Honduras is known for the being the original Banana Republic and my Abuelo worked for the Standard Fruit Company. He eventually immigrated to the United states when my dad was a child through a job working with bananas. Bananas link me back to my Honduran culture. Bananas are also the connecting link between Honduras and the US. Over time l've come to realize even more deeply how the
"Banana Link" between Honduras, most of Central America, and the Caribbean has been linked to corruption, crime, and murder.
The United Fruit Company employed Neocolonialism throughout Central America and the Caribbean, lobbying the US intelligence agencies and governments to overthrow democracies and replace them with dictators who began a civil war, killing thousands and thousands of people. The land grabbing and exploitation of these countries in the past led to a civil war, genocide, massacres, and military coups.
NeoColonialism is overripe. It decays, corrupt, spoils.
It is immoral. The actions of these corporations and United States today has left the poor, the most vulnerable, with a country filled with violence and poverty. We are in a continued crisis with refugees at our southern border. We are the linked to them and them to us. The country they seek for a better life, is the country that took their homes. Now the banana as we know it is being threatened by a fungus that is wiping out banana plantations across the globe. This beloved fruit is facing wide spread disease.
We are too now facing wide spread disease. We are all linked. There is no end to this chain. When we destroy, we destroy each other and the land we stand on. When we heal, we heal each other and land we will flourish on.