AS.100.369: Bananas, United Fruit, and "Negro Management"

Hey guys, a couple of items here just to help you with the shortened lecture from this week.

First of all, I am posting a link to a "New Yorker" article that Julia Nick found and is a great example of some of the contemporary implications of the material we have been considering. If you have problems with the link, I have also posted the article by Mike Peed, entitled "We Have No Bananas," on blackboard. Thanks Julia!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_peed


Per Amy's question in class about the pathology of Panama disease, I thought it would be useful if I offered a better explanation for how the disease spreads through banana crops. Below is historian John Soluri's summary of how the disease operates:


"The soil-borne fusaria fungi associated with Panama disease entered banana plants via root structures and traveled up vascular tissues to the leaves. Infected foliage turned yellow-brown before wilting. Severely diseases plants seldom produced healthy fruit, if they produced any at all. Spores released into the soil from decaying plant tissues germinated when they came into contact with the roots of neighboring plants, thereby spreading the disease in a radical pattern throughout fields. The expansion of continuously cropped Gros Michel monocultures accelerated the pathogen's advance by sharply increasing host density on a microlevel. In addition, the movements of irrigation and drainage waters, trains, migrant workers, and roving animals all facilitated the farm-to-farm spread of the fungi." 

As Erin brought up the issue of flooding and Australian agriculture, I would probably add flooding as another lethal ingredient in the spread of the disease.

 (These two cross sections of healthy and disease banana rootstocks offer a good sense of how the disease infects the plant)

Now, just to provide a few examples of how United Fruit utilized Jim Crow "Negro Management" on its banana biofactories:

• Many of United Fruit's managers, who hailed from New England, held their own firm convictions about race, labor, and the tropical world: They assumed that West Indian black workers had the physical attributes and constitutions to withstand the diseases and climate of the tropics
• There was strict labor segmentation—whites held managerial positions while blacks were pressed into heavy plantation and stevedore labor
• Whites received monthly salaries while workers of color were paid by the task--a point of constant tension about the laborers
•  Medical attention and mosquito control was uneven, as ailments plaguing black workers were rarely addressed by United Fruit medical staff—diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis were common, but were not attributed to poor housing or nutrition, but the misguided belief that blacks were more racially susceptible to respiratory diseases
• All social and working spaces were constructed along the color line, which was reflective of racial segregation patterns that were becoming common in the American public sphere
• Many observers feared that Jim Crow labor actually encouraged racial violence, as murders and reprisals were common across the color line--the occasional lynching was favored by United Fruit managers (which they incited through economically dislocated "Ladinos") to keep West Indian laborers in line  

AS.100.369: Colonial Public Health and the Diseases of Venus

If we consider the age-old cliche that prostitution is "the oldest profession in the world" and that prostitution evolved alongside American urban spaces and social institutions during the nineteenth century, what do we think is behind all of the concern about prostitution in the colonies during the early twentieth century? Thinking about the readings and the lectures, consider the role of the tropical environment in shaping American understandings of prostitution. Did the moral crusaders and the public health experts reinforce veneral diseases as unique products of the colonial environment or did they advocate that these were diseases that transcend geography and cross the great reaches of the American empire? Of course, any other thoughts or questions you might have are appreciated.

AS.100.369: The Panama Canal Zone and the Conquest of the Tropics

Let's talk hypotheticals. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, it's the year 1915, the Panama Canal has just been completed, and I'm a self-identified white Anglo-Saxon from a middle-class background. I have some disposable income and would like to go on holiday for both therapeutic reasons and as an expression of my new found affluence. I've heard some interesting stories about the tropics, and having read one article by Blakeslee and a book by Woodruff, I'm thoroughly confused. The tropics seem both terrifying for white men, but also full of potential with the successful completion of the canal. As my travel agent and having also read both works, what would you recommend?

[N.B. This is a student exercise. The views and opinions expressed by the students are not their own, but based off their interpretations of primary sources from the early twentieth century and how they imagine certain individuals from that period would express their own ideology in certain historical contexts.] 

AS.100.369: Managing the Philippine Environment

The image below of Governor-General of the Philippines (and later U.S. President), William Howard Taft, sitting on top of a water buffalo actually served an important ideological project--visualizing the American subjugation of its newest colonial possessions (or it could just be Taft sitting on top of an unfortunate water buffalo--we could debate that). Often, economic exploitation and management of natural resources requires ideological imperatives that sustain this colonial extraction process. After reading the B.I.A.'s "Official Handbook of the Philippines" can you locate certain American ideological imperatives in rationalizing the study and extraction of Philippine nature? What purposes might these rationales serve? Of course, any other questions and thoughts are welcome as well.