100 years ago, a new cruise liner called The Great White Fleet reached the shores of Honduras. It belonged to the US corporation, the United Fruit company, now called Chiquita, and was filled with US American tourists, eager for adventure, and eager to issue an endorsement for US American companies.
When the cruise liner docked in a country, as it did, not just in Honduras, but in Panama, Cuba, Guatemala, and Costa Rica — the cruisers would tour one of the United Fruit Company’s banana plantations, theatrically set up to present the plantation as a wonderful place to work.
In this room, we know the reality of the United Fruit Company. In order to control every aspect of the banana trade, from tree to market, it billed itself a credible partner for development and modernization. It won land concessions, acquired numerous companies and eventually controlled almost all railways, hospitals, ports, and telegraph lines — acting, in short, like a primordial “special economic zone” or ZEDE.
We know who these lands belonged to. To poor, Black, indigenous communities — the poor mestizos, to the Garífuna — the very same people who were then forced to be exploited as workers for the company stealing their wealth and turning their countries into “banana republics”.
We also know what happened if they tried to resist. The United Fruit Company would reveal itself to be the United States Government.
In 1952, when the newly elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz created an agrarian reform that took land from the company and gave it back to the poor farmers that needed it, the New York Times described Guatemala as “operating under increasingly severe Communist-inspired pressure to rid the country of United States companies.”
That same year, when the banana workers of the United Fruit Company in Honduras mobilised 25,000 workers for a historic strike, then U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles suggested that it was in fact, the same “communists from Guatemala that had infiltrated Honduras and were ultimately behind the strike.”
These carefully crafted words were meant to reach the halls of Washington DC. And they did. Enter Eisenhower — and the CIA — and a clandestine operation to overthrow Arbenz and return control of Guatemala to the company.
So, yes, the story, the harrowing story of Honduras, laid out by Gerardo [referring to Honduras' Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Torres Zelaya] is indeed "scandalous." The previous government, established by a US military backed coup, introduced a highly contested law to lease Honduran territory to foreign corporations to found a libertarian paradise — free from the reach of the state, and for the freedom of the market. And when the new, democratically elected Honduran Congress finally voted — unanimously — to repeal the ZEDEs law that allowed this scandalous loot, Honduras found itself facing ten cases for billions of dollars in the international arbitration courts.
Yet — it is the same story. It is the story of the United Fruit Company that came to Honduras a hundred years ago. It is the story of the East India company that came to my country, India, four hundred years ago. And it is the story of the reaction of the empire to resistance.
So, to me, the real scandal is, in fact, this — the near unbroken chain of audacious extractivism — or to give it its real name, corporate colonialism.
If the traditional colonisers spilt blood for bananas, the new-age Silicon valley colonisers, it seems, do it for bitcoin.
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Where Jacobo Arbenz had to fight the CIA, Xiomara Castro and previously, Mel Zelaya, found that they have to fight not only foreign powers, but the World Bank and its secret corporate tribunals as well.
So, if indeed there is something different about the battle today, it is that back when the United Fruit company came to Central American shores, there was yet to be a “rules-based international order.”
Today, however, we know that big investors have the blessing of the international institutions that are ostensibly meant to protect the most vulnerable people — the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation. How could we possibly treat, as par for the course, mechanisms like Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that Honduras is being threatened with? We know all they mean is that transnational companies can sue governments for lost profits — bankrupting countries in the Global South for taking back control while there isn’t even a possibility for the inverse!
In fact, a binding treaty to hold transnational companies accountable to human rights obligations has been gathering dust at the United Nations, opposed by the governments in whose countries big polluters, big agribusinesses and big pharmaceuticals are headquartered.
Anyone that continues to contest the existence of corporate colonialism, or attempts to endorse the supposed fairness of the international order, should be ashamed of these two statistics: As of today, US companies top of the list of claimants of ISDS cases, accounting for roughly one-fifth of all ISDS claims worldwide. Simultaneously, as of today, no case has ever, in the history of ISDS battles, been decided against a US investor. The United States has always won.
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That is why we’re here today.
Honduras has always been at the centre of global history. On one side, a dark history — of being exploited by the United States to push wars of destabilisation against their own brothers and sisters in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Many of you would have seen the US air base when you landed in Comayagua, the military foothold of the United States in Central America, and witness to the wars that sacrificed tens of thousands of lives in the service of imperial domination.
On the other, a history of resistance — from the spirit of collective resistance of Francisco Morazán, through the striking bananeros of Chiquita, to the Partido Libre’s current historic project of democratic refoundation. And now, by committing to fight the ZEDEs, and dismantle the ISDS system that protects it, Honduras is setting up a model for governments all over the Global South that are challenging the theft of their wealth.
This fight is not about Honduras alone. In my work building the Progressive International over these last three years, from Havana to Harare, Mexico City to Delhi, comrades have echoed a common sentiment, “we are glad to know we are not alone.”
So, I thank the Honduran government for taking up and championing the Honduran people’s cry of justice and dignity, setting an example to the world.
One hundred years ago, the Great White Fleet reached the shores of Honduras to act as ambassadors for empire, exporting corporate extraction to the world. We did not want them here.
Five hundred years before them, this coast rejected another such ambassador — Christopher Columbus, who struggled to dock his ship on the deep waters of these shores, and called the land "Honduras," or "depths," naming it with the challenge it issued.
This weekend, this international delegation comes to Honduras to break that history of the theft of sovereignty — and I hope, make new history by carrying the message of Honduras en resistencia.
Thank you. It is an honour to be here with you all.
Edited for publication online.
