El Pulpo

CV

A map of the New World showing the interlocking routes of the U.S.-based Pan American Airways, Pan American-Grace Airways (Panagra), the Grace (shipping) Line, United Fruit’s Great White Fleet, and Moore-McCormick Shipping’s American Republics Line. Although they were all legally independent companies, they worked closely together to control the economies of the nations of Latin America

 

If anybody had told Juan Trippe there was a Great Depression it’s likely he would have laughed. By 1931, the Pan American Airways System was the largest airline in the world --- and it hadn’t even left the western hemisphere yet. Besides PAA proper, Trippe outright owned or controlled the national airlines of Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Chile, and held effective control of the largest airlines in Colombia and Brazil. He was rapidly moving in on airline operations in the Central American republics as well, oft-times in direct contravention of the wishes of the national legislatures of those lands, and in despite of United States foreign policy. 

1931, the deepest, darkest year of the Great Depression, saw Pan Am post its first profits, and though they were a measly $108,000.00 on 7.5 million dollars in revenues, Pan Am was in the black. Much of Pan Am’s revenue was spent designing and buying ever-newer planes, building airport infrastructures, and buying influence. Arthur H. Geissler, the U.S. Minister to Guatemala, once complained to George Rihl, Trippe’s Head of Mexican Operations: “You seem to think that everyone in Latin America is on the take,” to which Rihl answered, chuckling, “Not all of them. Oh, no, not all of them. Not yet.” 

 

Central America in 1862. U.S. interest in the region began almost as soon as the United States achieved independence. Southerners wanted to expand slavery there and Northerners to expand their markets by exploiting the lush tropical climate. In 1854,  American-led filibusters were barely defeated when they tried to seize control of the isthmus

Trippe himself rarely left New York. He had an amazing cadre of amoral lackeys to do all the work, usually former State Department specialists in Latin America, former Consuls and ex-Charge d’Affaires, who’d left State to work for the better-paying airline and who knew more about their assigned areas than the local U.S. Ambassadors they tended to ignore. He also coopted local businessmen and lower-level Ministers and secretaries to give him an inside line of the policies of individual governments. Soon, Pan Am became known as The Other State Department. Although there was some friction between State and Pan Am, it was often muted, especially because State tended to use Pan Am’s people as an Intelligence-gathering network in Latin America.

Where Trippe could, he directly befriended the dictators of the various banana republics. He was particularly close to a succession of Cuban Presidents, and to Rafael Trujillo, the murderous President of the Dominican Republic. Trippe was utterly untroubled by their human rights violations. Business was business.  

Where he was bothered by national legislators and Ministers, Trippe sidestepped problems. Although some Air Ministries refused to deal with the gringo Pan American, they were lulled into comfort by dealing with, for example, Compañia Mexicana, Pan Am’s wholly-  and secretly-owned subsidiary. This approach didn’t always work because of political stresses between countries, but American dollars were a helpful lubricant among local leaders. 

The first misstep made by Pan American, and one that left lasting scars, was Pan Am’s affiliation with United Fruit. 

 

The all-controlling United Fruit Company was known to Latin Americans as El Pulpo, “The Octopus,” because its tentacles reached into every aspect of life in two dozen countries south of the Rio Grande. American Constitutional freedoms and Enlightenment values were not among the things United Fruit brought to the masses in the Spanish-speaking Southlands

United Fruit has been one of the most hated of American corporations. Established in 1871 as a railroad-building enterprise, it built the first rail line between the cities of San Jose and Limon in Costa Rica. Meant to transport coffee to port, the rail line soon began transporting other produce, including lemons. 

The founder of United Fruit, Henry Meiggs, grew bananas, first imported from Africa, as the primary foodstuff for his field laborers. Excess bananas were also sent to port. Meiggs bought up millions of acres of arable land throughout all of Central America and northern South America to grow bananas (primarily) and other popular tropical fruits. The banana was so prevalent that all these nations --- Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and others --- became known as “banana republics.”

