead of a United Fruit manager, General Cortez Vargas appears.  He doesn’t issue a concession.  Not at all.  He issues instead an ultimatum: get back to work, end the strike right now.  Or else.