Presentation

The year 1999 marks 100 years of the founding of the United Fruit Company, which under its contemporary name of Chiquita, has come to be emblematic of bananas. Chiquita has shaped the history and "development" of banana regions in Costa Rica and practically the entire Caribbean.

Banana production had its beginnings in Costa Rica in1884, a few tears prior to the founding of United Fruit, with the Soto-Keith Treaty which conferred on U.S. businessman Minor C. Keith the right to "organize" 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of untilled public lands along with all the natural riches they contained. Despite its founding 15 years after the treaty, United Fruit has come to be the symbol of banana production in Costa Rica due to a history often characterized by feudalism and monopoly. With the support and consent of successive governments of Costa Rica and the United States, this all powerful company ruled its landholdings unchecked.

When presenting this second edition of the magazine " Foro ", we want to keep the symbolism of this moment from passing unnoticed –the hundreth aniversery of "Yunai" as it has been transliterated in popular speech—to try to carry out a needed reflection on the true meaning of this industry for Costa Rica. Since practically no "commemoration" of this milestone has been undertaken, nor reflection on the true legacy of banana production on the overall development of the communities directly involved , Foro Emaus has dedicated these pages to the discussion of an alternative assessment to the "rationality" the of narrow economic and developmentalist assumptions that permeate the vision and decision making of those who have held the reigns of government and business in Costa Rica.

With this effort, , we intend to contribute toward the recovery and of history ignored by the official record, in danger of being forgotten or left to be buried in the past.

The contents of this second edition of the Foro Magazine attempts, therefore, to contribute to these goals, presenting the charges that flow inescapably from a daily confrontation with the raw economic and environmental realities of the banana plantations as well as formulating proposals that seek real solutions to the broad and complex problems confronting the country.

We hope that the articles that follow can make a real contribution to the debate – so needed but so assiduously avoided. We hope as well as to make more widely known, the reality hidden behind the mountains – and national media’s smoke and mirrors -- separating the population of Costa Rica’s Valle Central and much of the rest of the world from the banana plantations of the Atlantic Region.