In the annals of Western imperialism, no single firm approached the geographic reach and power of the United Kingdom’s East India Company. But United Fruit probably made a close second. No other American firm had been so emblematic of US corporation-driven neo-imperialism and state-sponsored terrorism across Latin America in the last century.

Its contemporary corporate incarnation, Chiquita Brands International, hits the news headlines this week for pretty much the legacy of crimes that made its previous corporate entity infamous.

In a civil suit, a jury in Florida ordered Chiquita, one of the world’s largest banana producers, to pay a total of US$38.3 million to the families of eight victims of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) – a disbanded right-wing paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004 and which the US State Department listed as a terrorist organisation.

The plaintiffs alleged that Chiquita had a close working relationship with the AUC, which terrorised farmers and other inhabitants across 7,000 square miles (18,130 sq km) of fertile land connecting Panama and Colombia until it was disbanded in 2006. Their suit claimed that the terror group tortured, killed or evicted farmers, or forced them to sell land for a pittance to convert into highly profitable banana farms. Chiquita, which is still facing dozens of similar lawsuits, said it would appeal. It said it was threatened and coerced into paying the AUC. The current case dates back to 2008.

The privately owned firm admitted in 2007 to having paid the AUC US$1.7 million and was fined US$25 million in the US.

The AUC was one of several far-right extremist groups that emerged out of Colombia’s civil war, which lasted from the mid-1960s to 2016.

If testimony from the lawsuit was anything to go by, not much had changed with Chiquita despite the corporate transformation in the 1980s.

From United Fruit to Chiquita

Reynolds wrote: “Despite the existence of multiple species, 99 per cent of export bananas and 47 per cent of bananas grown today are the Cavendish. Though they are now the standard, the Cavendish banana was once considered by Europeans to be inferior to the sweeter creamier Gros Michel (aka ‘Big Mike’).”

That’s because it was easier to transport, took longer to ripen and for a long time, was more resistant to infestation. Executives of United Fruit, founded in 1899 through a merger, decided in the early part of the last century that the Cavendish was the most economical to commercialise. That would be a momentous decision for the subsequent tragic fate of many Latin American countries.

The company could impose its preferred variety on the world because it was the biggest player in the global banana market, exercising its dominance and undue influence over a dozen countries and their economies in the Western hemisphere for much of the last century. It helped right-wing dictators repress leftists and reformers. It helped stage coups against reformist or leftist governments, as it had a direct line to the most important people in Washington.

As told by Peter Chapman, in Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World, the firm invented “the concept and reality of the banana republic”.

“As for repressive regimes, they were United Fruit’s best friends, with coups d’état among its specialities,” he wrote. “United Fruit had possibly launched more exercises in ‘regime change’ on the banana’s behalf than had even been carried out in the name of oil.”

Now that’s saying something.

The series of coups that ousted Jacobo Arbenz, the reformist president of Guatemala, in 1954 was a typical example of the collusion between Washington, United Fruit and the local oligarchs.

To say the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower had close ties with the company would be an understatement.

Arbenz had initiated a land redistribution programme to buy back land for the country’s farmers and villagers. But the government only offered official market prices. United Fruit, which was by far the largest landowner, had been deliberately undervaluing their land, much of which was unused, to avoid paying heavy taxes. Its executives were outraged by the prices offered, and started making phone calls to Washington. It didn’t have to make too many.

According to Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, the law firm of the Dulles brothers did work for the railway subsidiary of United Fruit, which was a vertically integrated company because it controlled major ports, rail and distribution centres across Latin America. The elder John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s secretary of state and brother Allen was director of the CIA.

The family of John Moors Cabot, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, was a major shareholder, while his brother Thomas was company president in 1948. Undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith, who was Eisenhower’s chief of staff during the second world war, joined United Fruit shortly after Arbenz was ousted.

Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Ann Whitman, was married to United Fruit’s director of public relations.

Speaking of PR, United Fruit also worked up a “red scare” among the American public by getting friendly journalists from such then-dominant publications as Time, US News & World Report and Newsweek to portray Arbenz as a communist. It had always been extremely adept at manipulating American public opinion as it was, decades ago, one of the first firms to hire as a consultant Edward Bernays, the grandaddy of American public relations and political propaganda. Bernays was steeped in the most advanced studies in mass psychology of his day. It’s no surprise that he was a nephew of Sigmund Freud.

After several coup attempts, Arbenz caved in to American pressure and resigned. “Slavery returned to Guatemala,” wrote Vincent Bevins in The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.

“In the first few months of his government, Castillo Armas established Anticommunism Day, and rounded up and executed between three thousand and five thousand supporters of Arbenz. Eisenhower was elated.”

As many historians and political writers of Latin America have argued, the Guatemala coups – there were three attempts against Arbenz – served as Washington’s Cold War template for regime change and destabilisation, not only in the Western hemisphere but around the world. Echoes of it can still be detected in US dealings with many unfriendly but weaker countries today. United Fruit was largely responsible for that tragic episode.

Of course, the shenanigans didn’t stop there. In what was known as “Bananagate” of 1975, Eli Black, CEO, chairman and president of the United Brands Company – the new name United Fruit was operating under – jumped to his death from his 44th floor office on Park Avenue, New York. He was about to be exposed for bribing Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, then president of Honduras.

The scandal was used as the rationale for a military coup that successfully ousted Lopez Arellano. Railways owned by United Brands were nationalised and large tracts of land owned by foreign companies were divested. United Brands was subsequently sold and became Chiquita. Though the name changed, perhaps not much else did, judging by the latest court ruling.