Draft - International Studies Association -

Friday, 19 February 1999 - 8:30 am.

Truman Room, Marriott Hotel, Washington DC

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That superb chronicler of the British imperial experience, Jan Morris, writes to the effect that some parts of the Empire stayed until the end out of ignorance, some out of good nature, but the Caribbean remained out of self-protection. (Morris, 539.) The British Caribbean is characterized as loyal to the Crown, not in an unseemly hurry to cut apron strings, and very fond and very good at cricket. Surely then if any part of the former Empire could make a claim based on principle, to take a word from the title of Professor Vickers´paper, it would the mini states that are in danger of being shut out from the emerging regional trade blocs.

As revisionist views increase about the Empire, partly generated by the end of the Cold War and the decline of dependency theory, and partly by the eclipse of academic Marxism and of other viewpoints that were long cherished in the academy, it is appropriate to discuss just what the current obligations of Britain are to besieged former wards. Is the current Labour Government bound by any point of honor? The banana is a useful political trope for the larger issue of residual British duty to the past, and perhaps during the question period we could exchange views on that thorny issue.

Though its banana policy the present Labour government has an opportunity to fulfill an arguably moral obligation to Britain´s former Caribbean dependencies and make a real contribution to political stability in that region, a part of the world where Britain still has something of an imperial presence. So far Labour has been somewhat equivocal., and perhaps understandably so: to speak of what is owed by former colonial powers to their onetime wards requires thought about whether the debt is influenced by the passage of time. As their onetime relations with possessions become increasingly distant in time the ties become more tenuous -- the children become grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The same could be said to apply to the relationship between Labour and the Caribbean.

Banana Culture

The hold that bananas were to achieve on some small countries is partly explained by the fact that while an acre of wheat can yield about 1300 pounds a year and an acre of corn will harvest into 2800 pounds, an acre of bananas will give 18,000 pounds every year. The only drawback is the fruit’s extreme perishability, so that until the advent of modern transportation, the idea of it ever becoming a major export crop was regarded skeptically. (Davies, 9.) It was not unknown to European consumers in the period from the seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries, but it was expensive and exotic. Anyone who dealt in them ran an enormous risk, because a delay at sea meant a total loss. These obstacles were gradually overcome during the nineteenth century and a process of consolidation ensued, with small companies being bought out by larger ones. Consolidation did not end with 1899 and Britain was much involved in the process.

We include Belize in this discussion partly because of visits there which have given us a first hand idea of the situation and although Belize is sometimes hived off from Central America when it comes to discussing the banana problem. That is unjustified. Mark Moberg for one has successfully demonstrated that rather than Belize being the exception in Central America, because of its British heritage, it was as much a banana republic as any of its neighbors. (Moberg, 357-381.) Professor Moberg correctly observes that British Honduras has customarily been grouped with the Caribbean nations, being in but not of Central America.

The present crisis is partly the result of British indecision about longterm tariff treatment of banana imports, and the whole subject is influenced by a collision between the large America banana companies and the European Union preferential treatment of banana imports from former colonies in the Caribbean. A false assumption in some quarters has been that British imperial and post-imperial Caribbean trade politics was somehow divorced from the so-called American banana politics. But exhaustive study of the archives in London shows that the colonial officials in British Honduras were the willing ´victims´´ of United States and United Fruit influence. (Moberg, 358-359.) In other words, the banana companies have always sought to influence British banana policy and the present situation is nothing new.

Countries as Corporations

The story is one of many years of British yielding to American banana interests. It is not just a post colonial phenomenon. Being part of the British Empire did not save the Belizean situation any more than independence has: The colonial government’s stance towards United Fruit in the 1920s was described as "self-abasement" out of fear of marketing retaliation that would destroy those independent producers who remained. Little has changed. At the present moment, "The big banana companies are at the centre of a Euro-American trade war, with the US supporting them to the point of threatening sanctions...against a range of European products if the EU does not stop giving preference to banana growers in former Caribbean colonies." (Davison, 5.)

The fact is that the Americans, at least up to the hurricane that struck Central America in 1998, have been flooded with bananas. That is one of the reasons they have been howling bout EU policies. American banana magnates saw the end of the Cold War as a golden opportunity to introduce millions of people to the banana, and large amounts of money were invested to increase Central American production. Unfortunately, Eastern Europeans and the Russians haven’t had the income to become big banana consumers.

Low prices have effected everyone, including Belize and formerly British islands, but actual violence has erupted in Honduras. The cruelest blow of all has come from Fyffes, that British subsidiary already mentioned which was sold and now on its own and free from United influence, which has started a banana war by encouraging the independent producers rather than company plantations. This was the throwing down of the gauntlet in the new ´post modern´ banana crisis. Fyffes shipments in Honduras were hijacked and eight Chiquita company officials were accused of attempting to kidnap a Fyffes officer. "Fyffes came to break the monopoly," said an observer, and, "I told them that those who have tried have been destroyed." (Otis, 28.)

Chiquita has sought to neutralize the perfidious British strategy by also purchasing from the independents, and has been pleasantly surprised at finding additional advantages to the tactic because it thus can diminish union influence. During the period 1990 through 1994 the union campaign for health care and pay raises had meant a constant series of strikes. Faced by the Fyffes threat and the union trouble, Chiquita sold some of the 1.9 million acres it owned in Honduras and conscripted the independents. Workers for the independents get about $2.50 daily, much less than do union workers. Chiquita’s cutbacks have been highly controversial, but the company claims it is developing a new culture. (Otis, 30.) That may be, but when the epic hurricane of 1998 devastated Central America it was possible for the banana companies to walk away from the situation as they had no longterm obligations to the independents.

