Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899-1944 (Latin American Silhouettes) - Softcover

Dosal, Paul J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0842025901 ISBN 13: 9780842025904

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995

Synopsis

The United Fruit Company (U.F.C.O.) developed an unprecedented relationship with Guatemala in the first half of this century. By 1944, U.F.C.O. owned 566,000 acres, employed 20,000 people, and operated 96% of Guatemala's 719 miles of railroad, making the multinational corporation Guatemala's largest private landowner and biggest employer. In Doing Business with the Dictators, Paul J. Dosal shows how U.F.C.O. built up a profitable corporation in a country whose political system was known to be corrupt. His work is based largely on research of company documents recently acquired from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act-no other historian researching this topic has looked at these sources. As a result, Dr. Dosal is able to offer the first documentary evidence of how U.F.C.O. acquired, defended, and exploited its Guatemalan properties by collaborating with successive authoritarian regimes.

About this title

About the Author

Paul J. Dosal is assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Review

The book is an absolute must for those interested in the region. It has solid footnotes, a good bibliography, and a workable index. (CHOICE)

Sheds important light on U.S. economic penetration of Latin America in the first half of this century. (Booklist)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0842025901
• ISBN 13: 9780842025904
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 4