Editing United Fruit Company (section)

==Reputation==
The United Fruit Company is reported to have been involved in bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment and working to consolidate monopolies. Latin American journalists sometimes referred to the company as ''el pulpo'' ("the octopus"),<ref>{{Cite journal|date=1990|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43681051|journal=Great Decisions|pages=27–36|jstor=43681051 |issn=0072-727X|title=Nicaragua and el Salvador: War or Peace in Central America? }}</ref> and leftist parties in Latin America encouraged the company's workers to strike. Criticism of the United Fruit Company became a staple of the discourse of the [[communist]] parties in several Latin American countries, where its activities were often interpreted as illustrating [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s theory of capitalist [[imperialism]]. Major writers in Latin America, such as [[Carlos Luis Fallas]] of Costa Rica, [[Ramón Amaya Amador]] of Honduras, [[Miguel Ángel Asturias]] and [[Augusto Monterroso]] of Guatemala, [[Gabriel García Márquez]] of Colombia, [[Carmen Lyra]] of Costa Rica, and [[Pablo Neruda]] of Chile, denounced the company in their literature:

{{Blockquote|The Fruit Company, Inc. reserved for itself the most succulent piece, the central coast of my own land, the delicate waist of America. It rechristened its territories 'Banana Republics', and over the sleeping dead, over the restless heroes who brought about the greatness, the liberty, and the flags, it established the comic opera: it abolished free will, gave out imperial crowns, encouraged envy, attracted the dictatorship of flies ... flies sticky with submissive blood and marmalade, drunken flies that buzz over the tombs of the people, circus flies, wise flies expert at tyranny. |[[Pablo Neruda]], "La United Fruit Co." (1950)}}

The business practices of United Fruit were also frequently criticized by journalists, politicians, and artists in the United States. [[Steven van Zandt|Little Steven]] released a song in 1987 called "Bitter Fruit", with lyrics that referred to a hard life for a company "far away", and whose accompanying video depicted orange groves worked by peasants overseen by wealthy managers. The lyrics and scenery are generic, but United Fruit (or its successor Chiquita) was reputedly the target.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qny7yFbZZS0 |title=Little Stephen&nbsp;– Bitter Fruit |publisher=YouTube |format=video |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019113640/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qny7yFbZZS0 |archive-date=October 19, 2013}}</ref>

[[United States Secretary of State|US Secretary of State]] [[John Foster Dulles]] and his law firm of [[Sullivan & Cromwell]] negotiated land giveaways to the United Fruit Company in Guatemala and Honduras. John Foster Dulles's brother, [[Allen Dulles]], who was head of the CIA under Eisenhower, also did legal work for United Fruit. The Dulles brothers and Sullivan & Cromwell were on the United Fruit payroll for thirty-eight years.<ref name=Cohen186>{{cite book |last=Cohen |first=Rich |year=2012 |title=The Fish that Ate the Whale |url=https://archive.org/details/fishthatatewhale00cohe |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |page=[https://archive.org/details/fishthatatewhale00cohe/page/186 186]|isbn=9780374299279 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Ayala |first=Cesar J |year=1999 |title=American Sugar Kingdom |url=https://archive.org/details/americansugarkin00ayal |url-access=registration |location=Chapel Hill, NC |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |isbn=9780807847886 }}</ref> Recent research has uncovered the names of multiple other government officials who received benefits from United Fruit:

{{blockquote|John Foster Dulles, who represented United Fruit while he was a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell&nbsp;– he negotiated that crucial United Fruit deal with Guatemalan officials in the 1930s&nbsp;– was Secretary of State under Eisenhower; his brother Allen, who did legal work for the company and sat on its board of directors, was head of the CIA under Eisenhower; [[Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.|Henry Cabot Lodge]], who was America's ambassador to the UN, was a large owner of United Fruit stock; Ed Whitman, the United Fruit PR man, was married to Ann Whitman, Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary. You could not see these connections until you could&nbsp;– and then you could not stop seeing them.<ref name=Cohen186/><ref>{{cite book|author1-link=Benjamin Keen |last1=Keen |first1=Benjamin |last2=Haynes |first2=Keith |title=A History of Latin America |date=2013 |publisher=Wadsworth |location=Boston |page=444 |edition=9th}}</ref>}}