You may wonder, where is this building?
NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA
What today is a Fidelity Homestead Bank was once the HQ of an exploitative company that shaped the history of Central and South America: the United Fruit Company. Almost 100 years ago, in 1920, the Company set up their base in our hometown. Notable businessman Sam "Banana Man" Zemurray directed its operation.
Sam Zemurray was a poor, uneducated Russian immigrant. He eventually got a job in Mobile, Alabama selling overripe bananas people threw away and was dubbed "Banana Man." As he became increasingly successful, he started a fruitful (haha, pun!) business in New Orleans: the Cuyamel Fruit Co. He eventually sold this company to the United Fruit Co. The United Fruit Co. struggled during the Depression, so Banana Man took effective control of that company (as the largest stockholder). He may sound like a shrewd businessmen who exploited Central and South America, but his affiliation with the Company was not his only societal involvement. He was a philanthropist who donated to the Guidance Center for the Institute of Mental Hygiene, to Tulane University, and to Touro.
As you can see, the United Fruit Company and Sam "Banana Man" Zemurray have intimate connections to New Orleans.
The United Fruit Company may no longer exist, but if you find yourself on St. Charles Avenue, take a look at the fruit-themed art on the outside of this building, and send yourself back a century!
FUN FACT: The United Fruit Company earned the nickname "el pulpo," or the "the octopus," because "its tentacles were everywhere."
Sources:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/united-fruit-company-building
https://www.nola.com/300/2018/06/sam_zemurray_banana_man_new_orleans_06162018.html
2 comments:
Some more facts about New Orleans and the United Fruit Company:
New Orleans was not only a port for importing large quantities of bananas from Central and South America, but was also for mercenary ships that carried out secret and very bloody operations.
Zemurray and the United Fruit Company was heavily in involved in Honduras. By 1910, the company owned land in the port city of Omoa and began building railroads, small shops, and little towns. Zemurray got into a conflict with the US government. Basically, "banana man" wanted to reach his own tax agreement with the Honduran government separate from the US Morgan bank and the US secretary of state. This was against the law. US secret service agents were sent to New Orleans to monitor Zemurray's activity with the company. Zemurray hired two mercenaries, Guy "Machine Gun"Molony and Lee Christmas, plus his friend Manuel Bonilla, a former President of Honduras. They tricked the agents into thinking that they were going to a late night party at a New Orleans brothel. The mercenaries managed to slip out of the party undetected and boarded a small boat that took them to a larger ocean yacht. The ship sailed from New Orleans to the Honduran coast bringing rifles, ammunition, and machine guns. There, they quickly suppressed Honduran resistance and overthrew the government in The newly formed Honduran congress guaranteed Zemurray a large tract of land and waived his obligations to pay taxes for the next 25 years. This allowed banana man to expand the fruit company into Honduras for many years.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, while reading the part with the Banana Company, I noticed that the book mentioned the city of New Orleans but nowhere else in America. It was very intriguing to me because it showed the historical importance and intervention of our hometown in Latin America. It reminded me of a time before airplanes when everyone relied on ships that New Orleans was one of the most prominent cities in the world. However, it seems like New Orleans is now overshadowed by other nearby cities such as Houston which illudes many from the importance of New Orleans in constructing what America is today.
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