Suchergebnisse

From the memory of men -- Lament for a dying fruit -- Roots of empire -- Monopoly -- The banana man -- Taming the enclave -- Banana republics -- On the inside -- Coup -- 'Betrayal' -- Decline and fall -- Old and dark forces -- Epilogue: United fruit world.

From hotel luxury suites to working-class lunchboxes -- The United Fruit Company in Latin America: business strategies in a changing environment -- The United Fruit Company and local politics in Colombia -- The Labor conflicts of the United Fruit Company in Magdalena in the 1920s -- Nobody's triumph: labor unionism in Magdalena after World War II -- The United Fruit Company's relationship with local planters in Colombia.

The United Fruit Company (UFC), an American corporation, monopolized the banana trade in the British colony of Jamaica for most of the 20th century, despite efforts by the British to establish a foothold (see Clegg 2002). While the British colonial government focused its efforts on challenging the UFC's domination in Jamaica; in 1923, a UFC subsidiary called Swift Banana Company began undertaking the commercial export of bananas in the then British colony of St. Lucia. Research on the St. Lucia banana industry, during the period 1923 to 1942, was very limited, and has largely dismissed the decline of the banana industry as the result of its inability to survive the Panama disease epidemic. This paper challenges this explanation; arguing that UFC subsidiaries contributed significantly to both the rise and decline of St. Lucia's banana industry from 1923 to 1942.

"This book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. Based on 5 years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca up the West Coast), Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, uncovers how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful-for instance, he trekked with his informants illegally through the desert border into Arizona, where they were apprehended and jailed by the Border Patrol. After he was released from jail (and his companions were deported back to Mexico), Holmes interviewed Border Patrol agents, local residents, and armed vigilantes in the borderlands. He lived with Indigenous Mexican families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals, participated in healing rituals, and mourned at funerals for friends. The result is a "thick description" that conveys the full measure of struggle, suffering, and resilience of these farmworkers. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies weds the theoretical analysis of the anthropologist with the intimacy of the journalist to provide a compelling examination of structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of a vertical slice of Indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers, farm owners, doctors, and nurses. This reflexive, embodied anthropology deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which socially structured suffering comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, especially through imputations of ethnic body difference. In the vehement debates on immigration reform and health reform, this book provides the necessary stories of real people and insights into our food system and health care system for us to move forward to fair policies and solutions."--Publisher information