Conclusion

The central issue facing the Labour government in London is that the Americans want the banana tariffs "buried with a stake through the heart".. Time has caught up the Caribbean and the chances dim of being exempt from the changes in tariff arrangements as the power grows of entities such as the World Trade Organization, European Union, and the North American Trade Agreement bloc. Banana-growing countries, small and without capital, political clout or the means for diversification are now at the mercy of what is euphemistically called free trade but which might more appropriately be called, at least for the present, free trade for some.

The formerly British Caribbean nations, including Belize, are not able to produce bananas at a cost that is competitive with the cost of bananas from American sources in Latin America, and in particular are not competitive with Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. The so-called Lome Convention gave these Caribbean growers some (limited) degree of tariff protection and this ever since has been an annoyance to United and its Chiquita subsidiary. (Evans, 8.)

Enter on the disturbed scene Senator Bob Dole, who in retirement lends himself to credit card advertisements and like the Duke and Duchess in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers and is available for store openings and cornerstone layings. Senator Dole has displayed and continues to display a remarkable interest in bananas, or perhaps for his retainer. It seems that he is a friend of Carl Lindner, who had acquired the majority interest in United Brands, which was the successor to United Fruit, and thus had become the CEO of Chiquita Brands International. Chiquita and Mr. Lindner have donated to Dole campaigns as well as to his non-profit Dole Foundation, and have made Chiquita’s corporate jets available to Dole for his junkets.

There seems then to be a connection between Dole’s political fundraising and Dole’s bananamania. Lindner has had continuing problems with the European Union, and with Britain in particular, which from his viewpoint have stubbornly continued to protect former colonies by those tariff impositions on the bananas of other countries. Chiquita’s banana interests thus are at risk because preferential tariffs to the Caribbean islands would exclude their output from the attractive European market. Mr. Lindner has been unhappy at the compromises made with the European Union. Contributing to his unhappiness, but fortunately for the rival Del Monte and Dole corporations (appropriately named, but not incidentally named for the Senator!), those companies have plantations in such former British Empire possessions as Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and St. Lucia and thus have enjoyed the benefits of the European Union restrictions applied to United’s Chiquita bananas. (Spy, 53.)

The small grower in Belize and the islands who has enjoyed preferential access to Europe thus has an unenviable number of enemies.

It comes as little surprise then, with such pressures, that the WTO (World Trade Organization) found against the small Caribbean producers, though appeals and behind the scene lobbying continues . This pleased Germany and other European Union countries where consumers are the main concern, or at least the main concern when it comes to bananas. But the WTO ruling places Britain and Labour in a difficult position because virtually all of the Caribbean bananas go to Europe, and the small islands which formerly were British colonies will be devastated if they have to enter full competition with the big producers. (de Jonquières, 7. Calvert and Calvert, 204.)

The American banana imperialists would seem to be up to their usual tricks and the machinations of Mr. Lindner would appear to support the traditional historiography involving the place of the banana in politics, a rôle which has emphasized the economic stranglehold of the banana companies. (Euraque, xix.) (Nevertheless, analyses falling within that tradition, no matter how well conceived, lay themselves open to more specific and particular studies which seek to discriminate by taking slices of time or regions within a country and by that discrimination overthrowing the general theses that have been advanced. This is a winning strategy regardless of the topic, for few are the social science theses which can encompass every year and every era and every example. (See Graña, 186.) When all is said and done, "An ideology does not have to be dominant (in the sense of being the only one available, which is how ideology is often conceptualized) to be effective. Because of the possibly contradictory nature of its themes, which give sit wide generality and lends it applicability in a broad range of situations, it can incorporate and subordinate competing or anti-elite ideologies." (Howe, 463.) In fact, in a political culture heavily influenced by the production cycle of one agricultural staple, the underprivileged can be heavily implicated in their own impoverishment (Howe, 463), a point often overlooked in British Caribbean studies.)

Although we have used the banana as an example, the institutional structures and value systems erected around a plantation economy have a universality. The generalization then still stands that British Caribbean has been oligarchy-prone because of its economic vulnerability and dependency on the export of agricultural products for survival. (Wrobel, 4.)

The bottom line is that Labour has to decide whether it will get in the ring for more rounds with the banana interests and work out a longterm plan that will protect the small growers, or simply walk away from the problem. If Labour tries to help the small banana countries, it must face the fact that, "...the US has been unyielding in its position, and that the Caribbean group has had to fight every inch of the way to get its concerns heard." ( Sutton, 30.) If Labour walks away from the problem, Belize and the islands will be more at the mercy of the drug smugglers, see more of their populations emigrate, and have good reason to wonder just what the Commonwealth ties really mean. The alternative is to insist on retaining some preferences, which the French would support because they still get their bananas from Martinique and Guadeloupe. This should be accompanied by a strenuous effort to upgrade quality with the hope that eventually Caribbean bananas could dvelop specialty markets. The cause is just. Free trade is fine, but not when it means flushing old friends down the drain.

Sources

"Banana Republican", n.a., Spy, September/October 1996, 51-54.

Guy de Jonquières and Maggie Urry, "WTO puts skids under banana regime", Financial Times, 20 March 1997, 7.

César Graña, Fact and Symbol, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 1994 [1971].