The house burghee of United Fruit’s “Great White Fleet.” In a prime example of United Fruit’s domineering arrogance, their Caribbean cruise / shipping line was named after President Theodore Roosevelt’s world-circumnavigating naval task force of 1907, dispatched specifically to intimidate other world powers by exhibiting U.S. military prowess

Working conditions were terrible. While not slaves per se, most Latin Americans who worked for United Fruit were essentially sharecroppers, forced to buy all their subsistence goods from overpriced company stores that kept them impoverished.  Shelter, water, and other basic necessities were provided --- or denied by way of coercion --- by United Fruit. United Fruit built an infrastructure of roads, telegraph and telephone systems, and even air and sea ports throughout the banana republics that was limited to use only by the company and its political supporters. Such things as sewer systems, schools and hospitals were entirely overlooked. 

A succession of tinsel-bedecked dictators ran the various banana republics, each earning great profits from their support of United Fruit. Uncooperative leaders were toppled in United Fruit-backed coups, often aided and abetted by U.S. military force sent to “protect” resident Americans.  Labor disputes were met with violence.    

The most infamous such occurrence was la matanza de las bananeras, the Banana Massacre, in Colombia in 1928. 

The Banana Massacre occurred when a wave of strikes hit the United Fruit plantations just before Christmas. Workers demanded written contracts, eight-hour work days, six-day work weeks and the elimination of food rationing by the company. 

 

A typical United Fruit laborer in 1928

The Colombian military intervened in several places, most notably in the town of Cienaga, where it machine-gunned some 3,000 protestors, declaring them rebels and Communists. Although United Fruit always denied calling out the troops, the troops clearly acted to protect United Fruit’s corporate interests. After the Banana Massacre, Colombia became and has remained a particularly unstable nation.  

La Violencia has ebbed and flowed over the country for the better part of a century, sometimes involving produce, other times coffee, and more latterly cocaine production.

Political resistance to the domination of United Fruit has led to numerous U.S. military interventions in Latin America, collectively called the Banana Wars. The latest of the Banana Wars, Operation Uphold Democracy, returned Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office in 1995, after his exile by a military junta. 

Juan Trippe liked being devious, As a matter of fact, one of his friends once said of him that “If the front door was open, he’d go in the side window.” 

Few Americans had any idea that the delicious yellow fruit they enjoyed was grown and harvested under such terrible conditions. As a matter of fact, United Fruit went out of its way to present Latin America as a paradise on earth

Chiquita Bananas were one of United Fruit’s most successful brands. After a series of corporate reorganizations United Fruit ultimately became Chiquita Brands International. To look at the artwork no one would ever know the suffering attendant upon United Fruit’s manner of doing business

Pan American partnered with United Fruit in many places in Latin America and adopted its advertising style if not its precise manner of doing business. Juan Trippe was a robber baron not a sadist, though most Central and South Americans couldn’t discern much difference. Trippe’s refusal to adopt immoral business practices was a fine thing, but his amorality in sharing the ill-gotten gains of tinhorn dictators, irresponsible corporate oligarchs, and even Nazis troubled many American leaders, even his friends. South of the border, Pan Am began to be seen as an instrument of Yanqui imperialism, a reputation it never quite lived down

  

Thus, his agreement with United Fruit, to operate their cargo airlines, soon expanded into a more generalized development of local air resources and passenger lines, usually under local carrier names. This hardly fooled the natives, who too quickly associated Pan American Airways with the despised United Fruit. Both companies denied any association, which only convinced the citizens of the various nations involved that it existed. Pan Am's agents, employees and passengers were often put at risk of harm, not to mention its planes and other equipment. Pan American remained the primary U.S. carrier in the region, but it was quite unloved. 

Juan Trippe flirted with dictators and fascists not because of his principles or lack of them, but because he was a pragmatist in business. He also seemed to like associating with Bad Boys, at least at arm’s-length. His decision to pick Havana as Pan Am’s first international destination had much to do with the mail route FAM-2, but it was also a wildly popular day trip for Prohibition-weary Americans who wanted to get good and drunk on fine Caribbean rum --- and sneak some back in their luggage