Honduran Banana Companies as Reflected in the Published Works of Wendy Griffin

Honduran Banana Companies as Reflected in the Published Works of Wendy Griffin

By Wendy Griffin February 2015

1. Griffin, Wendy, Juana Carolina Hernández Torres y Hernán Martínez Escobar (2009) Los Pech de Honduras: Una etnia que aun Vive  Tegucigalpa:  Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia.

This book includes the stories of the Pech of Olancho walking to Trujillo to sell pigs in Trujillo for the Truxillo Railroad workers, the Pech as workers for the Truxillo Railroad, the effects of the Truxillo Railroad as it entered the Pech áreas of Rio Sico and Paulaya including displacing Pech villages without payment, cutting mahoghany and even abandoning it, and the rainforest not growing back after the Truxillo Railroad left. It also mentions the logging by Samuel Zemurray’s other Company the Nicaragua Louisana Lumber Company in the Honduran Mosquitia, and the fact that the Truxillo Railroad’s concession included the rights to cut Wood,  and also rights to hydrocarbons like coal, gas, naptha, petroleum that might be under their lands or within 50 miles of their right away for free. This is mentioned in the context of other hydrocarbon concessions given in the 1920’s and 1930’s  in the área.

The book includes the Honduran rubber industry and how rubber was extracted and processed in order to be sold. It mentions that some of the buyers included people associated with the United Fruit Company such as Mr. Darling, the builder of United Fruit’s Great White Fleet who had a rubber concession on the Caratasca Lagoon. Each ship required 22 tons of rubber. During the Second World War the United States was concerned that the Japanese controlled most of the sources for domesticated rubber which were in Southeast Asia, and United Fruit’s President Samuel Zemurray personally assumed responsibility to ensure that from Central American sources the US would have enough rubber to build the ships and make tires and hoses for truck and airplanes for the war effort. The Honduran rubber industry mostly died after the Second World War. Also included is the Honduran chicle industry, which provided chicle to Wrigley’s to make chewing gum which had a Factory at Waspan on the Rio Coco on what is now the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. Wrigley’s provided chewing gum to the US troops during the Second World War. Both natural rubber and chicle have been largely replaced by products derived from petroleum.

The book also mentions the founding of the Pech village of Silin outside of Trujillo as a Ladino cattle rancher from Olancho brought Pech workers to work on his ranch in the 1930’s when the Truxillo Railroad was still active and had two fincas in the Silin área of Trujillo. The  Truxillo Railroad had a person who slaughtered beef in the Trujillo neighborhood of Jerico and then it was sold to the Truxillo Railroad workers, so cattle ranching expanded around Trujillo as a result of the Truxillo Railroad and the German owned Mas Nada which raised cattle for the shoe Factory that opened in Trujillo to make shoes from the slaughtered cattle to sell to the workers of the Truxillo Railroad. Mas Nada, located where the Garifuna neighborhood of San Martin is now, and the Shoe Factory both left in the 1930’s as the Truxillo Railroad began to shut down.

One third of the Pech population was lost in the 1918-1920 Spanish flu epidemic during the time of the Truxillo Railroad, including the parents of the woman considered the founder of Silin. It is called Spanish flu as it followed the trade routes of ships, so the frequent ship transportation to the North Coast as a result of the Truxillo Railroad was a contributing factor to the high losses of population reported among the Pech and the Tawahka Rainforest Indians for the 1918-1920 period.   This book is in US universities and is note don WorldCat.  Some copies are still for sale through the major distributors of Central American books in the US such as www.libreroonline.com and Literatura de Vientos Tropicales.

2. Griffin, Wendy & Comite de Emergencia Garifuna de Honduras (CEGAH), “Los Garifunas de Honduras:  Cultura, Lucha y Derechos bajo el Convenio 169 de la OIT”  (The Garifunas of Honduras: Culture, Struggle, and Rights under ILO Convention 169” in Spanish ) Central Impresora San Pedro Sula, 2005.

