Today’s Mindful Monday brought to you by the phenomenal, gorgeous, boss ass writer for some major publications, fly, poppin & a Bruin @yvetteactually
Present day Chiquita Brands International was once United Fruit, the same company that lobbied for US intervention in Central American politics just as the “dangerous” communism and socialism was spreading in the region. The US government made it a whole morality issue but really their problem with communism and socialism was the agrarian reform laws and workers rights that would follow. Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, etc. All started electing governments that began to seize large land-holdings and redistributed them to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. The majority of them were indigenous people, whose ancestors had their lands stolen after the Spanish invasion. United Fruit (now Chiquita Banana) wanted to crush these movements before they had a chance of spreading. These actions have had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries that are still being felt today. Major left-wing writers in Latin America, such as Carlos Luis Fallas of Costa Rica, Ramón Amaya Amador of Honduras, Miguel Ángel Asturias and Augusto Monterroso of Guatemala, Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, Carmen Lyra of Costa Rica, and Pablo Neruda of Chile, have all denounced the United Fruit in their literature. Refugees are often the beneficiaries of land rights legislation. This is where the term “Banana Republic” comes from. #mindfulmonday #consciouscontributor#gueststar