Brian Behnken

History often occurs differently for different people. Perspective can play a huge role on how someone interprets events. History, as the case goes with beauty, often lies in the eye of the beholder. In The Banana Men, Lester Langley attempts to explain the motivations of the United States in several Central America countries through the eyes of various fruit producing corporations, the dictators who controlled these countries, and the American adventurers who came to Central America for profit and excitement. The book details the episodic history of mainly Honduras and Nicaragua from 1880-1930, excluding almost entirely the affairs of the US in El Salvador, Panama, and, most importantly, Guatemala. Langley alludes to the fact that American involvement often led to violence and corruption, but he mentions these facets of US involvement only in the Preface and Epilogue. The rest of the book revolves around the banana men themselves. Clearly this view is one-sided.

Langley agrees with those who view American expansion and imperialism during this time period as a necessity for continued economic growth and as a source to alleviate internal economic problems. Langley’s model for foreign policy is both simple and explanatory. The author sees the larger European countries and the US as metropoles. He describes a metropole as a country "that controlled production and distribution in the world economy."(p.10) These metropoles sought to use "periphery countries (those that did not control production and distribution in the world economy)" to diffuse their own domestic and social woes.(p.10) Walter LaFeber makes a similar argument in The New Empire. He states that Americans like Brookes Adams theorized about alleviating US recessions through outside trade. According to LaFeber, James G. Blaine created foreign policy that would achieve theories such as Adams’. For both authors the focus of American expansion shifted from the accumulation of land to the accumulation of markets. However, companies like United Fruit or Cuyamel Fruit demonstrate that these two concepts eventually become inseparable. While searching for foreign markets, with the blessing and guidance of the metropole, these companies sought land to grow their profitable produce upon and in the end created small-scale republics of their own. This logic seems to have escaped Langley although he did choose to title chapter two Banana Kingdoms. As these companies grew, so too did their holdings of land and material, and so too did their influence in the periphery country. We can then view American expansion in the light of both market and territorial expansion. Langley makes no value judgement against these evidently paradoxical philosophies, indeed he leaves criticism of the banana men, the US, and the Central American countries almost completely out of the book.

Langley’s portrayal of the banana men in chapter two and three also lacks any kind of critique. The author explains the development of UFCO at the hand of Andrew Preston, Lorenzo Baker, and Minor Keith as "the dream of three men different in every social respect."(p.33) The Vaccaro family, a group of Sicilians recently arrived from Mississippi, formed Vaccaro Brothers Company and helped build Honduras. Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray formed Cuyamel and began business out of Honduras; Central America would hear his name for years to come. Langley offers no animadversion of these men. Their interests lay in starting a business…and what could be wrong with that? The author also acquaints the reader with the American mercenary, filibusterer, and roughneck Lee Christmas in this chapter. Langley makes sure the reader will not forget the exploits of "this fearless gringo" who routed "an army of frightened Hondurans at the battle of Laguna Trestle."(p.49)

In the next three chapters the author places great detail on the leaders of Honduras and Nicaragua, and the banana men’s efforts to participate in armed conflict. The policies of the Josè Santos Zelaya government in Nicaragua frustrated the US as well as its fruit producing subsidiaries. When political intrigue involved Zelaya in battle with Manuel Bonilla of Honduras and Estrada Cabrera of Guatemala, American favor quickly fell away from Zelaya. The American adventurers like Lee Christmas quickly chose sides. Many of these men, criminals, escaped convicts, and debtors, fought on whichever side offered the most monetary incentive. Zelaya found victory for the moment in 1907 when he ousted Bonilla from Honduras, but other revolutions soon followed. Zelaya himself fell in 1909 after American forces helped secure the port of Bluefields and revolutionary forces toppled his regime. With Nicaragua reduced more or less to an American protectorate, the banana men themselves fomented a revolution in Honduras. Manuel Bonilla longed to return to power, and with the financial backing of Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray and the leadership of Lee Christmas he attempted to do so in 1910. After a blundering campaign with the US government involved on both sides, Bonilla returned to Tegucigalpa victorious. Sam Zemurray and the US government, of course, remained the real winners.

Again, after detailing numerous battles and political machinations, Langley has little criticism for anyone involved in these affairs. Somehow the reader leaves with the impression that Zemurray only wanted better business ties, Christmas was a hero, and Manuel Bonilla and others like him acted for the greater good of their countries. The slaughter of innocent peasants, the brutal recruiting tactics of Zelaya or Bonilla, the use of US armed forces, and the role of American adventurers in overwhelming and catastrophic bloodshed receives scant attention. The worst criticism the author has to offer revolves around the fact that the United States’ ideologies of "making the world ‘safe for democracy’ or ‘safeguarding the national interest’…often concealed other motivations."(p.2) What "other motivations" we can only guess at. The world of Central America came under the wing of the United States both economically and politically due to these types of motivations, but this remains trivial to the author. The final chapter deals with the lives of the heroes after the wars ended for them and the author gives us detail as to how Zemurray, Christmas, and others lived out their final days. In the end the author concludes that these wars represented the hard times. The problems that followed in later generations under the leadership of dictators like Jorge Ubico, Tiburcio Carìas Andino, and Anastasio Somoza Garcia were simplex in comparison. This seems an egregious understatement.

Noam Chomsky in American Power and the New Mandarins asserts that "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."(p.325) He argues that scholars "are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions."(p.324) The type of history Langley has written in The Banana Men inherently needs a reading from the bottom up. By focusing from the top down Langley fails to follow Chomsky’s maxim. He never calls into question the motives of the US government or the outcome of these bloody revolts. The exact number of casualties from this time period history will probably never know, and the number of peasants killed goes unnoticed by Langley. The author mentions that people died in the numerous battles he chronicles, but we never learn anything about these people. The reader only hears about the successes of the banana men, the American adventurers, and the various leaders that assumed power...the big whigs. No blame or guilt is assigned to anyone.

For simple factual information this book remains somewhat useful. The reader learns how all of the political intrigue in Honduras and Nicaragua came about and how certain individuals and governments dealt with it. The evolution of the banana corporations becomes apparent, and this information remains useful when one examines the later history of these companies. Knowing the activities of these corporations in the early 1900s helps our understanding of their later motivations in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The evolution of the Central American dictator also becomes useful to later study. Also, Langley’s theory of the metropole/periphery country relationship is enlightening. Nevertheless, the book remains a simple collection of facts. The lack of insight, discernment, and introspection takes away from the book’s overall effect.