In the early twentieth century, the Boston-based United Fruit
Company controlled the production, distribution, and marketing of
bananas, the most widely consumed fresh fruit in North America. So
great was the company’s power that it challenged the sovereignty
of the Latin American and Caribbean countries in which it operated,
giving rise to the notion of company-dominated “banana
republics.” In A Camera in the Garden of Eden, Kevin Coleman
argues that the “banana republic” was an imperial constellation
of images and practices that was checked and contested by ordinary
Central Americans. Drawing on a trove of images from four enormous
visual archives and a wealth of internal company memos, literary
works, immigration records, and declassified US government
telegrams, Coleman explores how banana plantation workers, women,
and peasants used photography to forge new ways of being while also
visually asserting their rights as citizens. He tells a dramatic
story of the founding of the Honduran town of El Progreso, where
the United Fruit Company had one of its main divisional offices,
the rise of the company now known as Chiquita, and a sixty-nine day
strike in which banana workers declared their independence from
neocolonial domination. In telling this story, Coleman develops a
new set of conceptual tools and methods for using images to open up
fresh understandings of the past, offering a model that is
applicable far beyond this pathfinding study.
General
Imprint: |
University Of Texas Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
February 2016 |
Firstpublished: |
2016 |
Authors: |
Kevin Coleman
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 36mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
328 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4773-0855-4 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
1-4773-0855-5 |
Barcode: |
9781477308554 |
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