Overripe Bananas

September 18, 2022 – Millarville, Alberta

Did you ever hear the story of how one man brought down a government, with a banana?  No? Well pull up a chair, pour yourself a daiquiri, and I will tell you the whole slippery tale. 

The story involves a Russian immigrant to America, a boatload of fruit, and a corrupt Central American government. You might want to fact-check the tale when we finish, but I swear every word is true.

The story starts in Alabama in about 1905. Eighteen-year-old Russian immigrant Samuel Zamurray is a street merchant, selling produce off a pushcart.  As he purchased inventory at the dock, Samuel noticed that cargo ships arriving in Mobile were discarding ripe bananas.  Fruit merchants destroyed mature bananas because they would spoil and contaminate other fruit before reaching their far-flung markets.   Zamurray bought a load of the ripe bananas for almost nothing and devised a direct-to-consumer distribution system. The public couldn’t get enough of Zamurray’s product.

Fruit companies in Honduras at the time, operated in an enclave economy (internally self-sufficient, tax exempt, often exploiting local workers, and contributing very little to the host economy).  Cuyamel and other fruit companies had such a tight rein on the economy of Honduras it became the first country labeled a Banana Republic. 

Cuyamel prospered under these conditions, but the market was undergoing change.  In 1910 the US Government, with assistance from financier J.P. Morgan, assumed the Honduran national debt.  A provisional “puppet” government was established, which set about imposing taxes to recover the debt.  The first targets of taxation were fruit companies.

This did not sit well with Zamurray.  He used his considerable political influence to lobby the US government to change the Honduran tax structure, but his efforts fell short.  Undeterred, Zamurray drew on his street-smarts; he concocted a daring plan to overthrow the government of Honduras. 

Zamurray recruited a deposed former president, Manuel Bonilla.  Bonilla enlisted mercenaries, rallied the anti-American press, and invaded the Honduran capitol, Tegucigalpa.  The entire project was quietly financed by The Banana Man.

The insurrection worked.  The Honduran people rallied behind Bonilla; they selected him as president in a landslide post-revolution election. Bonilla rewarded his benefactor with a twenty-five-year tax-free concession, and a gift of 25,700 acres of prime banana plantation land.

It was a remarkable personal victory for Zamurray. He had outmanoeuvred the US Administration, poked J.P. Morgan in the eye, overthrown a government, become a much richer man in the process, and nobody even knew he was involved.

… overripe Bananas.

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More Banana Facts:

• The banana is Walmart’s biggest selling item.
• Botanically, it is a berry.
• The fruit is named after the West African word for fingertip, banaana.
• Bunches are called Hands.
• The Chinese name of the aromatic Go San Heong banana means “You can smell it from the next mountain”.
• In about 1966, when I was in Cub Scouts, an RCMP officer was invited to speak to our troop.  I was seated on a bench behind the policeman; I noticed that he had a Chiquita banana sticker on the butt of his holstered gun.  (I have no idea why I remember this vital piece of information.)
• Bananas as a source of potassium is a myth, they have low levels of the element.  If you want a full potassium hit, try raw spinach (Popeye knew), or baked potatoes.
• Bananas are used in religious rituals around the world. 

• Bananas aren’t all good.  They are a key factor in deforestation. Also, the death of coral reef along the coast of Costa Rica is partially due to sediments from banana plantation fertilizers.
• Slipping on a banana peel is a very common slap-stick comedy routine, and

• For five weeks in 1923, the No. 1 hit song in America was…

 … “Yes, We Have No Bananas”

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Yes! We Have No Bananas (Silver & Cohn) Billy Jones

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