banana [ ]

Citations for the title poem are below.

About the Book

Winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from Poetry Society of America.

Winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Nominated for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

banana [ ] reveals the extractive relationship the United States has with the Americas and its people through poetic portraits of migrants, family, and memory. The title poem is part poetry and part reportage that traces the history of bananas in Latin America using only found text from sources such as history books, declassified CIA documents, and commercials. The book includes collage, Ecuadorian decimas, sonnets, and a long poem interspersed with photos and the author’s mother’s bilingual idioms. Traversing language and borders, global and personal histories, traditional and invented forms, this book guides us beyond survival to love.

Order at the University of Pittsburgh Press, here.

Order at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, here.

Praise for banana [ ]

The first poem in this book completely swept me off my feet. As pages of this book turn, one quickly realizes that the whole manuscript is filled with invention, passion, and skill. I love the restlessness and the attentiveness to language. But most importantly: the invention and lyric textures in this book aren’t here just for the show; they are setting to music the urgency of our time. That is a hard thing to do, and this poet does it again and again.

-Ilya Kaminsky, Donald Hall Prize guest judge and author of Deaf Republic

The poems in Paul Hlava Ceballos’s banana [ ] are elegy, labor, and repair. The title poem is one of stripping away and accretion constructed from the words of others. It is made from racist emails, racist popular culture, from interviews, declarations, from reports that detail or obscure violence and living. An entire grammar emerges across the poem’s three sections.

-Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

Three texts exist simultaneously within banana [ ]: one is curated and is clearly visible, a second has been strategically redacted, and a third the reader puts together in imagining the text whole again. Using this strategy, Hlava Ceballos creates a house of mirrors in which the legal, historical, anthropological, and agricultural language of violence employed by the US empire across Central America can be dissected. A master at the enthymeme, this collection’s contributions to inventive forms astounds.

-Natalie Scenters-Zapico, author of Lima :: Limón

Paul Hlava Ceballos’s banana [ ] renders personal and cultural histories. The personal and naturally political, Eden and Hades converge into a landscape of experimental form that propels us forward. Names and places pay tribute in the languages of everyday life to bear witness and celebrate human rituals—familial and communal. In banana [ ], Hlava Ceballos exacts these poems with such caring precision, fully resonant, lit by earth and sky.

-Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Everyday Mojo Songs

banana [ ] assuredly interrogates the systems and dead philosophies in the grip of which we find ourselves. Only by addressing these forces will we make the necessary and existential progress in an effort to salvage a livable and equitable planet.

-VerseCurious Podcast

Ceballos’s balance of archival footage with imagined voices of the past brings into sharp focus questions of empire, inheritance, and legacy in ways that resonate beyond national and cultural borders.

-The Poetry Foundation

How can one be expected to care about something they cannot see? How can they see if the relevant knowledge has been obscured? Ceballos’ book seeks to intervene in our collective ignorance, to illuminate dark chapters of our interconnected histories. His artwork challenges us to look more closely at the fruit occupying our grocery stores and breakfast tables.

-Yes! Magazine

Endnotes for Banana [ ]: A History of the Americas

 Click here for the chapbook banana [ ] / we pilot the blood (3rd Thing Press)

1 The redacted C.I.A. document continues: "Syndicate organization in Santa Marta and the banana zone has always had a leftist orientation and Marxist leadership. The so-called Socialist revolutionaries who directed the tragic banana strike of 1928 became Communists after 1930 and continued to direct the labor movement in the area." The document does not mention that the strikers were primarily indigenous people and peasant farmers struggling to keep their land in a time of U.S. corporate expansion, nor that the tragedy of the 1928 strike was a U.S. backed massacre against the strikers, as fictionalized in Garcia Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude. According to a 2018 North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) article entitled "Photos We Don't Get to See," before the 1928 massacre, the U.S. Embassy in Colombia sent telegrams to the U.S. Secretary of State requesting a warship and also asked Colombia to pressure the strikers. A telegram from the embassy to the Secretary of State dated January 16th, 1929 states, "I have the honor to report…the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand." Reports surveilling banana workers, such as the one included here, continue for decades.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Labor Situation in the Banana Zone (Washington D.C.: 1951), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp82-00457r007100270005-3

2 Christopher Cumo, ed., Encyclopedia of Cultivated Plants: From Acacia to Zinnia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2013).

3 I discovered Conquest of the Tropics scanned on HaithiTrust digital library at midnight after returning home from a poetry reading, and did not go to sleep until I finished it. It is full of aggravatingly (or comically?) intesnse praise for the United Fruit Company, such as: "[The story of United Fruit] is a story of the peaceful and honorable conquest of a portion of the American tropics, and one of which every citizen should be proud." I count over 70 times the word "great" appears in the book in reference to United Fruit. On the other hand, words directed at the black, indigenous, or mestizo laborers are slurs. While Adams refers to his text as a history book, the publisher's note admits that "facts [have] been obtained through courtesy of officials of the United Fruit Company," as well as transportation and lodging to plantations.  

Frederick Upham Adams, Conquest of the Tropics; the Story of the Creative Enterprises Conducted by the United Fruit Company (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1914), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b110129&view=1up&seq=7.

