Why Do People Keep Saying Banana Republic?

First Published: Sep 28, 2022

In the last few months, there has been an increase in the use of the term Banana Republic. After the FBI raid on Trump at Mar-a-Lago, conservative pundits started to claim that Biden was running a banana republic. But what is a banana republic and where did the term come from?

The term banana republic is traditionally used to describe a poor and unstable country with one chief export, usually crops. That country’s economy is usually dependent on the exportation of that crop. Banana republics are normally categorized as having a corrupt or totalitarian government. The term is often used to mock Central American countries and political opponents.

To really understand the problems with the term banana republic you need to know the history of why we have the term. The short answer is American capitalism.

In the 1880s the Boston Fruit Company pushed a very successful campaign to sell bananas in the United States and because of this campaign, the demand for bananas in the United States quickly outgrew the current supply. So large American fruit companies raced to set up deals with Central American governments to increase access to their supply.

These companies realize that these deals work best with corrupt and totalitarian governments because to increase the supply of bananas without hurting profit the local populations had to be exploited. This meant things like horrific working conditions and people losing their family homes to make way for new farmlands.

But what were American companies to do if they couldn’t get a deal with the local government either because the government didn’t want to exploit its people or they’d already set up a deal with a competitor. The simple answer is that company would just finance a coup and replace the government.

That’s right American companies decided they don’t like the current leadership of a foreign company so they just replaced them. An example of this is in 1911 the Cuyamel Fruit Company hired American mercenary Lee Christmas to overthrow the government of Honduras.

The government of Honduras had already established a deal with a competing fruit company that was not favorable for Cuyamel . So Cuyamel just replaced that government and that’s not the only time it happened either. In 1954 the United Fruit Company convinced the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala. United Fruit convinced the CIA that Guatemala was a threat because of Communism.

These companies that played with world affairs to get a higher profit margin on bananas are still alive today. If you’ve bought bananas in a grocery store you’ve probably bought fruit from these companies because due to a series of acquisitions and mergers these companies all became Chiquita International Fruits.

So we have the term banana republic because American companies decided to increase their profit margin by playing into world affairs and world politics by overthrowing foreign governments. So the irony should not be lost on you when American politicians use the term to mock each other or mock the current state of affairs in our country. Because the reason that banana republics and the term exist is because of America.