Rachelle Mozman Solano

In this video, the Panamanian artist Rachelle Mozman Solano stages an imaginary encounter between Minor Keith, the railroad construction magnate and founder of the United Fruit Company, and Flor, an inhabitant of a banana producing town. Psychoanalysis has a strong presence in the work of Mozman Solano, who worked as a therapist for more than seven years. Imbued with a dreamlike aesthetic, the video dramatizes the encounter between both characters through actors whose gestures and movements are reminiscent of contemporary dance. Keith appears in the form of a Cavendish banana and laments to the woman that the monoculture of a single variety of bananas has caused the fruit disease that he is suffering from (called Panama Disease). The Dying Cavendish is a satirical take on the history of the United Fruit Company in Panama, its interventionism and its efforts to control the country’s media and education. The video remembers how the United Fruit Company was the first multinational company to combine commercial interests and government policies with the aim of making money. Mozman Solano condemns the disastrous effects of the company’s actions in the banana producing areas of Latin America and the Caribbean, the consequences of which continue to this day.