4 Also from the film: "Central America is just what the name implies, the heart of the Americas: a few days by ship from the United States, a few hours by plane, or a few minutes by guided missile." The film was produced and released just a year before the invasion of Guatemala that deposed the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, carried out by the C.I.A. Árbenz had been elected under promises of land reform and updating labor laws. Links between United Fruit and the C.I.A. leading up to the invasion are numerous. According to Wikipedia, John Foster Dulles, the then-U.S. Secretary of State, had represented United Fruit as a lawyer and negotiated a crucial Guatemalan land purchase. His brother Allen Dulles was on the United Fruit board of directors and was head of the C.I.A. Ed Whitman, who directed the film, was married to Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary.

Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas, directed by John Sutherland (1953; U.S.: United Fruit Company).

5 Ambayeba Muimba-Kankolongo, “Chapter 12 - Fruit Production,” in Food Crop Production by Smallholder Farmers in Southern Africa, ed. Ambayeba Muimba-Kankolongo (Academic Press, 2018), 275–312, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-814383-4.00012-8.

6 B.A. Aglave et al., “Molecular Identification of a Virus Causing Banana Chlorosis Disease from Marathwada Region,” International Journal of Biotechnology & Biochemistry 3, no. 1 (January 1, 2007): 13–24, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=09732691&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA172131883&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=fulltext.

7 Plant Health Australia, Fact Sheet: Blood Disease (Canberra, Australia: 2013).

8 “Cigar End Rot of Banana,” Greenlife Crop Protection Africa, accessed July 22, 2020, https://www.greenlife.co.ke/cigar-end-rot-of-banana/.

9 P. Parvatha Reddy, Biointensive Integrated Pest Management in Horticultural Ecosystems (India: Springer Science & Business Media, 2014), https://books.google.com/books?id=5puKAwAAQBAJ.

10 “Gene Identified for Full Virulence of the Fusarium Wilt Towards Cavendish Banana,” Fusarium Wilt, 2018, https://fusariumwilt.org/index.php/en/2018/11/19/gene-identified-for-full-virulence-of-the-fusarium-wilt-towards-cavendish-banana/.

11 Julia Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates (Miami: J.F. Morton, 1987), https://books.google.com/books?id=pCgmAQAAMAAJ.

12 Ibid.

13 Plant Health Australia, Fact Sheet: Banana Spider Mite (Canberra, Australia: 2013).

14 Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, Chlorpyrifos: Preliminary Review Findings Report on Additional Residues Data (Canberra, Australia: 2009).

15 N. A. Martin, “Factsheet: Banana Silvering Thrips - Hercinothrips Bicinctus,” Interesting Insects and other Invertebrates, New Zealand Arthropod Factsheet Series Number 104 (New Zealand: 2017), https://nzacfactsheets.landcareresearch.co.nz/factsheet/InterestingInsects/Banana-silvering-thrips--Hercinothrips-bicinctus.html.

16 Australian Department of Primary Industries, Plant Biosecurity and Product Integrity, Banana Freckle (New South Wales: 2013), https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/biosecurity/plant/insect-pests-and-plant-diseases/banana-freckle.

17 Plant Health Australia, Fact Sheet: Moko (Canberra, Australia: 2013).

18 Guy Blomme et al., “Bacterial Diseases of Bananas and Enset: Current State of Knowledge and Integrated Approaches Toward Sustainable Management,” Frontiers in Plant Science 8 (July 20, 2017): 1290, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2017.01290.

19 Based on thousands of pages of documents obtained by FOIA requests, this book pretty thoroughly details the U.S. invasion of Guatemala.

Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2005).

20 To continue: "Hernán had objected to the palm oil, banana plantations and cattle ranches expanding over his community's territory and clearing the forest. He had been forcibly evicted from his land by a paramilitary group in 1996, but decided to return despite the risks." Paramilitary groups began sending him death threats again in 2015. Global Witness's review of murders against indigenous and Afro-Colombian farmers during 2010-2016 showed an impunity rate of 92%—the vast majority of cases were dropped, or never investigated at all.

Billy Kyte, “At What Cost? Irresponsible Business and the Murder of Land and Environmental Defenders in 2017,” Global Witness (January 2017).

21 John McGinty and Stephen Burkhart, Operative Arthroscopy (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2003), https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uq3bmM6qwcC.

22 Scot Nelson, “Postharvest Rots of Banana,” Plant Disease 54 (Honolulu, HI: October, 2008).

23 This article analyzes the impact of the book Climate Change and Food Systems: Global Assessments and Implications for Food Security and Trade that was published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2015. As the title suggests, this book details how climate change affects food and agriculture at a global level. In short, food security grows more tenuous and water more scarce as climate change progresses. At an individual level, this means more hunger and malnutrition worldwide. Due to their locations and the existing economic hierarchies, agricultural workers are among the first impacted.

"Bananas and Climate Change: What Is Going to Happen to One of the World’s Favourite Fruits?,” Biodiversity International, June 18, 2015, https://www.bioversityinternational.org/news/detail/bananas-and-climate-change-what-is-going-to-happen-to-one-of-the-worlds-favourite-fruits/.

