ajax18 wrote:The Indian way of life could not support latge populations of people. Hence we have hoads of destitue people rushing gates in desperation. I don't buy the idea that latin america is poor because of the US. If there were no US they would wirse off not better.
On the contrary. It is a very well documented, historical fact that they are probably worse off
because of US selfish, ignorant and/or ill advised actions and policies than they would otherwise have been had we let them alone to freely pursue their own goals and destiny. See
Banana republic.
The phrase banana republic was coined in 1901 by the American writer O. Henry (a.k.a. William Sydney Porter), 1862–1910.
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited-resource product, such as bananas or minerals. In 1901, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighbouring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling-class plutocracy, composed of the business, political and military elites of that society.[1] Such a ruling-class oligarchy control the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labour;[2] thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile dictatorship that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.[2]
In economics, a banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, by which economic model the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and usually reduces the national currency into devalued banknotes (paper money), rendering the country ineligible for international development credit.[3]
The history of the banana republic began with the introduction of the banana fruit to the U.S. in 1870, by Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain of the schooner Telegraph, who bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 percent profit.[9] The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than locally-grown fruit in the U.S., such as apples; in 1913, 25 cents (equivalent to $6.34 in 2018) bought a dozen bananas, but only two apples.[10] In 1873, to produce food for their railroad workers, the American railroad tycoons Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor C. Keith, established banana plantations along the railroads they built in Costa Rica; recognizing the profitability of exporting bananas, they began exporting the fruit to the Southeastern U.S.[10]
In the mid-1870s, to manage the new industrial-agriculture business enterprise in the countries of Central America, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company: one-half of what would later become the United Fruit Company (UFC); later Chiquita Brands International, created in 1899 by merger with the Boston Fruit Company, and owned by Andrew Preston. By the 1930s, the international political and economic tensions created by the United Fruit Company enabled the corporation to control 80–90 per cent of the banana business in the U.S.[11]
By the late 19th century, three American multinational corporations (the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company) dominated the cultivation, harvesting, and exportation of bananas, and controlled the road, rail, and port infrastructure of Honduras. In the northern coastal areas near the Caribbean Sea, the Honduran government ceded to the banana companies 500 hectares per kilometre (2,000 acre/mi) of a laid railroad, despite there being neither passenger nor freight railroad service to Tegucigalpa, the capital city. Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as El pulpo (The Octopus), because its influence pervaded Honduran society, controlled their country's transport infrastructure, and sometimes manipulated Honduran national politics with anti-labor violence.[12]
Honduras
In 1912, for the Cuyamel Fruit Company, the American mercenary "General" Lee Christmas overthrew the civil government of Honduras to install a military government friendly to foreign business.
In the early 20th century, the American businessman Sam Zemurray (founder of the Cuyamel Fruit Company) was instrumental to establishing the "banana republic" stereotype, when he entered the banana-export business by buying overripe bananas from the United Fruit Company to sell in New Orleans. In 1910, Zemurray bought 6,070 hectares (15,000 acres) in the Caribbean coast of Honduras for use by the Cuyamel Fruit Company. In 1911, Zemurray conspired with Manuel Bonilla, an ex-president of Honduras (1904–07), and the American mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas, to overthrow the civil government of Honduras and install a military government friendly to foreign businessmen.
To that end, the mercenary army of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, led by Gen. Christmas, effected a coup d'état against President Miguel R. Dávila (1907–11) and installed General Manuel Bonilla (1912–13). The U.S. ignored the deposition of the elected government of Honduras by a private army, justified by the U.S. State Department's misrepresenting President Dávila as too politically liberal and a poor businessman whose management had indebted Honduras to Great Britain, a geopolitically unacceptable circumstance in light of the Monroe Doctrine. The coup d'état was consequence of the Dávila government's having slighted the Cuyamel Fruit Company by colluding with the rival United Fruit Company to award them a monopoly contract for the Honduran banana, in exchange for the UFC's brokering of U.S.government loans to Honduras.[11][14]
The political instability consequent to the coup d'état stalled the Honduran economy, and the unpayable external debt (ca. US$4 billion) of the Republic of Honduras was excluded from access to international investment capital. That financial deficit perpetuated Honduran economic stagnation and perpetuated the image of Honduras as a banana republic.[15] Such a historical, inherited foreign debt functionally undermined the Honduran government, which allowed foreign corporations to manage the country and become sole employers of the Honduran people, because the American fruit companies controlled the economic infrastructure (road, rail, and port, telegraph and telephone) they had built in Honduras.
In the event, the U.S. dollar became the legal-tender currency of Honduras; the mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas became commander of the Honduran army, and later was appointed U.S. Consul to the Republic of Honduras.[16] Nonetheless, 23 years later, after much corporate intrigue among the American businessmen, by means of a hostile takeover of agricultural business interests, Sam Zemurray assumed control of the rival United Fruit Company, in 1933.[12]
Guatemala
Guatemala suffered the regional socio-economic legacy of the banana republic: inequitably distributed agricultural land and natural wealth, uneven economic development, and an economy dependent upon a few export crops—usually bananas, coffee, and sugar cane. The inequitable land distribution was an important cause of national poverty, and the concomitant sociopolitical discontent and insurrection. Almost 90 percent of the country's farms are too small to yield adequate subsistence harvests to the farmers, while two percent of the country's farms occupy 65 percent of the arable land, the property of the local oligarchy.
During the 1950s, the United Fruit Company sought to convince the governments of U.S. Presidents Harry Truman (1945–53) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953–61) that the popular, elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán of Guatemala was secret pro-Soviet for having expropriated unused "fruit company lands" to landless peasants. In the Cold War (1945–91) context of the pro-active anti-communist politics exemplified by U. S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the years 1947–57, geo-political concerns about the security of the Western Hemisphere facilitated President Eisenhower's ordering and authorizing Operation Success, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état by means of which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency deposed the democratically elected government (1950–54) of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán and installed the pro-business government of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas (1954–57), which lasted for three years until his assassination by a presidential guard.[2][17]
A mixed history of elected presidents and puppet-master military juntas were the governments of Guatemala in the course of the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War (1960–96). However, in 1986, at the 26-year mark, the Guatemalan people promulgated a new political constitution, and elected Vinicio Cerezo (1986–91) president; then Jorge Serrano Elías (1991–93)
Like it or not, believe it or not, this past, deplorable history of U.S dealings with Central American countries has had very much to do with creating the situations motivating so many of their people to seek refuge and asylum at our southern border today. Our ill-conceived and misguided, though well intentioned "War on Drugs" has also contributed to that crisis by helping to fuel the rise of criminal, murderous and opportunistic drug cartels that threaten those people in their own countries.
ETA: Ajax, if you had really cared about and bothered to learn something about the people you served on your mission and their concerns and culture, you would already have known about much of this.