West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1940 (ISBN 0-8071-1979-2) is a 1996 book written by Aviva Chomsky. It details the history of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, formed in 1899 from previous railroads and banana-growing interests in Costa Rica. It also describes how the local workers developed their own parallel socio-economic system. The book was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies. It also assists in telling the story of how indins suffered in the plantations they worked in and connnects to Rigoberta Menchu, who has won a Nobel Prize, and once worked in plantations similar to the ones owned by the United Fruit Company.
Famous quotes containing the words west, indian, workers, united, fruit and/or company:
“He is every other inch a gentleman.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“In former times and in less complex societies, children could find their way into the adult world by watching workers and perhaps giving them a hand; by lingering at the general store long enough to chat with, and overhear conversations of, adults...; by sharing and participating in the tasks of family and community that were necessary to survival. They were in, and of, the adult world while yet sensing themselves apart as children.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“One of the last of the philosophers,—Connecticut gave him to the world,—he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man—the one he used to be.”
—Cesare Pavese (1908–1950)