Today in Labor History June 11, 1913: Cops shot Black & White IWW members (Industrial Workers of the World) and AFL maritime workers in New Orleans. As a result, one worker died and two were injured. They imprisoned another 43 IWW members, who were striking against United Fruit Company for better wages. This strike was part of a strike wave at ports along the eastern seaboard, particularly in Philadelphia, led by African American IWW organizer Ben Fletcher. Most of these strikes were successful. However, the one in New Orleans was lost. United Fruit would go on to become one of the most powerful corporations of the 20th century. They ultimately controlled vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, Colombia, and the West Indies, and maintained a virtual monopoly in the so-called banana republics of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. In 1954, they lobbied for the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, which was successfully planned and orchestrated by the CIA, led by CIA-director Allan Dulles, who was also a board member of United Fruit. In the 1980s, United Fruit later changed their name to Chiquita. Their violence and corruption were described in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Pynchon, O. Henry, and Pablo Neruda.

You can read my complete biography of Fletcher here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #cia #unitedfruit #union #IWW #strike #prison #benfletcher #philadelphia #neworleans #prison #wages #imperialism #writer #author #books #novel #poetry @bookstadon

Oh, that makes it okay then

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2075185/oh-that-makes-it-okay-then

Free open-access publication article on 20th century archaeology of Maya sites Quiriguá and Zaculeu

How the United Fruit Company Racialized Archaeological Labor in Guatemala, 1910–1953 by Sam Holley-Kline

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/how-the-united-fruit-company-racialized-archaeological-labor-in-guatemala-19101953/78466EE5B65ED299F8BBA1050E927F56

#Archaeology #Maya #Guatemala #Mesoamerica #UnitedFruit

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 #columbia #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 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/