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Forgotten Workers: British West Indians and the Early Days of the Banana Industry in Costa Rica and Honduras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Elisavinda Echeverri-Gent
Elisavinda Echeverri-Gent
Affiliation:
Elisavinda Echeverri-Gent is an independent international development consultant, currently working with the Inter-American Foundation in Washington, D.C.
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Extract

The Central America of books, and indeed of our imaginations, does not have very many black actors. That is not because blacks have not been present in the unfolding of Central American history. It is because their participation has been selectively ignored. During the last decade there have been a few welcome exceptions to this trend; however, a lacuna still remains. This article focuses on the role played by the first generation of black British West Indian immigrants in the development of the Costa Rican and Honduran labour movements - an area of history in which blacks have been particularly ignored.

To this day the populations of black British West Indian descent living on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica and Honduras have remained outside the mainstream of political and cultural life in these two countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that they have also been neglected historically.

Nowhere is this tendency more glaring than in the literature on labour history – especially that concerned with the important banana exporting sector. With few exceptions, the role of the British West Indian workers in the early period of the banana industry is dismissed. Those that acknowledge their role minimise the workers' importance by arguing that they failed to act collectively in challenging their employers. In brief, this view argues that black West Indian workers are not important to a study of labour politics in Honduras and Costa Rica.

Historical evidence renders this suggestion invalid. The British West Indian workers who came to Honduras and Costa Rica during the last century in search of employment were neither indifferent to, nor totally accepting of, their situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 1992 , pp. 275 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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2 This material is part of a broader comparative study of the paradox presented by the labour movements in Honduras and Costa Rica. They share certain early structural characteristics, e.g. the importance of banana workers to working class formation and the spearheading of their respective labour movements. However, each developed quite differently. The Honduran labour movement, even after long periods of military rule, enjoys a significant political role. In Costa Rica's democracy the labour movement remains politically insignificant and repressed. During the course of research it became clear that there was more to the West Indian banana workers than the passivity which most sources suggested.

3 Excellent exceptions have been cited above. Also Vladimir de la Cruz in his work on the Costa Rican labour movement and Mario Posas in his books on the Honduran labour movement have both touched upon the role played by the British West Indian workers. They have not done so, however, in any systematic or in-depth manner. Seligson, Mitchell also briefly dealt with the West Indian workers in his book Peasants in Costa Rica and the Development of Agrarian Capitalism (Madison, Wisconsin, 1980).Google Scholar

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32 Garden to FO London, 17 May 1906, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 2634.

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34 Cox to Mallet, 1910, BPRO, FO Costa Rica/369, no. 279:19870; Report from Consulate in Trujillo, 20 Dec. 1907, BPRO, FO Honduras/369, no. 126.

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36 Hepburn to Walter, 13 July 1915, BPRO, FO Costa Rica/371, no. 2297:134269.

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39 Garden to Honduran Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1912, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 1306:5090. The report for 1912 related the ‘La Masica” incident.

40 Petition from British West Indians to Young, 12 April 1916, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 2643.

41 Young to FO London, 24 June 1916, BPRO, FO, Honduras/371, no. 2643.

42 J. Glaney, banana worker, to FO London, 1910, BPRO, FO Costa Rica/371, no. 944:41616.

43 Hepburn to Young, 11 Dec. 1916, in Armstrong despatch to FO London, 26 Dec. 1916, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 2902. ‘Zone' was the popular term for the areas in towns which were controlled by the banana company. Only high company employees were allowed to live there.

44 West Indian worker's letter enclosed in Hepburn to Armstrong, 14 Oct. 1919, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 3676.

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50 Ibid. British officials were convinced this was the reason for the union's exponential growth in membership. Membership reached 5,000 workers in a relatively short time. One official stated that ‘…a notable change in the demeanour of the labourers followed. They became insubordinate…'.

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58 Letter Chitterden to British Consul MacAdams, 28 Dec. 1918 and Letter Chitterden to Governor of Limón Province, BPRO, FO Costa Rica/371, no. 3856 and 7856, p. 22825. Philippe Bourgois citing other sources puts the date at 2 Dec. 1918.

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61 Ibid.

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67 The Foreign Office had received 163 complaints from West Indian banana workers during that period.

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69 Ibid.

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79 Towards the end of the nineteenth century the mining of precious metals had been seen as a vehicle for integration into the world economy. The mines were controlled by US, British and, to a lesser extent, French capital. Owing to financial problems, the low price of silver, low output and political instability the expected boom never took place and the mines were in decline by the turn of the century. Posas, Mario, La construccióndel sector público y del estado national en Honduras (San José, 1983), p. 30.Google Scholar

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85 Ibid., Garden Political Report, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 1306:23862.

86 Letter from Young to Grey, 4 May 1914. BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 1919:22849. The UFCO was the one most concerned with the issue of West Indian labour. The other companies mostly hired those who drifted away from UFCO farms.

87 Letter Young Guatemala, 3 Aug. 1915, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 2296:113189.

88 Report Guatemala Legation, 1917, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 2903:50574. Honduras was required to pay compensation. All diplomatic expenses were deducted from this payment. The amount granted to the dead man's family was minuscule.

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105 Ibid. The only reference to this incident which the author found in Honduran documents was in García, GracielaPáginas de Ayer y Hoy, Cuaderno no. 12, México D.F., 1981.Google Scholar These are accounts of her experience as a labour organiser in Honduras. In her memoirs she recounts a labour conference that took place not far from Trujillo in the summer of 1924. The events in Trujillo were referred to strictly as an instance of workers' collective action ignoring its racial component.

106 G. Smith to A. H. Tatum, 29 July 1924, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 9518.

107 Ibid.

108 G. Watson to FO London, 20 April 1929, BPRO, FO Honduras/371, no. 13471. This despatch enclosed reports from the British Consul in Trujillo and La Ceiba.

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