Rise and Resist: Remembering The Caribbean Plantocracy

“Come Mr. Tally Man, tally me banana,” they call. "Daylight come and me wan’ go home," the voices plead under a fresh, Caribbean sunrise. Harry Belafonte popularized the 1956 Banana Boat song, which originated from Jamaican dock workers during the growth of the country’s banana trade. Beneath an easy melody, its bittersweet memories of labourers asking an omnipotent overseer for their time-off  peels back the history of power and exploitation that speckles the simple banana. 

For Indo-Caribbeans, indentureship is a historical moment we can point to that shows the gravity of how much our people struggled, suffered, and somehow succeeded through. Toiling for abysmal wages on sugarcane plantations from the 1830s to the 1920s, they grew accustomed to being exploited for unfair wages by colonial overseers. This type of plantocracy, in which laborers were forced to work the land for the plantation owners’ gain, was not unique to Indo-Caribbeans or any one Caribbean country. For African slaves and Indian indentured laborers in Guyana, the crop was sugarcane. For Haitian slaves, it was coffee. In Colombia and Guatemala, it would prove to be bananas. 

In 1899, the United Fruit Company (known as Chiquita Brands International today) formed and became infamous for its harsh and exploitative practices in Central and South America. Severely underpaying Colombian workers for their banana picking, the workers finally led a strike in 1928 against the company’s mistreatment. In demanding fairer wagers and better working conditions, the workers were met with government retaliation, leading to the Banana Massacre. The Colombian government, working in tandem with the United Fruit Company, orchestrated the killing of numerous plantation workers in order to stop the strike. 

Continuing its exploitative practices, the United Fruit Company went on to brand its plantations to American tourists as tropical, fun destinations where the workers were happy and well taken care of. The company even initiated the launch of 95 cruise ships to allow Americans the chance to view, like wide-eyed spectators, the plantations they owned in various Central and South American countries.

By 1952, the United Fruit Company’s reach had extended to Guatemala, where laborers were already entrenched in the lucrative banana trade. When then-President Jacobo Árbenz worked to remove exploitative labor practices and grant unused United Fruit Company land to poor plantation laborers, the company responded with violent action.

In a series of vindictive acts including psychological warfare and fear mongering, the United Fruit Company was able to orchestrate a coup d'état with substantial help from the US’ CIA. The once democratically-elected President Árbenz was replaced with the puppet military dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas. Castillo Armas would go on to execute almost 5,000 supporters of the previous government and ushered in 40 years of internal war that would ultimately lead to the genocide of the indigenous Maya peoples.

The system of labor and land exploitation, whether it be in Colombia or Jamaica, or brought on by British colonial governments or money-hungry American corporations, is remembered even today. We who came from those who labored and struggled under oppressive systems, remember the stories of those “peasants” and “unskilled” workers. Bananas and their leaves, sugar and its cane, all these crops reflected abundance for those with power and scarcity for those trying to build a simple life. 

Indentured laborers, slaves, landless “peasants”--these are the people who had a relationship with the land, the earth, and its offerings. The Arawak, one of the original Indigenous peoples in South America and the Caribbean, once used banana leaves to sustainably cook and steam their food. Today, Indo-Caribbeans who are Hindus still use banana leaves as offerings in their religious practices and celebrations. Some even use the leaves to decorate their homes. We have found a way to remember and honor the sacrifices made by those intentionally forgotten people that corporations exploited to build their legacy of greed. 

When we sweeten our tea with brown sugar or thoughtlessly peel a banana between meetings, we should remember the hands from generations ago. The hands that might have wiped sweat away from their foreheads, pulled and picked what they needed to from the land, resisted and fought back where they could. Like this, we’ll remember how to rise and resist against inhumane systems of power just as our Caribbean ancestors did so many years ago.