United Brands

Central American nations have long been disparagingly referred to, by some, as banana republics.

The bananas in question were grown by the peasants of Central America and sold by the United Fruit Company, which has made huge profits from this arrangement since 1899 when a banana trader',, and a railroad magnate merged resources to create the corporation.

The company's founders built a vast network of railways and plantations in the region-at great cost to the workers and traditional landowners.

From 1930 to 1950. United Fruit was run by. Samuel Zemurry, known as Sam the Banana Man:

When Zemurry stepped down, United Fruit owned more than three million acres of land in Latin America. Among their employees were Angel Castro and his sons Rail and Fidel.

In 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman proposed nationalizing the company, which responded by providing the CIA with ships in which to transport invaders who overthrew Arbenz and returned the country to military dictatorship. United Fruit provided two ships for the less successful invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs, in 1961.

From 1950 to 1975 the company was run by Eli Black, an idealistic man who believed in improving the lot of his workers. In the early 70s Black was confronted by a Central American banana cartel which he broke by bribing the president of Honduras. Apparently guilt-ridden, Black jumped out of the 44th floor window of his office in the Pan Am building in New York, and to this day United Brands is busy rescuing itself from the financial losses, and the sullied image, left in the wake of Eli Black.

Currently, the largest stockholders are brothers Seymour and Paul Milstein. They have sold much of the company's land to governments in Panama, Honduras and Costa Rica-and all of their Guatemalan operation to Del Monte-to satisfy an antitrust action.

Now the company makes 70 percent of its profits from bananas, but two thirds of sales are from palm oil, lettuce, melons, house plants, A&W root beer, and processed meats. In Central America, they make margarine and salad oil, and plastic film to keep bugs off the banana trees. '

Brand names include Chiquita, Fyffes and Amigos (bananas); meat products by John Morrell, Broadcast, Tom Sawyer, Bob Ostrow, Scott Peterson-Saratoga, Peyton, Hunter, Partridge, Rodeo and E-Z Beef; Full-O-Life house plants; and A&W restaurants and root beer.