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In 1901, the government of Guatemala hired the United Fruit Company to manage the country's postal service, and in 1913 the United Fruit Company created the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company. By 1930, it had absorbed more than 20 rival firms, acquiring a capital of $215 million and becoming the largest employer in Central America.
It discusses examples like the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, and the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. In each case, the film claims, the purpose was to further the interests of Western corporations: the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iraq and the United Fruit Company in Guatemala.
By 1950, the United Fruit Company's (now Chiquita) annual profits were 65 million U.S. dollars, [b] twice as large as the revenue of the government of Guatemala. [54] The company was the largest landowner in Guatemala, [ 55 ] and virtually owned Puerto Barrios , Guatemala's only port to the Atlantic , allowing it to profit from the flow of ...
In May 1952, Árbenz enacted Decree 900, the official title of the Guatemalan agrarian reform law. [24] Approximately 500,000 people benefited from the decree. [25] The United Fruit Company lost several hundred thousand acres of its uncultivated land to this law, and the compensation it received was based on the undervalued price it had presented to the Guatemalan government for tax purposes. [17]
In response the US-based United Fruit Company, which had large landholdings in Guatemala, intensively lobbied the US government for Árbenz's overthrow. [12] [13] US President Dwight Eisenhower authorized a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation to overthrow Árbenz, code-named Operation PBSuccess in August 1953. [14]
In 1913, Zemurray bought back the portion of his company owned by United Fruit, a transaction that was made possible by increasing anti-trust pressure on United Fruit from the United States government. [2] Fully in control of the company, he expanded by buying 20 ships by 1915 that were outfitted with refrigerated holds.
United Fruit Company had been in Guatemala since 1904 which was its largest domain with the main product being of the banana. The United Fruit Company started in 1899 with a merger between the Boston Fruit Company and a business man named Minor Keith. With a capital of $215 million, what was happening in Guatemala was a concern for the company ...
Edward Bernays was born in Vienna to a Jewish family. [13] His mother, Anna (1858–1955), was Sigmund Freud's sister, and his father Eli (1860–1921) was the brother of Freud's wife, Martha Bernays; their grandfather, Isaac Bernays (through their father Berman), was the chief rabbi of Hamburg and a relative of the poet Heinrich Heine.