This book includes some of the land problems caused by the Truxillo Railroad, the Tela Railroad, and Standard Fruit/Vacarros Brothers in Garifuna communities. It includes the work of the Garifunas with the banana companies, and as the Truxillo Railroad closed, how the Garifuna men switched to working as merchant marines for the banana Company ships and how they served on the Great White Fleet as these ships provided logistics support for the US war effort in World War II. Also includes the affects of other businesses of the Honduran Banana companies like logging and making vegetable shortening from coconuts, cohune palm (corozo), and African Palm oil.  The Honduran government had  land to give to Ladino peasants in the Lower Aguan  (see Wikipedia article Bajo Aguan Conflict and Food First’s book Power Grab for overview of modern conflicts there) as part of the Agrarian Reform in the 1970’s as it was Truxillo Railroad land that was set aside for Colonization as the Truxillo Railroad began to withdraw. The book documents the relationship of bringing Ladinos to the North Coast first for the Truxillo Railroad and later for the Agrarian Reform and then displacing them as a result of the Counter Agrarian Reform in the 1990’s which Standard Fruit of Dole had a role in is related to current Garifuna land troubles. How mahoghany was actually cut with the bull gangs and principally Garifuna workers before the railroad was put in is also documented.

The book also includes a Garifuna eyewitness versión of the expulsión of the Black English speakers who had been employees of the Truxillo Railroad in the 1930’s and for which the Honduran government required in the 1934 law prohibitting the entrance of Blacks to Honduras even as tourists that the United Fruit Company to send three ships and forceably repatriate them, which they did.

Another version of this mass deportation of Honduran Black English speakers who were employees of the Truxillo Railroad is in Glenn Chamber’s book on Race, Nation and Anglo-Antillans in Honduras.  That book does not include that it was in the Truxillo Railroad’s original 1914 concession that the Truxillo Railroad was prohibitted from bringing in Black, Chinese, East Indian, Syrian, and Malayan workers. While they complied with the other races, by 1914 there were already complaints that United Fruit was bringing in Black workers and that they should repatriate them.

Reports of Honduran revolutions during the Truxillo Railroad period reaching Trujillo itself and the actual entrance to the American zone of Puerto Castilla is also included in Wendy Griffin’s book, with descriptions of different types of Garifuna houses used to take refuge in because they were bullet proof. Anti-black riots in Trujillo reported in other sources like Elizeth Payne’s article on Trujillo merchants and the Black English speaker book “Black Chest” were not mentioned by the Garifunas, but it may be that the two month strike,the race riots,and then the entrance of Gregorio Ferrera’s troops into Trujillo and Puerto Castilla coming from Western Honduras in the 1930’s by way of Tocoa and the Aguan Valley plantations all blended into the memories of “revolution”.  The idea that there were no strikes in US owned Honduran banana companies prior to 1954 just because unions were illegal, with at least 15 strikes noted in the documents sent back by British and American diplomats on the North Coast, does not hold water.

There are photos of an old Standard Fruit train engine, currently in a park in La Ceiba, and also parts of a railroad car of the Truxillo Railroad which were left abandoned on the beach in Trujillo in the neighborhood of Barrio Rio Negro. The latter and the old Truxillo Railroad engine that still stuck out of the wáter in the Trujillo Bay in the 1990’s are no longer there. There is also a photo of a banana tree growing in a Garifuna garden. There are also photos of Garifuna women farmers holding some of the products that they raise with the caption that Garifuna women sold food crops and breads to the workers of the Truxillo Railroad.

Another source of information about Garifunas as workers for the US banana companies and as merchant marines on the Banana companies’ ships is in Wendy Griffin’s  article “Garifuna Immigrants Invisible” available for free as a pdf file in the about and Garifunas section on the website of the Garifuna in Peril movie www.garifunainperil.com

3. Wendy Griffin’s articles published in Honduras This Week related to the Honduran Banana Companies

Wendy Griffin did a number of articles related to the land problems caused by the leaving of the Truxillo Railroad for Honduras This Week. She also did one article specifically about the Truxillo Railroad and the photo collection of Antime Landry from 1928-1930 that will be included with the book versión of the Oral history Project in commemoration of the 100th Anneversary of the Truxillo Railroad. She also did a two series article on Black Women’s work during the Banana Boom and a two series article on the long history of Black English speaking churches on the North Coast of Honduras and in the Bay Islands. Those on the North Coast were all started by the Banana Companies and most had bilingual schools associated with them, which in most cases precede the opening of Honduran government Spanish language schools in those towns. 

Although others have argued that these schools were opened for the children of the White workers of the Banana Companies, in most cases until at least the 1950’s, the White children were taught separately in the American zones like Mazapan in La Ceiba or where Villas Telamar is now in Tela, and the bilingual schools were attended primarily by the children of the Banana Companies’ Black workers, including both Black English speakers and some Garifunas. Many children of White workers also studied in the US in either boarding schools or with family members. The articles on the Black English speaking churches also note that in Banana towns like La Ceiba, the Episcopal Church did services in the American compounds like Mazapan separately for White workers and their families  until 1954, and then said, we only have one church where we do services. Come to the church services together with the Black workers or don’t attend church. In the US Martin Luther King described 11 am on Sunday morning the most segregated hour in America, because mostly Blacks and Whites did not go to the same Protestant churches in the US. This issue also affected Honduran churches, and when the Honduran Episcopal churches passed to being a Missionary church of Episcopal churches in Florida in1954, the pressure in the US to force churches to be more open also affected the Honduran Episcopal churches in Banana Company towns. The Episcopal Church and its bilingual school in Puerto Castilla closed after the Truxillo Railroad left.