24 Nelson, “Postharvest Rots of Banana.”

25 According to the article, the National Agriculture Workers Union (Sintrainagro) threatened a strike because employers in the Urabá region were threatening to cut the wages of workers by 43%. Employers claimed the cuts were necessary because of the price fluctuations of the U.S. dollar. Strikes have dangerous implications for workers; a subsequent section of the poem is full of the names of assassinated labor leaders. However, according to a report by Global Living Wage titled “Living Wage Report: Caribbean Coast of Colombia, Context: Banana Sector” from May 2018, banana workers in this region were making roughly U.S. $10 per day of work. Cut wages could mean eviction or starvation; they could also mean death. In this case, the threat of a strike was sufficient action. A week before the strike was scheduled to begin, negotiations ended with workers winning no pay cuts and improved housing.

"Colombian Banana Workers Threaten Wage Strike,” Fresh Fruit Portal, May 23, 2013, https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2013/05/23/colombian-banana-workers-threaten-wage-strike/.

26 Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates.

27 Banzie, “Hello to all Firstly. Banana plants are not trees...," Word Reference, Forum: Hand/Bunch of Bananas, February 11, 2018, https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/hand-bunch-of-bananas.1795688/.

28 The Coordinating Committee of Foro Emaús, translated by Ruth Mendelhall and Felipe Montoya, “The Effects of Working Conditions in the Banana Plantation,” Foro Emaús: Committee for the Defense and Promotion of Environmental and Human Rights in the Banana Industry of Costa Rica, April 1998, https://members.tripod.com/foro_emaus/2ing.html.

29 “Fruit Carriers at Port Maria Are on Strike,” The Kingston Daily Gleaner, June 11, 1929.

30 Satbir Singh Gosal and Shabir Wani, eds., Biotechologies of Crop Improvement: Cellular Approaches, 1st ed. (Springer International Publishing, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78283-6.

31 What soared was symptomatic occupational pesticide poisoning. The cited article states that such poisoning affected 4.5% of workers in Costa Rica in 1986. Between 1980 and 1986, 3,330 Costa Rican banana laborers were hospitalized and 429 died. In fact, a more recent article titled "Pesticides Made Us Sterile, Banana Workers Say," published by BBC News on July 21, 2022, shows that this problem is not just a thing of the past. The article revisits the issue of Nemagon, or DBCP, poisoning. It states that tens of thousands of former Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte banana workers in Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua claim to have been exposed to DBCP by their plantation in the decade after it was banned in the U.S. for causing sterility.  

Catharina Wesseling, Luisa Castillo, and C. Elinder, “Pesticide Poisonings in Costa Rica,” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 19, no. 4 (August 1993): 227–35, https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.1479.

32 This article argues that understanding United Fruit's reaction to Panama Disease is more than just an episode of the company's history but sheds light on the agricultural industry's relationship to labor and the environment. United Fruit's strategies to fight the disease, which included larger plantations and more aggressive use of chemical pesticides, diminished pay and health outcomes of entire regions of people who worked in or lived near banana plantations, and altered ecosystems and the landscape itself. 

Steve Marquardt, “‘Green Havoc’: Panama Disease, Environmental Change, and Labor Process in the Central American Banana Industry,” American Historical Review 106, no. 1 (2001): 49–80, https://doi.org/10.2307/2652224.

33 Jacques Arago, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, in the Uranie and Physicienne Corvettes, Commanded by Captain Freycinet, During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture: The Oliveira Lima Library, Part II (Oxford University: Treuttel & Wurtz, Treuttal, jun. & Richter, 1823), https://books.google.com/books?id=rLENAAAAQAAJ.

34 Arlette S. Saint Ville, Gordon M. Hickey, and Leroy E. Phillip, “Institutional Analysis of Food and Agriculture Policy in the Caribbean: The Case of Saint Lucia,” Journal of Rural Studies 51 (April 1, 2017): 198–210, https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JRURSTUD.2017.03.004.

35 Randy C. Ploetz et al., “Banana and Plantain—An Overview with Emphasis on Pacific Island Cultivars Musaceae (Banana Family),” Pacific Island Agroforestry (Hōlualoa, Hawai‘i, February 2007), https://www.growables.org/information/TropicalFruit/documents/BananaPlantainOverview.pdf.

36 “Ecuador: Widespread Labor Abuse on Banana Plantations,” Human Rights Watch, April 24, 2002, https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/04/24/ecuador-widespread-labor-abuse-banana-plantations.

37 Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates.

38 Chiquita Banana Song, performed by the Terry Twins (1947; U.S.: Chiquita Brands International), via “Chiquita Banana Song (1940s),” (September 24, 2009; Youtube), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A834CwzNHI.

39 Cameron Gallagher, Mike and McWhirter, “Chiquita Secrets Revealed; Environment; Workers Sprayed in the Fields,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1998.

