https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A1

This image that I selected is from Costa Rica in the 1890’s and is of a group of workers harvesting bunches of bananas for the United Fruit company. I chose this image because I like how it shows the conditions of the work of these workers for Tropical Agricultural goods. Goods such as bananas would eventually be mechanized but at this point it required more effort from workers for very low wages. They could have easily mechanized this process to avoid the exploitations of people desperate for work. The United Fruit company took advantage of the indigenous people of Costa Rica as they did not have many other options. There was a large increase in the demand for bananas which lead to a massive increase to the economy in Costa Rica but yet they still refused to make these changes. The United Fruit company became a large part of Costa Rican economy due to them taking advantage of the climate in Costa Rica to mass produce these tropical goods. They took advantage of the fact that the indigenous people could not come up with any other methods so typically they were forced to continue to use the traditional methods because they had no other options.(Woods, 269). This would have been one of many areas that had conditions such as these as nations such as Costa Rica grew many other goods such as coffee so the people of Costa Rica where being suffocated by The United Fruit company and forced into working into those plantations that they owned. The Costa Rican government had no other choice but to allow The United Fruit company to create these plantations because they needed the boost to their economy because they had little chance of doing it themselves without their intervention in the economy. It had gotten to the point where about 14% of the fruits and vegetables where being exported from nations in Latin America such as Costa Rica.(Woods,270) This was the beginning of Latin Americas economic boom that would not have been possible without this situation.

Referenced: Wood, & Alexander, A. R. (2019). Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.