4. Griffin,Wendy (2004) The History and Culture of the Bay Islanders and North Coast English speakers (These are Black or Afro-antillian English speakers) This is the whole book available for free on the Internet . Developed at request of IHAH librarian due to student requests.

.s114101627.onlinehome.us/files/Isleno.pdf

Everything about North Coast English speakers in this book is related to life and culture in Honduran banana towns. Much of the information about the Bay Islanders was also provided by people whose parents had worked for the Banana Companies on the North Coast, especially Prof. Arnold Auld whose father had been a Jamaican school teacher in the bilingual school at Puerto Castilla for the workers of the Truxillo Railroad Company employees. He married a Black English speaker from the Bay Islands and the family relocated to Roatan as feelings and laws grew against Black English  speakers in the Trujillo área. The Bay Islands is where the Honduran banana trade started, and at the beginning bananas were just a part of a general fruit trade from the Bay Islands in which coconuts actually dominated.  During the Banana boom period, the Bay Islands provided agricultural products for sale to Banana Company workers and to Standard Fruit’s La Blanquita Company with ships between La Ceiba and the Bay Islands being frequent.   Bay Islanders like the Pech and Miskito Indians often relocated for a time to work with the Banana companies on the North Coast. Black English speaking women provided both profesional labor like school teachers and nurses and domestic help like cooks and nannies in Banana Company towns.

The stories of Black English speakers going to Belize in skiffs and dories seemed to buy seem to indicate that the Black English speakers, like the Garifunas, Miskitos, and the mulattos of the Honduran North Coast were all involved with the Honduran government called contraband or smuggling which continued unabated at least through the massacre of most of the Garifuna men of San Juan near Tela in 1937 by the Ladino army detachment based in El Progreso, Yoro, for helping to smuggle arms brought from Guatemala to support General Umaña in his revolt against the Carias government. The Garifunas of San Juan were also accused of bringing General Umaña himself ashore almost in the direct shadow of the Tela Railroad’s cattle ranch at Puerto Arturo and their headquarters in Tela 4 km away.  Virgilio Castillo’s book about the Massacre at San Juan is in US libraries.   Examples of the arms that were left in the caves at Puerto Arturo are in the Rufino Galan Museum in Trujillo.

5. Griffin, Wendy (2012) "Garífuna Immigrants Invisible" Available as a pdf for free on the Garífuna in Peril website. www.garifunainperil.com

This article tells the role of Garífunas in the US banana companies in Honduras and as sailors on ships of the US banana companies and how this led to many Garífuna families being able to legal immigrate to the US.  This article also tells the leading role of the Garífunas in international, regional, and local struggles for Blacks and Indians.  The article documents that the experience of many Garífunas in unions within Fruit Companies, including the Pomona Citrus packing plant in Belize, and later in unions for Honduran government workers like teacher's unions and medical worker unions, led to the Garífunas being part of political parties and government structures that changed their countries. In Belize these changes extending  voting rights to reach universal suffrage and receiving Independence from Great Britain.

T. V. Ramos who is famous for his inspiration of the Garífunas in Belize was actually born in Honduras where his father worked for a banana company in NW Honduras at the time of Marcus Garvey's UNIA organization's misión to Honduras between Puerto Cortes and La Ceiba which tried to reach Garífunas as well as Black English speakers.  According to Honduran historian Jorge Amaya Banegas, T.V. Ramos mentions being motivated by Marcus Garvey's dreams which his father had heard and also many Garífuna sailors heard about. See for example Sabas Whittaker's book Africans in the Americas.

When Honduras made laws that foreign Blacks could not immigrate or even come to Honduras as tourists between 1934 and 1949, this affected not only Black English speakers, but also Garífunas living in other Central American countries.  The assumption that all the people who held British Passports in Honduran statistics were West Indian English speakers does not take into account the movements of Belizean Garífunas during the Banana Boom period. Not only did Belizean Garífunas go to Honduras, but Honduran Garífunas including Yaya's natural father from Roatan and Herman Alvarez's uncle in San Juan, went to Belize and stayed.