40 This C.I.A. report is concerned primarily with the decline in Ecuadorian banana exports in 1965. It states that Ecuador, like other Latin American countries, is economically dependent on exporting natural resources, in this case bananas. With United Fruit returning to Central America during the rebound from banana wilt (Panama disease) and the growth of Asian banana producing markets, the report states concerns that Ecuador might "develop new export markets through barter trade with Communist Countries."

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Current Support Brief, Project No. 47.5294, The Deepening Banana Crisis in Ecuador (Washington D.C.: November 30, 1965), https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79t01003a002500010002-1.

41 Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Encyclopedia of Kitchen History (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, an imprint of Taylor and Francis Books, Inc., 2004).

42 Egon Schaden, “South American Forest Indian - Belief and Aesthetic Systems,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed July 30, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/South-American-forest-Indian/Modern-developments.

43 What does it mean for the military and ruling government to have ties to banana plantations? According to the following article, in the 1960s, "The 389 largest [private farms] (a mere 0.2% of all highland units) controlled 41% of all agro-livestock land." This is during a period when over 90% of Ecuador's export revenue came from agriculture, namely, cocoa, sugar, coffee, and bananas. The dependence on an export-based revenue system, a system upheld by foreign transnationals such as United Fruit and backed by the U.S. government, helped perpetuate inequalities in land ownership and wealth. The article continues: "30-40 percent of the peasant work force (including some property owners who could not support their families on their plots) were dependent on the hacienda system. They might offer up to four or five days' labor per week on the hacendados' land for a nominal wage (or even no wage at all) in return for usufruct of a small plot of land and pasture grazing rights (huasipungueros)." The Jorge Icaza novel The Villagers (Huasipungo), emotively depicts this relationship between ancestrally-Spanish land owners and native or cholo laborers who become financially tied to them.

Howard Handelman, “Ecuadorian Agrarian Reform: The Politics of Limited Change,” The Institute of Current World Affairs Form no. 49 (Washington D.C.: 1980).

44 This note was in reference to Chiquita's funding of the A.U.C, a right-wing paramilitary group and U.S. federally-recognized terrorist organization that patrolled the Urabá and surrounding regions in Colombia. In March 2007, Chiquita admitted to paying over $1.7 million to the A.U.C. for land rights and to protect its operations. According to Wikipedia, the A.U.C. had about 20,000 members, was heavily financed by the drug trade, and was responsible for killing thousands of civilians. In just the first ten months of the year 2000, the group conducted 804 assassinations, 203 kidnappings, and 75 massacres with 507 victims.

Senior Counsel Robert Thomas in a meeting with Chiquita Vice President Wilfred “Bud” White, and General Counsel Robert Olsen, "And do we want to ship bananas from Colombia? Need to keep this very confidential—people can get killed," Handwritten Note during Chiquita Management Meeting, May 1997.

45 Nelson, “Postharvest Rots of Banana."

46 The article states: "The war began between the big plantation owners and government, who refused unionised labour, and revolutionary groups who eventually took to the jungle to resist them. By the late 1960s that conflict was becoming a way of life. It was fueled over the next three decades by the great wash of money and corruption from the cocaine trade and it took on a kind of hallucinatory violence. Official figures put the death toll at 220,000 though it is probably higher; 7 million people were “internally displaced”, mostly from rural communities." The article follows Don José Manuel Suarez to show how he and his cooperative has risen above this "hallucinatory violence." His Fairtrade cooperative Coobafrío has survived paramilitary violence, recent hurricanes, and is growing.

Tim Adams, “Colombia: No Guns, No Drugs, No Atrocities, No Rape, No Murder. Just Bananas…,” The Guardian, February 25, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/25/colombia-farmers-fairtrade-bananas-civil-war-drug-trafficking.

47 This quote comes from an interview with Gustavo Murillo, thanks to the work of the artist, Jan Nimmo (her translations). Murillo was on strike with other workers when masked and armed paramilitaries raided their dormitories, threatening them, beating them, and killing one person. Murillo's story is personal and tender, and I recommend you read it. Murillo again: "We're not against those who have wealth if they've earned it. To be rich isn't bad in itself when it's a fortune that's been earned through someone's efforts and hard work. What is immoral is getting rich on the backs of the poor. We're not criticising the rich, but we want them to realise that what they have, they have because the poor work for them to possess it. They have to realise this and be more conscious of this and treat us a bit better - better treatment for the women of Ecuador, for the Ecuadorian children, the children who work on the banana plantations, doing the various jobs." The Los Alamos Plantations are owned by Álvaro Noboa, Ecuador's billionaire banana magnate.

Gustavo Murillo, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde, May 2002, http://greengold.org.uk/Gustavo.htm.

48 International Trade Union Confederation, Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights 2012 (Brussels: 2012). 

49 Larry Luxner, “Guatemalan Banana Bosses Deny They’re Exploiting Campesinos,” The Tico Times, April 22, 2014, https://ticotimes.net/2014/04/22/guatemalan-banana-bosses-deny-theyre-exploiting-campesinos.

50 Kimberly Kern, “Guatemala: Banana Workers Union Leader Assassinated,” Upsidedown World, October 24, 2007, http://upsidedownworld.org/archives/guatemala/guatemala-banana-workers-union-leader-assassinated/.

