Guatemala 2009

This class was really interesting because we learned a lot about America's influence in Latin America, specifically Guatemala. The United Fruit Company/Chiquita Banana essentially used Guatemala as a banana market, and and in order to ensure a need for a banana market in America, they inundated Americans with positive images of bananas to increase sales. A singing, dancing Chiquita banana, modeled after Carmen Miranda, became the symbol for the United Fruit Company. Through this sexy banana symbol, Latin America was feminized, creating images in Americans' minds of a colonial Latin America with an indigenous population of topless women, which was of course not the case. However, the banana became firmly entrenched in American culture with no mention of the labor/economic/social inequality of "Banana land" (the nickname of Guatemala) which was related almost entirely to the United Fruit Company.

Watch the original Chiquita Banana commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE