This Code and Council episode documentary traces the banana trade from its scrappy beginnings to the present day—an apolitical, deeply reported history of how a single crop transformed companies and countries. Part I follows the rise: Lorenzo Dow Baker’s first cargo, Andrew Preston’s Boston Fruit system, Minor C. Keith’s railways-for-land concessions, United Fruit’s Great White Fleet, and the rivalries with Cuyamel and Standard that forged an oligopoly across the Caribbean basin. We see how labor camps, clinics, scrip, and company towns organized daily life—and how “banana republic” entered the lexicon. Part II tracks the long reconfiguration: the Great Depression and wartime years; the fall of Gros Michel to Panama disease and the turn to Cavendish; the 1934 Costa Rica strike and Honduras 1954; Guatemala’s 1952–54 land reform crisis; hurricanes, scandals, and consolidation into Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte; European “banana wars”; containerization; and today’s supermarket-driven logistics. Across a century, the business moves from vertical empires to modular networks, while Central American societies absorb enduring legacies in land, labor, infrastructure, and politics. This is the story behind the cheapest fruit in the grocery aisle—and the clock that still governs every green banana.

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