51 International Labour Office, Record of Proceedings (Geneva: 2008), https://books.google.com/books?id=4K9Oj-gsTg4C.

52 International Trade Union Confederation, 2012 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights - Guatemala (Brussels: 2012), https://www.refworld.org/docid/4fd8894cc.html.

53 Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, “Killings Continue in Honduras’ Aguán Valley,” Weekly News Update on the Americas, August 28, 2011, https://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/08/wnu-1094-killings-continue-in-honduras.html.

54 Phoebe Cooke, “Son’s Horror as He Finds Parents and Grandad Stabbed to Death in Their Tenerife Home,” The Sun, March 23, 2018, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5883625/married-couple-grandad-found-dead-tenerife-banana-plantation/.

55 Gustavo Murillo, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde.

56 “Peeling Back the Truth on Guatemalan Bananas,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, July 28, 2010,  https://www.coha.org/peeling-back-the-truth-on-the-guatemalan-banana-industry/.

57 In Re Chiquita Brands Int'l, Inc. Alien Tort Statute & Shareholder Derivative Ligation, Case No. 08-01916-MD-MARRA (U.S. District Court, S.D. Florida, 2012).

58 Jan Goodey, “Guns, Threats and Exploitation behind the Banana Trade,” Red Pepper, December 1, 2002, https://www.redpepper.org.uk/Guns-threats-and-exploitation/.

59 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights 2012.

60 “Asesinan de Machetazos a Jornalero de Guatemala,” El Sol Del Soconusco, num. 21-537, ed. Nahum Gómez Grajales, November 9, 2018.

61 “Brenda Marleni Estrada Tambito,” Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, June 19, 2016, https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/últimas-noticias/brenda-marleni-estrada-tambito/.

62 United Nations, International Labour Organization, Individual Case (CAS) - Discussion: 2008, Publication: 97th ILC session, 2008, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:13100:0::NO:13100:P13100_COMMENT_ID:2556325.

63 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights 2012.

64 Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, Guatemala Human Rights Update Vol. 20, No. 6 (Washington D.C.: 2008).

65 Note: the published article includes the typo below.

"Lawyers Call for Heads of Security Minister and Plice Chiefs,” Newsroom Panama, July 28, 2010,  https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/lawyers-call-for-heads-of-security-minister-and-police-chiefs.

66 “Executive Council Statement on the 2000 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award,” AFL-CIO, August 2, 2000, https://aflcio.org/about/leadership/statements/2000-george-meany-lane-kirkland-human-rights-award.

67 Víctor Báez, "Letter to the President of Guatemala,” Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores/as de las Américas (CSA), (Montevideo, Uruguay: 2013).

68 International Labour Office, Report of the Committee on Freedom of Association: 378th Report of the Committee on Freedom of Association (Geneva: June 2016).

69 Chiquita Banana and the Cannibals (1947; U.S.: Chiquita Brands International), via "Chiquita Banana and the Cannibals" (May 22, 2018; Youtube), accessed August 10, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5YNlCxo43E.

70 Guatemala Human Rights Commission - USA, Fact Sheet: Labor Rights in Guatemala (Washington D.C.: 2008).

71 Phillip A. Hough, “A Race to the Bottom? Globalization, Labor Repression, and Development by Dispossession in Latin America’s Banana Industry,” Global Labour Journal 3, no. 2 (2012): 237–64, https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v3i2.1121.

72 Lise Josefsen Hermann, “They Live and Die by Bananas,” Danwatch, 2016, https://danwatch.dk/en/undersoegelse/they-live-and-die-by-bananas-2/.

73 International Labour Organization, Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948, No. 87 - Guatemala (Geneva: 2017).

74 Carlos Amorín, “Asesinan En Izabal a Otro Miembro Del SITRABI,” Regional Latinoamericana de la Unión Internacional de Trabajadores de la Alimentación, Agrícolas, Hoteles, Restaurantes, Tabaco y Afines (Rel-UITA), 2011, http://www6.rel-uita.org/sindicatos/asesinan_en_izabal_otro_miembro_de_sitrabi.htm.

75 In Re Chiquita Brands Int'l, Inc. Alien Tort Statute & Shareholder Derivative Ligation, Case No. 08-01916-MD-MARRA (U.S. District Court, S.D. Florida, 2012).

76 Dow Chemical Company and Shell Oil Company, Petitioners, v. Domingo Castro Alfaro et Al., Respondents, 786 S.W.2d 674 (Supreme Court of Texas, 1990). 

77 International Labour Office, 368th Report of the Committee on Freedom of Association (Geneva: 2013).

78 “Colombia - Murders, Attempted Murders and Disappearances (2012)” International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), accessed July 27, 2020, https://survey.ituc-csi.org/Murders-attempted-murders-and.html?lang=es.

79 Alex Pickett, “Families Blame Banana Execs for Killings,” Courthouse News Service, 2017, https://www.courthousenews.com/families-blame-former-banana-execs-paramilitary-killings/.

