BANANOS. HISTORIA, POLÍTICA Y CULTURA VISUAL

An Introductory Course

Open-Access, Shared Syllabus

Designed by Blanca Serrano Ortiz (independent scholar), Juanita Solano Roa (Universidad de los Andes), and Kevin Coleman (University of Toronto)

Descripción del curso:

Este curso interdisciplinario traza la historia del plátano/banana en las Américas desde su introducción a comienzos del siglo XVI hasta el presente, y examina cómo el cultivo y el comercio de una sola fruta transformaron la política, la economía, los paisajes y las culturas de América Latina y el Caribe. Desde los primeros encuentros botánicos coloniales hasta el ascenso de la United Fruit Company, las intervenciones de la Guerra Fría y los debates contemporáneos sobre comercio justo y crisis ecológica, el curso interroga cómo el monocultivo, la explotación laboral, la raza, la migración y el poder imperial han marcado la imaginación visual y la identidad colectiva de la región. Cada sesión articula un texto académico, una fuente primaria — mapas, cartas de empresa, fotografías, anuncios publicitarios — y un objeto cultural como una película, una obra de arte o un texto literario, invitando a los estudiantes a leer estos distintos tipos de evidencia en diálogo entre sí.

Objetivos del curso:

  • Conocer la historia del banano en América Latina, incluyendo sus principales hitos políticos y económicos, sus consecuencias medioambientales y las reflexiones culturales surgidas en torno a la expansión de este fruto.
  • Analizar documentos de fuentes primarias.
  • Desarrollar herramientas analíticas para el estudio de fuentes no escritas, como fotografías, obras de arte y películas.

 

Sesiones de clase:

1. Origins of the banana in South East Asia and how it came to the Americas

  1. Reading: Koeppel, Dan. “Chapter 5: Asia” in Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (New York: Plume, 2008)
  2. Primary source: Charles Saffray, Étude de Bananier, 1869
  3. Artwork: Miguel Cabrera, De español y mestiza, castiza, 1763

 

2. Smallholders, Poquiteros

  1. Reading: Soluri, John. “People, Plants, and Pathogens: The Eco-Social Dynamics of Export Banana Production in Honduras, 1875–1950” The Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 3 (2000): 463–501. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-80-3-463
  2. Primary source: Photograph from UFC photographic collection at Baker Library, Harvard University
  3. Artwork: Ramón Amaya Amador, Prisión verde, Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, 1990

 

3. The United Fruit Company

  1. Reading: Koeppel, Dan. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (New York: Plume, 2008), chapters 9–14, and Gómez, Liliana. Archive Matter: A Camera in the Laboratory of the Modern (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2023)
  2. Primary source: UFCO Map, 1920
  3. Artwork (Film): Mathilde Damoisel, When Banana Ruled, 2017

 

4. The Era of Banana Republics

  1. Reading: Herrscher, Roberto. Crónicas Bananeras (Bogotá: Tusquets, 2021), 17–101
  2. Primary source: The United Fruit Company Letters, Visualizing the Americas
  3. Artworks: Moisés Barrios’s oeuvre and Victoria Cabezas’s performance Banana Thesis

 

5. 1928 Massacre of Banana Workers

  1. Reading: Coleman, Kevin. “The Photos That We Don’t Get to See: Sovereignties, Archives, and the 1928 Massacre of Banana Workers in Colombia” in Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism, edited by Daniel Bender and Jana Lipman, 104–33. New York: NYU Press, 2016
  2. Primary source: Photograph of the Ciénaga workers and 
  3. Artwork: José Alejandro Restrepo, Musa Paradisiaca, 1996 and and Kevin Coleman and Señal Colombia, Stolen Photo, 2024

 

6. Advertising and the Aesthetics of Banana Consumption

  1. Reading: Roberts, Shari. “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat’: Carmen Miranda, a Spectacle of Ethnicity.” Cinema Journal 32, no. 3 (1993): 3–23
  2. Primary source: “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat” in The Gang’s All Here (1943) and the first Chiquita Banana commercial
  3. Artworks: Voluspa Jarpa, Altered Views, 2019 and Alberto Baraya, Frutales Carmen Miranda, 2011

