Banana companies rendered Honduras nearly indistinguishable from themselves by 1912

Evidence

The banana companies “bought up lands, built railroads, established their own banking systems, and bribed government officials at a dizzying pace,” writes the historian Walter LaFeber. “If Honduras was dependent on the fruit companies before 1912, it was virtually indistinguishable from them after 1912. In 1914 the leading banana firms held nearly a million acres of the most fertile land. Their holdings grew during the 1920s until the Honduran peasants had no hope of access to their nation’s good soil.” The wealth of the country was hauled off to the United States. Honduras was left with low-wage jobs in the banana groves and with proceeds from export duties, which were often evaded and, when they did get paid, were in any case mostly pocketed by a small group of Honduran elites. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels how the US ‘task force’ in Soto Cano renders Honduran sovereignty nominal — private corporate capture prefigures state-base capture.
• SHARE: LaFeber’s line about Honduras becoming ‘virtually indistinguishable’ from the fruit companies is a sharp one-sentence encapsulation worth sending to anyone interested in corporate imperialism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 278