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Banana Country

Banana Country image
Parent Issue
Month
May
Year
1991
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

Shortly after arriving on the Atlantic Coast, I decided to get a close-up view of what is projected to be Costa Rica's number one export in 1992 - bananas. According to officials of U.S. Aid for International Development (US AID) and of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Costa Rica can both pay off its multi-billion dollar debt and balance its government checkbook. They say Costa Rica can accomplish this by privatizing the state-controlled sectors of the economy', by increasing its exports of coffee, bananas, beef and sugar, while simultaneously expanding its tourist and light manufacturing industries. While this may sound somewhat reasonable on paper, on the ground here things look rather different.

Along the muddy, potholed road that runs through the Valle de Estrella, among a colony of banana workers' zinc-roofed wooden shacks, the late afternoon air reeked of chemical pesticides. Appalled by the putrid-grey river, murky irrigation ditches and the amputated stumps of thousands of trees which had been clearcut six months earlier, I realized I had just made contact with the rather unpicturesque, pungent New Economic Order of Costa Rica - the Banana, Coffee and Tourism Republic that the glossy government travel brochures like to refer to as the "Switzerland of Central America."

After viewing the eco-handiwork of the banana and lumber barons in several rural scenes like this, it comes as no surprise to leam that Costa Rica is suffering from the fastest rate of deforestation in the world, according to a recent study of the World Resources Institute. Although neo-liberal Christian Unity President Rafael Angel Calderón boasted in his May 1990 inauguration speech that "Costa Rica will be converted into a model of conservation. . .and the leader in the fight for a New International Ecological Order," the WRI and others have wamed that all of the tropical and highland forests outside of the country's national parks and reserves will be destroyed by the year 2000 if current practices persist.

Standing in the middle of this ecological devastation, I was struck by the sight of a Dole promotional billboard saluting the "labor, peace and cooperation" achieved between the banana giant and the local plantation workers 'company union, the so-called Solidarista Association. These solidarista groups in Limón province and other agro-export zones have all but displaced the once militant, communist-led banana workers' union. Avidly promoted by foreign multinationals and U.S. AID - which Costa Rican opposition forces cali "the parallel government" - solidarista company unions have spread throughout the country, undermining what was once a solid network of leftist and social democratic trade unions.

According to spokespersons for the solidarista movement, at least one third of all Costa Rican workers now belong to their associations, which adds up to double the size of the country's 16% union membership. According to Millie Thayer, in an April 1991 article in The Guardian, there are over 200,000 Costa Rican solidaristas, with associations in more than 90% of all the transnational corporations operating in Costa Rica.

The cheerful "happy talk" on the Dole billboard seemed a bit ironic in light of recent reports of widespread pesticide poisoning and other corporate violations of workers' health and safety in Costa Rica. The most notorious example of Banana Republic criminal negligence and eco-assault in this regard is the unfolding Texas court case which Dow Chemical and Shell Oil are being sued for knowingly conspiring with Standard FruitDole (Castle & Cooke) to use the toxic, U.S.-banned chemical DBCP on Costa Rican banana plantations. The Use of DBCP certainly enhanced Dole company profits, but unfortunately caused the sterilization (and probable future cancer) of several thousand of the country's 23,000 banana workers. As local Valle de Estrella residents will admit, no one is happy about rampant deforestation, aerial pesticide spraying, and appalling health and safety conditions on the plantations. But when you're desperate for wages, as the banana migrant workers are, or desperate for tax revenues, as the Costa Rican government is, bananero development seems like a blessing. Jon Reed is a writer and journalist based most of the year in Mexico and Central America.

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