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:
“Listen, my friend, I’ve just come back from Mississippi and over there when you talk about the West Bank they think you mean Arkansas.”
—Patrick Buchanan (b. 1938)
“According to my observation, a batteau, properly manned, shoots rapids as a matter of course, which a single Indian with a canoe carries round.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“It is a united will, not mere walls, which makes a fort.”
—Chinese proverb.
“I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts and grapes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)