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Building a banana empire
By Mark Lewis |
September 16, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AMID the vast outpouring of literature about America's banana empire in the Caribbean, no one seems to have written a full-fledged biography of the remarkable Samuel Zemurray, who guided the United Fruit Company through perilous times. Rich Cohen has rectified that oversight. Cohen, the author of "Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams," now gives us "The Fish that Ate the Whale," a tale about a poor Russian Jew who emigrated to Alabama as a teen and ended up controlling much of Central America.
After starting out as a humble banana peddler in Mobile in the 1890s, Zemurray moved up to become a major importer in New Orleans, shipping in fruit from his firm's plantations in Honduras. When the Honduran president, Miguel Davila, placed obstacles in his path in 1910, Zemurray hired some mercenaries, orchestrated a sham revolution and replaced Davila with a more compliant president. Cohen duly condemns Zemurray's colonialist arrogance but also admires his chutzpah.
Zemurray was first a customer, then a major competitor of United Fruit, though his own firm was much smaller. In 1929 he sold out to his rival for 300,000 shares of United Fruit stock and retired to New Orleans, where Huey Long assailed him as a corrupt plutocrat. Meanwhile, the Depression was laying waste to United Fruit's balance sheet. As the value of Zemurray's stock plummeted, he decided it was time to foment another revolution. He staged a boardroom coup and installed himself as chief executive, prompting The New York Times to call him "the fish that swallowed the whale."
Zemurray led United Fruit back into the black. He also had a hand in the founding of Israel. But his final triumph, in Guatemala, would leave a dark legacy. There, United Fruit confronted a democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Arbenz, who began redistributing the firm's uncultivated lands to peasants. This time, instead of hiring mercenaries, Zemurray hired the public relations guru Edward L. Bernays to paint Arbenz as a Communist, while urging the Eisenhower administration to intervene. In 1954, the CIA staged a coup that toppled Arbenz, touching off a cycle of revolution and reaction that lasted decades and claimed thousands of lives.
In Cohen's hyperbolic and often speculative telling, Zemurray looms as such a titan that even the United Fruit co-founder Minor C. Keith recedes into Zemurray's shadow.
For a balanced assessment of Zemurray's career, readers should consult the many histories of United Fruit. But Rich Cohen books constitute a genre unto themselves: pungent, breezy, psychodramas about tough-minded Jews who vanquish their rivals. Within this specialized context, Cohen's Zemurray biography fills the bill.
After starting out as a humble banana peddler in Mobile in the 1890s, Zemurray moved up to become a major importer in New Orleans, shipping in fruit from his firm's plantations in Honduras. When the Honduran president, Miguel Davila, placed obstacles in his path in 1910, Zemurray hired some mercenaries, orchestrated a sham revolution and replaced Davila with a more compliant president. Cohen duly condemns Zemurray's colonialist arrogance but also admires his chutzpah.
Zemurray was first a customer, then a major competitor of United Fruit, though his own firm was much smaller. In 1929 he sold out to his rival for 300,000 shares of United Fruit stock and retired to New Orleans, where Huey Long assailed him as a corrupt plutocrat. Meanwhile, the Depression was laying waste to United Fruit's balance sheet. As the value of Zemurray's stock plummeted, he decided it was time to foment another revolution. He staged a boardroom coup and installed himself as chief executive, prompting The New York Times to call him "the fish that swallowed the whale."
Zemurray led United Fruit back into the black. He also had a hand in the founding of Israel. But his final triumph, in Guatemala, would leave a dark legacy. There, United Fruit confronted a democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Arbenz, who began redistributing the firm's uncultivated lands to peasants. This time, instead of hiring mercenaries, Zemurray hired the public relations guru Edward L. Bernays to paint Arbenz as a Communist, while urging the Eisenhower administration to intervene. In 1954, the CIA staged a coup that toppled Arbenz, touching off a cycle of revolution and reaction that lasted decades and claimed thousands of lives.
In Cohen's hyperbolic and often speculative telling, Zemurray looms as such a titan that even the United Fruit co-founder Minor C. Keith recedes into Zemurray's shadow.
For a balanced assessment of Zemurray's career, readers should consult the many histories of United Fruit. But Rich Cohen books constitute a genre unto themselves: pungent, breezy, psychodramas about tough-minded Jews who vanquish their rivals. Within this specialized context, Cohen's Zemurray biography fills the bill.
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