United Fruit Company

United Fruit Company
Industry	Agriculture
Founded	March 30, 1899
Predecessors	Boston Fruit Company Tropical Trading & Transport
Defunct	June 30, 1970 (as United Fruit Company) August, 1984 (as United Brands)
Successors	Chiquita Brands International

The United Fruit Company, later the United Brands Company, was a Statesian corporation responsible for neocolonialism in Central America. It had close connections to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, CIA directors Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and various members of Congress and the State Department.

Operations by country

Guatemala

The United Fruit Company had a monopoly over bananas in Guatemala and controlled the country's telephones, telegraphs, railroads, and its only Atlantic port. In the early 1950s, President Jacobo Árbenz expropriated much of its land. He offered the company compensation, but the value was based on what it paid in taxes and was about 1/30th of what it was really worth. In March 1953, the company gave right-wing military officers $64,000 to fund a CIA-backed uprising against Árbenz. After the 1954 coup against Árbenz, the company regained all the land it lost in the land reform and banned banana workers' unions.