Banana Land

Sunday, Feb 26th at 3pm at the IU Fine Arts Theater

Bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

A longstanding system of exploitation originates from the political manipulations of agribusiness in the former Banana Republics. From the massacre of thousands of protesting banana workers by the Colombian Military at the behest of United Fruit Company, to the coup that overthrew Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz, and to recent payments to paramilitary death squads by Chiquita; political meddling by the fruit companies has always borne fatal consequences.

The history will be examined and the atrocities of the past are paralleled with the abuses of the present as we demonstrate a pattern of social and environmental exploitation perpetrated by government leaders and corporate executives and their enforcers. These influential individuals have routinely conspired to realize their own narrow interests at the expense of their constituents, consumers and workers alike.

Banana Land is presented in part by Global Gifts: a Fair Trade Store making a Difference one Purchase at a Time