Critical Compendium » Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World, by Peter Chapman
Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World, by Peter Chapman

“When the Banana Company arrives in Macondo, the jungle town in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” it brings with it first modernity and then doom. “Endowed with means that had been reserved for Divine Providence in former times,” García Márquez writes, the company “changed the pattern of the rains, accelerated the cycle of harvests and moved the river from where it had always been.” It imported “dictatorial foreigners” and “hired assassins with machetes” to run the town; it unleashed a “wave of bullets” on striking workers in the plaza. When the Banana Company leaves, Macondo is “in ruins.” If Macondo is meant to represent Latin America, it is fitting that “the Banana Company” plays so central a role in its development and decline.” Read the review at the New York Times.

Filed under: Nonfiction | Posted 03.05.08 | Comments:


No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

(required)

(required)



Main Menu
» HOME
» ABOUT

Search

An interview with Steve LeVine, author of The Oil and the Glory

"Big Oil is dying . . . The jury is out on whether the average consumer will be affected. The oil companies say with some justification that the state-owned companies don’t produce oil and natural gas as well as they – Big Oil – can. They say that means less and less supply – or at least not as much supply as might be expected – from these countries in the coming years. That’s important, especially since tight global supplies are one reason for $95-a-barrel oil right now." [ Read the rest of the interview ]



Subscribe
Via RSS 2.0
Via email

Bookmark with:



Archives
» April 2008
» March 2008
» February 2008
» January 2008
» December 2007
» November 2007
» October 2007
» September 2007