80 US Labor Education in the Americas Project, US Leap Newsletter #4 (Washington D.C.: 2011).

81 “Challenging Impunity in Colombia,” International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations, June 11, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20070701200954/http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/editorials/db.cgi?db=default&ww=1&uid=default&ID=540&view_records=1&en=1.

82 Middle America Information Bureau, Background Information on Bananas (New York: United Fruit Company, 1943), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924013997535&view=1up&seq=1.

83 Description of objects, “Support your local banana dealer pins” and “Fyffes bananas promotional rubber-band gun” (Auburn, Washington: Washington Banana Museum, c. 1960), accessed August 26, 2022, http://www.bananamuseum.com/.

84 Traaacker, “Definition: Banana Beaner,” Urban Dictionary, 2015, accessed July 29, 2020,  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=banana beaner.

85 Must a thing be seen? This endnote is from a popular right-wing and openly racist media group. A quick Google search for "banana" led me there. Why? What boardroom decisions allowed the most powerful search engine in the world to lead me to an openly racist media group? Much of this poem in its conception was about visibility--who is not seen and how that unseeing allows historical atrocities to continue as present-day atrocities. I wanted to create a window for readers, especially those of us who are U.S. Americans, to see what we so often overlook—Latin American people, black people, indigenous people, and workers whose deaths have, in the case of agricultural labor, literally sustained us, and in what linguistic and cultural ways we actively condone these deaths. But I am tired of looking at atrocities. This section of the poem alone took at least three years to research. I am tired of looking at atrocities; they continue and continue. It is winter. I escape into cooking large meals, social media, or television, and yet I know that whether I am connected to them or safe from them, the atrocities continue and continue. Recently, I have been reading (and re-reading) Christina Sharpe's In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. She begins a passage quoting Maurice Blanchot and then elaborates from there: "'When the disaster comes upon us, it does not come. The disaster is its imminence, but since the future, as we conceive of it in the order of lived time, belongs to the disaster, the disaster has always already withdrawn or dissuaded it; there is no future for the disaster, just as there is no time or space for its accomplishment.' Transatlantic slavery was and is the disaster. The disaster of Black subjection was and is planned; terror is disaster and "terror has a history"… and it is deeply atemporal. The history of capital is inextricable from the history of Atlantic chattel slavery. The disaster and the writing of the disaster are never present, are always present…thinking needs care ('all thought is Black thought') and that thinking and care need to stay in the wake."

The poem's line, with mistakes preserved, is from Raptormann, 2017, comment on Tom Ciccotta, “Ole Miss Greek Life Retreat Canceled After Banana Peel Found in Tree,” Breitbart, August 31, 2017, https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/31/ole-miss-greek-life-retreat-canceled-after-banana-peel-found-in-tree/.

86 Bobby Kiite (@bobbyliite), “shutup u spic go eat fried bananas and rice,” Twitter, January 22, 2013, https://twitter.com/BobbyLiite_/status/293820956290449410.

87 Pandora89, “Definition: Spic Spaz,” Urban Dictionary, 2008, accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=pandora89.

88 Letterboxd, “‎Going Bananas,” accessed July 29, 2020, https://letterboxd.com/film/going-bananas/.

89 IMDB, “Going Bananas (1987),” accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093098/.

90 IMDB, “Herbie Goes Bananas (1980),” accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080861/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1.

91 G Savo (@ImSavageOG), “nah fuck this beaner I hope his family drowns on a banana boat...” Twitter, August 20, 2015, https://twitter.com/ImSavageOG/status/634535137741508609.

92 This book is wonderful and was important to my research. Dana Frank stays with women banana workers in Honduras to write about the agricultural history of the region and their role in it. From the website of Haymarket Books, which published the second edition: “Women banana workers have organized themselves and gained increasing control over their unions, their workplaces, and their lives. Highly accessible and narrative in style, Bananeras recounts the history and growth of this vital movement and shows how Latin American woman workers are shaping and broadly reimagining the possibilities of international labor solidarity.”

Dana Frank, Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005).

93 Sacha Silva, Fairtrade, the Windward Islands and The Changing EU Banana Regime, Economic Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat (London: 2010).

94 Adams, Conquest of the Tropics.

95 Ligia Lamich, interview with Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde, May 2001, http://www.greengold.org.uk/Ligia.htm.

96 Blair Turner, Latin America 2016-2017 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016), https://books.google.com/books?id=gT7TDAAAQBAJ. 

97 In Re Chiquita Brands Int'l, Inc. Alien Tort Statute & Shareholder Derivative Ligation.

98 Frank, Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America.

99 Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

100 Leonie Nimmo, “One Hundred Years of Servitude,” Ethical Consumer Magazine, January/February 2010.

101 This quote comes from Maria Eugenia Angulo Durán, a strike leader on a Costa Rican banana plantation. She speaks about sexual assault on banana plantations, being fired for union affiliation, and child rearing, before she continues: "If there's one thing I'm proud of then it's the conflict and the workers' struggle on this plantation here in Finca Jardín de Cariari. I believe this should go down in history. I feel really proud that my compañeros have supported me so much. It gives me the enthusiasm and strength to go on fighting - to go on working hard. Yes, I got involved in this strike, but I never believed that they would take me as one of their leaders. But now they've come to regard me as one of the strike leaders, and I feel really proud and will continue our struggle. To see that we women are so important, and that we shouldn't be frightened of those so-called important, educated people. We are all human beings, God made us all equal. This gives me the hope that we can continue our struggle for justice."

