McCann, Thomas. An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit. New York: Crown Publishers, 1976. 244 pages.

Thomas McCann joined United Fruit in 1952; when he resigned in 1971 he was vice-president in charge of public relations. United Fruit was the most powerful economic and political force in Central America during the 1950s. They were cozy with foreign interventionists and media owners back home, which meant that they could make or break little countries at will. In 1954, United Fruit and the CIA broke Guatemala. The media, having been carefully prepped and by United Fruit's PR experts such as Edward L. Bernays (the "father of public relations"), cheered from the sidelines. (Forty years of death squads and tens of thousands of killings later, it remains very much broken, and our media are happy to keep it buried.)

Guatemala's peasants were powerless against United Fruit, so it took a corporate raider by the name of Eli Black to bring it down. In 1968, when United Fruit was 70 years old, Black began acquiring shares. After six years as CEO, making all the wrong decisions and alienating everyone who could help him, United Fruit was in deep trouble. Black jumped out of his office window on the 44th floor in 1975, while the SEC investigated his bribes to Honduran officials for tax relief on banana exports. Now peasants had only the CIA to worry about -- those thugs from that big banana republic up north, whose job it is to keep all the little bananas in line.
ISBN 0-517-528096

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