With the end of slavery, the economic panics of the late nineteenth century, and the birth of the Industrial Revolution, many Americans were looking for new markets, opportunities and wealth, causing them to head South. Americans turned to Central America where countries were attracting and recruiting foreign investors by giving them land in an attempt to build capital and develop. The United States justified the move to Central America through the idea of Pan Americanism. Pan Americanism was a movement that sought to create, encourage and organize relationships between the Americas through diplomatic, political, economic and social means. The Americans who headed to Central America on the terms of Pan Americanism became known as the banana …show more content…
The banana men included a small group of men from Boston, Lorenzo Baker, Andrew Preston and Minor Cooper Keith who were the founders of the United Fruit Company. Other banana men that had strong southern roots including Jacob Weinberger, Sam Zemurray, and the Vaccaro brothers, who worked with Salvator D’Antoni. After the end of the civil war, the South in the United States was in a period of rebuilding and re-industrializing. The men who once worked on plantations and had slaves, now had to find a new way to do business. Many of the southern entrepreneur banana men were attracted to Central America where they could use the hierarchical ideals to, “squeeze extra profits from alien workers who were poor, were considered racially inferior and lacked the intellectual ability and determination to rely on family or other kinship groups, the community or the law for legitimate protest” (Langley and Schoonover 24). The white southern men can no longer do slavery like business in the South anymore, but they can do it in Central America, their “new South”. This also shows how the banana men came into Central America asserting their power using class and race to gain labor. The banana men also exercise their dominance by altering Central America politically, economically and …show more content…
The banana men arrived in Central America and quickly overtook the existing banana companies. People recalled the days in the coast town before Americans arrived, “the native farmers [received] weekly large sums of money for the sale of his produce... [and] it was common sight to see in the streets... farmers carrying their hats brimful of greenbacks... They were the only banana producers on the coast” (Langley and Schoonover 37-38). The banana men came in with bigger ships and better workers taking over existing companies and leaving local farmers without a way to make the profit they once had. The banana men also wanted to do their work with leaders who made them pay little or no taxes, ignored land violations, and who would disregard overworking of local populations. Leaders in Central America were also looking for Americans, “ambitious Honduran politicos were looking eagerly to these yanqui impresarios to help fight their wars and fatten their purses” (Langley and Schoonover 44). The banana men were often behind the scenes in overthrowing certain leaders to put new leaders in power for their own interest. This instability in the government left Central American countries in constant states of war. During this time nationalism was in a decline. Leaders would call to the citizens to come fight for them and no one would turn out. Leaders would then have to use