Today in Labor History November 22, 1891: Dr. Edward L. Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria. Bernays, a nephew of Freud, is considered by many to be father of public relations. He is credited with getting millions of women to start smoking with his “Torches of Freedom” cigarette ad campaign that equated smoking with feminism, and with women’s liberation and independence. He also worked to legitimize the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemalan, becoming the primary supplier of information for the international newswires, like Associated Press, United Press International, and the International News Service. He described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct and wrote books on how to harness this to maximize profits. In the 1930s, his critics compared him to Goebbels and Hitler, and Goebbels did, indeed, read and utilize Bernays’s books to inform his propaganda campaigns. Bernays was even offered a job by the Nazis, which he reportedly turned down. He also supposedly turned down propaganda job offers from the the Spanish fascist dictator, Francisco, Franco and the brutal Somoza family, in Nicaragua.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #edwardbernays #freud #unitedfruit #cia #guatemala #publicrelations #advertising #smoking #cigarettes #arbenz #hitler #nazis #fascism

Panama il governo dichiara lo Stato di emergenza nella provincia nord orientale di Bocas del Toro.

Il successo economico della United Fruit provocò consistenti danni ambientali e socio-economici a svantaggio dei Paesi che le concedevano i territori

https://codice-rosso.net/panama-il-governo-dichiara-lo-stato-di-emergenza-nella-provincia-nord-orientale-di-bocas-del-toro/

Today in Labor History December 5, 1928: The Colombian military slaughtered up to 2,000 people in the Banana Massacre. Workers had been on strike against United Fruit Company since November 12. They were participating in a peaceful demonstration, with their wives and children. The Columbian troops set up machine guns on the rooftops near the demonstration and closed off the access streets so no one could escape. The soldiers threw the dead into mass graves or dumped them in the sea. U.S. officials in Colombia had portrayed the workers as communists and subversives and even threatened to invade if the Colombian government didn’t protect United Fruit’s interests. Gabriel García Márquez depicted the massacre in his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” as did Álvaro Cepeda Samudio in his “La Casa Grande.”

United Fruit, which is now called Chiquita, controlled vast quantities of territory in Central America, and the Caribbean, maintained a near monopoly in many of the banana republics in which it operated (e.g., Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica). By 1930, it was the largest employer in Central America and the largest land owner. In 1952, the democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, in Guatemala, began giving away unused land, owned by United Fruit, to landless peasants. In 1954, the CIA deposed the Arbenz government, leading to decades of brutal dictatorship and genocide of Guatemala’s indigenous population. The head of the CIA at that time was former board member of United Fruit, Allen Dulles, who also oversaw the over throw of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran (1953), the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), and the MK Ultra LSD mind control experiments.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #strike #massacre #colombia #unitedfruit #children #communism #mkultra #cia #genocide #indigenous #GabrielGarciaMarquez #fiction #novel #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History November 22, 1891: Dr. Edward L. Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria. Bernays, a nephew of Freud, is considered by many to be father of public relations. He is also credited with getting millions of women to start smoking with his cigarette ads, and helping legitimizing the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of the Guatemalan government. He described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct and wrote books on how to harness this to maximize profits.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #edwardbernays #freud #unitedfruit #cia #guatemala #publicrelations #advertising #smoking #cigarettes #arbenz