By Ken Cotterill
In 1996, Chiquita Brands' CEO Carl Lindner donated $US500,000 to US President Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. Now he wants some return.
Lindner's gripe is that several Caribbean states in the Windward Island group — Grenada, Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines — have the audacity to export their banana crop to their former colonial masters in Europe.
Although two-thirds of Europe's banana imports emanate from Chiquita plantations in Central and South America, Lindner is not happy with the 7% that gets in from the Windward Islands. If Chiquita gets its way, the Windward Islands banana industry will be decimated.
With US trade representatives — first Micky Kantor and now Charlene Barshefsky — batting for him, Lindner can see his dream of Chiquita dominating the European banana market being fulfilled.
Lindner is only doing what Chiquita has always done when things turn against it: it brings in its powerful friends.
In the 1940s, Guatemala was run by a small white-Creole elite who presided over an Indian population who toiled in vast private plantations, including those of the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands.
A revolution, led by Juan Jose Arevelo, then Jacobo Arbenz, set out to rectify the social imbalance through land reform. In 1952, Arbenz announced the nationalisation of United Fruit's land.
But then, as now, United Fruit was well connected. The Dulles brothers, Allen as the head of the CIA and John Foster as secretary of state, had both been associated with United Fruit through the law company Sullivan and Cromwell. US President Eisenhower's personal secretary was the wife of United Fruit's public relations director, and the family of the assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, John Moors Cabot, had extensive interests in United Fruit.
By 1954, a CIA-assisted coup was organised and Arbenz fled into exile, to be replaced by Castillo Armas. One of the new president's first actions was to repeal the 1952 land expropriation act.
It seems that nothing will deter the banana transnational. Hurricane Mitch, which recently devastated Central America, damaged most of Chiquita's large Honduran plantations. However, Chiquita's Costa Rica spokesperson, Jimmy Zonta Sing, says the insurance pay-out is an opportunity for the company to invest in new plant and increase its global competitiveness.