Maria Eugenia Angulo Durán, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde, May 2001, http://www.greengold.org.uk/maria eugenia.htm.

102 Central Intelligence Agency, The Deepening Banana Crisis in Ecuador.

103 Dawn C.P. Ambrose et al., “Techniques to Improve the Shelf Life of Freshly Harvested Banana Blossoms,” Current Agriculture Research Journal 6, no. 2 (August 28, 2018): 141–49, https://doi.org/10.12944/CARJ.6.2.02.

104 Matthew Abbott, “Increasing Value through Branding: An Investigation for the Australian Banana Industry,” Nuffield Australia Farming Project No 1615, November 2018.

105 The Middle America Information Bureau was a news agency about Central America created by Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations. Bernays was hired by the United Fruit Company and named the Middle America Information Bureau to make Central America sound exactly like that—within, or owned by, the United States. The books, reports, newsreels and movies produced by the bureau were meant to accomplish two things: to sell bananas and to sell the idea that Russian communism was spreading in Central America and required U.S. military intervention. For example, his PR firm flew journalists to Guatemala where they witnessed an anti-American protest from their hotel room windows. Recent historians such as Peter Chapman, author of Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Changed the World, have claimed that this protest, and the dignitaries the journalists met, were actors hired by Bernay's PR firm. But it worked. Within a year of this trip, the U.S. invaded Guatemala and overthrew the democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz. Friendships and other personal ties between United Fruit, Bernays, and C.I.A. were numerous, a few of which were briefly mentioned in the fourth endnote of this text.

Middle America Information Bureau, Background Information on Bananas.

106 Bruce K. Kirchoff and Riva A. Bruenn, “How Do Banana Flowers Develop?,” Frontiers for Young Minds 6 (November 20, 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2018.00060.

107 Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases.

108 Samuel C. Prescott, “The Banana: A Food of Exceptional Value,” in Food Value of the Banana: Opinion of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities (United Fruit Company, 1917).

109 Richard Trumka, "AFL-CIO President Trumka’s Remarks on USTR Announcement,” AFL-CIO, September 18, 2014, https://aflcio.org/press/releases/afl-cio-president-trumkas-remarks-ustr-announcement. 

110 The misspelling in the following user question is preserved.

HealthTap user question 833858, "I Have Always Need Told Not to Give Children Bananas before Bed Because It Can Smother or Suffocate Them, Is This True?,” HealthTap.

111 Cameron Gallagher, Mike and McWhirter, “Chiquita Secrets Revealed; Environment; Chiquita Executive Assigned to Investigate the Polymer Plastipak Problems; Smokestack Emits Toxins” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1998.

 112 Cardboard advertisements from grocery stores, "Bananas give children energy and strength" (Auburn, Washington: Washington Banana Museum, c. 1930), accessed August 26, 2022, http://www.bananamuseum.com/.

113 “Ecuador: Widespread Labor Abuse on Banana Plantations,” Human Rights Watch.

114 Hough, “A Race to the Bottom? Globalization, Labor Repression, and Development by Dispossession in Latin America’s Banana Industry”

115 Maria Eugenia Angulo Durán, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde.

116 Trade and Markets: Banana Facts and Figures, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (Rome: 2020), http://www.fao.org/economic/est/est-commodities/bananas/bananafacts/en/.

117 Ted L. Gragson and Ben G. Blount, Ethnoecology: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1999), https://books.google.com/books?id=NgQq2oQEdCEC.

118 Aizhu Lu, “You May Not Know What a Speckled Banana Can Do to Improve Your Health,” Vision China Times, 2015, accessed August 23, 2020, https://www.visiontimes.com/2015/01/21/you-may-not-know-what-a-speckled-banana-can-do-to-improve-your-health.html.

119 Stephen Mihn, “The Bananapocalypse Is Nigh,” Bloomberg News, December 21, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-12-21/the-bananapocalypse-is-nigh.

120 Robert Atadman, “Do You Know These Facts about AR-15?,” Hemlock-Kills, May 14, 2020, https://hemlock-kills.com/do-you-know-these-facts-about-ar-15/.

121 John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel (New York: Library of America, 1930; Boston: Mariner Books, 2000).

