The Banana Wars, also known as the "American-Caribbean Wars," were a series of occupations, police actions, and interventions involving the United States in Central America and the Caribbean. This period of conflict started with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris, which gave the United States control of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Thereafter, the United States conducted military interventions in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The series of conflicts ended with the withdrawal of troops from Haiti in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Reasons for these conflicts were varied but were largely economic in nature. The conflict was called the "Banana Wars" because of the connections between U.S. interventions and the preservation of American commercial interests in the region.
Most prominently, the United Fruit Company had significant financial stakes in the production of bananas, tobacco, sugar cane, and various other products throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and northern South America. The United States also was advancing its political interests, maintaining a sphere of influence and controlling the Panama Canal, which it had recently built and which was critically important to global trade and naval power.
United Fruit Company Steamship Service
A 1916 advertisement for the United Fruit Company Steamship Service.
Panama and the Canal
In 1882, Ferdinand de Lesseps started work on a canal, but by 1889, the effort had experienced engineering challenges caused by frequent landslides, slippage of equipment, and mud, and resulted in bankruptcy. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt convinced Congress to take on the abandoned works in 1902, while Colombia was in the midst of the Thousand Days' War. During the war, Panamanian Liberals made at least three attempts to seize control of Panama and potentially achieve full autonomy. Liberal guerrillas such as Belisario Porras and Victoriano Lorenzo were suppressed by a collaboration between conservative Colombian and U.S. forces under the Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty. The Roosevelt administration proposed to Colombia that the United States should control the canal, but by mid-1903, the Colombian government refused. The United States then changed tactics.
Less than three weeks later, on November 18, 1903, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed between Frenchman Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, who had promptly been appointed Panamanian ambassador to the United States (representing Panamanian interests), and the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay. The treaty allowed for the construction of a canal and U.S. sovereignty over a strip of land 10-miles wide and 50-miles long on either side of the Panama Canal Zone. In that zone, the United States would build a canal, then administer, fortify, and defend it "in perpetuity."
Honduras and American Fruit Companies
Honduras, where the United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company dominated the country's key banana export sector and associated land holdings and railways, saw the insertion of American troops in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, and 1925. The writer O. Henry coined the term "banana republic" in 1904 to describe Honduras.
The first decades of Honduras's history were marked by instability in terms of politics and economy. Indeed, the political context gave way to 210 armed conflicts between independence and the rise to power of the Carias government. This instability was due in part to American involvement in the country.
The first company that concluded an agreement with the Honduras government was the Vaccaro Brothers Company (Standard Fruit Company). The Cuyamel Fruit Company then followed that lead. The United Fruit Company also agreed to a contract with the government, which was attained through its subsidies (the Tela Rail Road Company and Truxillo Rail Road Company).
Different avenues led to the signature of a contract between the Honduras government and the American companies. The most popular avenue was to obtain a grab on a piece of land in exchange for the completion of railroads in Honduras; this explains why a railroad company conducted the agreement between the United Fruit Company and Honduras. The ultimate goal in the acquisition of a contract was to control the bananas, from production to distribution. Therefore, the American companies would finance guerrilla fighters, presidential campaigns, and governments.
Mexico
The U.S. military involvements with Mexico in this period are related to the same general commercial and political causes, but stand as a special case. The Americans conducted the Border War with Mexico from 1910 to 1919 for additional reasons: to control the flow of immigrants and refugees from revolutionary Mexico (pacificos), and to counter rebel raids into U.S. territory. The 1914 U.S. occupation of Veracruz, however, was an exercise of armed influence, not an issue of border integrity; it was aimed at cutting off the supplies of German munitions to the government of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, whom U.S. President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize. In the years prior to World War I, the United States also was sensitive to the regional balance of power against Germany. The Germans were actively arming and advising the Mexicans, as demonstrated by the 1914 SS Ypiranga arms-shipping incident, the establishment of German saboteur Lothar Witzke's base in Mexico City, the 1917 Zimmermann Telegram, and the presence of German advisors during the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales. Only twice during the Mexican Revolution did the U.S. military occupy Mexico: during the temporary occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and between the years 1916 and 1917, when U.S. General John Pershing and his army came to Mexico to lead a nationwide search for Pancho Villa.
Other Countries
Other Latin American nations were influenced or dominated by American economic policies and/or commercial interests to the point of coercion. Theodore Roosevelt declared the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, asserting the right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and his Secretary of State Philander C. Knox asserted a more "peaceful and economic" Dollar Diplomacy foreign policy, although that, too, was backed by force. The U.S. Marine Corps most often carried out these military interventions. The Marines were called in so often that they developed a Small Wars Manual, The Strategy and Tactics of Small Wars, in 1921. On occasion, U.S. Naval gunfire and U.S. Army troops were also used.