 

7. 1954 Coup d’État in Guatemala

  1. Reading: Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)
  2. Primary source: Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)
  3. Artwork: Diego Rivera, A Glorious Victory (1954)

 

8. Cuban Revolution

  1. Reading: Zanetti, Oscar and García, Alejandro. “The United Fruit Company in Cuba” The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff. New York: Duke University Press, 2019, pp. 268–272
  2. Primary source: Raúl Corrales, Caballería, 1960
  3. Artwork: Celia Irina González, Deshijar, 2019

 

9. Race and Ethnicity in Banana Production

  1. Reading: Chambers, Glenn. “Eradicating the Black Peril: The Deportation of West Indian Workers from Tela and Trujillo, Honduras, 1930–1939” in Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890–1940 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2010), pp. 115–135
  2. Primary source: Letter from P. Chittenden to Victor M. Cutter, United Fruit Company, May 3, 1922
  3. Artwork: Jonathas de Andrade, 40 nego bom é um real, 2013

 

10. Environmental Issues of the Banana Monoculture

  1. Reading: Soluri, John. “Introduction: Linking Places of Production and Consumption” in Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (University of Texas Press, 2005); also available here
  2. Primary source (film): Frederik Gertten, Bananas!, 2009
  3. Artwork: Milko Delgado, Problemas conceptuales sobre el extractivismo bananero en Barú, 2021 and Glorianna Ximendaz, Peel it Good

 

11. Free-Trade vs. Fair Trade Bananas

  1. Reading: Frundt, Henry J. “The Fair Trade Alternative” in Fair Bananas! Farmers, Workers, and Consumers Strive to Change an Industry (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011), 30–48
  2. Primary source: Fairtrade International website
  3. Artwork: Adriana Martínez, Tutti Frutti Market, 2017

 

12. Paramilitarism and Banana Plantations

  1. Reading: Chomsky, Aviva. “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 90–115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094
  2. Reading: Barbosa Vargas, Julián Eduardo. “Configuración diferenciada de las Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá en el Urabá: Norte de Urabá, Eje Bananero, Sur del Urabá Antioqueño y Urabá Chocoano” Análisis político 28, no. 84 (2015): 39–57
  3. Primary source: Proyecto Las Franciscas
  4. Artwork: Forensic Architecture, Disposition and the Memory of the Earth, 2022

 

13. Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Banana Industry

  1. Reading: Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Oakland: University of California Press, 1990)
  2. Or: Lara Putnam, The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
  3. Primary source: Jem Bendell, “Towards Participatory Workplace Appraisal: Report from a Focus Group of Women Banana Workers”, New Academy of Business, 2001
  4. Artwork: Rachelle Mozman Solano, The Dying Cavendish, 2019

 

14. Banana and Consumer Culture

  1. Reading: Klein, Shana. “Seeing Spots: The Fever for Bananas, Land and Power” in The Fruits of Empire (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 105–136
  2. Primary source: Banana Republic 1986 catalog cover: https://www.secretfanbase.com/banana/cover-gallery/
  3. Artworks: Gonzalo Fuenmayor, What is this? A Banana Republic, 2019 and Moisés Barrios, Vitrinas Banana Republic, 2012

 

15. Recipes for Cooking with Bananas

  1. Reading: Ali Berlow, “Why Bananas: Because they have a lot to say”, Curious Kitchen, 2021; and Chris Baraniuk, “The Secrets of Fake Flavors”, BBC, 2014
  2. Primary source: United Fruit Company, A Short History of the Banana and a Few Recipes for Its Use, 1904. Recipes by Janet McKenzie Hill. https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb8059887z
  3. Artworks: Daniela Kohn, La piel de la banana, 2021 and Leonardo González, From the series Cabbages and Kings, 2016–2018