Multinational corporations, totalitarian regimes and economic nationalism: United Fruit Company in Central America, 1899-1975

The US multinational United Fruit Company has been considered the quintessential representative of American imperialism in Central America. Not only did the company enjoy enormous privileges in that region, but also counted on authoritarian governments in dealing with labour unrest. The literature assumes that United Fruit and the dictators were natural allies due to their opposition to organised unionism. This paper shows that this alliance could only survive as long as the multinational provided the dictators with economic stability for the country. However, when the multinational proved to be incapable of doing that, the dictators allied with the working class to confront the multinational and extract higher rents from it.United Fruit Company, economic nationalism, foreign direct investment, multinationals and democracies, multinationals and dictatorships, Central America, 1970s oil crisis, banana industry, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama,