Disir
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The events of Dec. 6, 1928 in Ciénaga, Colombia, would inspire a famous novelist, topple a government and change the dynamics between a massive corporation and one of the many countries it operated in.
The massacre took center stage in Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s 1967 masterwork “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The recently deceased and monumentally lauded writer said he was inspired by the stories his grandmother told him about living in the Magdalena region of Colombia on the country’s northern coast, known as the banana zone for its main agricultural product. At the time he wrote the novel there was little interest and no serious historical studies on the banana workers’ strike that began in November 1928 and culminated in the massacre the next month and subsequent crackdown by the government.
modernfarmer.com
Disturbed by the losses that the strike caused to its bottom line, United Fruit Company decided to activate its power over the Colombian and U.S. governments. The workers were immediately and unjustly portrayed as “communists” by the local newspapers. The U.S. government threatened to invade, using the U.S. Marine Corps that were stationed off the shores of Ciénaga, should the Colombian government not act to protect United Fruit’s interests. Concerned with this threat and its potential economic impact, the Colombian government decided to act in favor of the interests of the United Fruit Company.
On Dec. 6, 1928, Colombian soldiers sprayed gunfire at the banana workers who were demonstrating outside of the United Fruit Company. The figures about the number of workers killed greatly fluctuate depending on the source, however, about a month later, the U.S. Ambassador to Bogotá, Jefferson Caffery, sent a dispatch home, informing Washington: “I have the honor to report…that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.”
Collecteurs
And here is a documentary on the rest of the banana:
While this is similar to my last thread in many ways it wasn't the whole banana. This incident was worthy of it's own thread.
The massacre took center stage in Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s 1967 masterwork “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The recently deceased and monumentally lauded writer said he was inspired by the stories his grandmother told him about living in the Magdalena region of Colombia on the country’s northern coast, known as the banana zone for its main agricultural product. At the time he wrote the novel there was little interest and no serious historical studies on the banana workers’ strike that began in November 1928 and culminated in the massacre the next month and subsequent crackdown by the government.
Old Time Farm Crime: The Banana Massacre - Modern Farmer
The events of Dec. 6, 1928 in Ciénaga, Colombia, would inspire a famous novelist, topple a government and change the dynamics between a massive corporation and one of the many countries it operated in.
modernfarmer.com
Disturbed by the losses that the strike caused to its bottom line, United Fruit Company decided to activate its power over the Colombian and U.S. governments. The workers were immediately and unjustly portrayed as “communists” by the local newspapers. The U.S. government threatened to invade, using the U.S. Marine Corps that were stationed off the shores of Ciénaga, should the Colombian government not act to protect United Fruit’s interests. Concerned with this threat and its potential economic impact, the Colombian government decided to act in favor of the interests of the United Fruit Company.
On Dec. 6, 1928, Colombian soldiers sprayed gunfire at the banana workers who were demonstrating outside of the United Fruit Company. The figures about the number of workers killed greatly fluctuate depending on the source, however, about a month later, the U.S. Ambassador to Bogotá, Jefferson Caffery, sent a dispatch home, informing Washington: “I have the honor to report…that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.”
Collecteurs
And here is a documentary on the rest of the banana:
While this is similar to my last thread in many ways it wasn't the whole banana. This incident was worthy of it's own thread.