122 This is from a 1913 protest against taxing bananas one-tenth of a cent per pound upon importation. A protester is quoted as saying, “While it is known as the ‘poor man’s fruit,’ yet I assure you that those who are not poor are buying the cheap banana now because other fruits are so dear. While I am a free-born American woman, a Daughter of the American Revolution, believing firmly in American ideals and stand ready to protect America in every way possible…We cannot raise bananas in this country, therefore whatever we do to protect America and American citizens and keep this country the greatest country in the world, we must not tax foodstuffs.” Well, the language around protecting the wealth of businessmen has not changed much over the years. The first clause of her sentence is already an appeal to wealth, against “the poor man.” But rich or poor, who is allowed into humanity? In the decades leading up to this protest, bananas became the cheapest fruit on the U.S. American market. They did not come without a price. To grow them, United Fruit had bought up huge swaths of Costa Rica, razing rainforest to build plantations and railroads to carry bananas. Because malaria was killing so many of their workers, United Fruit used prisoner labor from New Orleans jails, a prisoner population that, in the South, in early 1900s U.S. America, was primarily black. According to a September 26, 2021 article in The Tico Times titled “Minor Keith and the History of Costa Rica’s Train to Limon,” just in the first 25 miles of building the Costa Rican railroad to carry bananas, over 4,000 people died—these were black U.S. Americans, Chinese immigrant workers, and primarily indigenous or mestizo Costa Rican farmers.

National League of Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Distributors, "Banana Mass Meeting: Protest Against Taxing 'Poor Man's Fruit' Made," Fruit Trade Journal and Produce Record, vol. 49 (1913), https://books.google.com/books?id=idxKAQAAMAAJ.

123 National Public Radio, “America’s Gone Bananas: Here’s How It Happened," NPR, June 2, 2012, https://www.npr.org/2012/06/02/154153252/americas-gone-bananas-heres-how-it-happened.

124 NYT Cooking, “King Arthur Flour’s Banana Crumb Muffins Recipe,” The New York Times, 2018, accessed September 4, 2022, https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6245-king-arthur-flours-banana-crumb-muffins.

125 “Guillermo Touma - President of FENACLE, Ecuador,” interview by Natacha David, Bananalink, 2001, accessed February 4, 2019, http://www.bananalink.org.uk/testimonies/guillermo-touma-president-fenacle-ecuador.

126 Letitia Charbonneau and Dianne Clipsham, “Bananas Unpeeled! The Hidden Costs of Banana Production and Trade; a Global Education Curriculum” (Ottawa: Global Education Network, Canadian International Development Agency, 2004).

127 Dole Food Company, Inc., “Form 10-K: Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934” (Westlake Village, CA: 2011).

128 Louise Jury, “The Fruit Trade That Turned Sour,” The Independent, May 5, 1998, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-fruit-trade-that-turned-sour-1161216.html.

129 Luisa E. Castillo, Elba de la Cruz, and Clemens Ruepert, “Ecotoxicology and Pesticides in Tropical Aquatic Ecosystems of Central America,” Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 16, no. 1 (January 1997), https://doi.org/10.1002/etc.5620160104.

130 Michael Evans, ed., “Chiquita Papers Are Key Evidence in International Criminal Court Filing,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, 2017, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/colombia-chiquita-papers/2017-05-18/chiquita-papers-are-key-evidence-international-criminal-court-filing.

131 United State of America v Chiquita Brands, International, Inc., Indictment, Violation: Engaging in Transactions with a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist 50 USC 1705(b); 31 CFR 594.204 (Washington D.C., Office of Foreign Assets Control, 2007).

132 American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S. 347, 29 (U.S. Supreme Court 511, 1909).

133 Gardeners’ World, “How to Protect a Tender Banana Plant over Winter,” BBC, February 25, 2019, https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-protect-a-tender-banana-plant-over-winter-part-one/.

134 Emiko Purdy and Henry Vega, The Banana Sector in Ecuador: Trade, Supply Chain, U.S. Cooperation (Quito: GAIN Report, USDA Foreign Agricultural Services, 2011).

135 Juanita Darling, “Human Struggle for Survival Plays Out Behind Banana Wars,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1999, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jun-11-fi-45271-story.html.

136 Guatemala Labor Laws and Regulations Handbook: Strategic Information and Basic Laws, World Business Law Library (Washington D.C., Guatemala City: International Business Publications USA, 2013), https://books.google.com/books?id=fuENCgAAQBAJ.

137 Chris Hunt and Rathnasiri Premathilake, “Banana Domestication - Peeling Back the History of the Banana,” SAPIENS, August 24, 2018, https://www.sapiens.org/culture/banana-domestication/.

138 Jonathan Beecher Field, “Yes, We Have No (Time For) Bananas - Letters to the Editor,” The Clemson University Tiger, April 11, 2016, http://www.thetigercu.com/letters_to_editor/yes-we-have-no-time-for-bananas/article_af9bfe96-0032-11e6-b590-ff3779e322b5.html.

139 Richard Poplak, “How Sam ‘The Banana Man’ Zemurray Explains Capitalism, and Marikana,” The Johannesburg Daily Maverick, September 17, 2012, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-17-how-sam-the-banana-man-zemurray-explains-capitalism-and-marikana/.

 140 N.M. Nayar, “The Bananas: Botany, Origin, Dispersal,” in Horticultural Reviews, Volume 36, ed. Jules Janick (Trivandrum, India: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470527238.ch2.

141 Lizzie Thomson, “Exotic Frog Travels 5,000 Miles from Colombia to Wales in Bananas,” Metro UK, July 6, 2020, https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/06/exotic-frog-travels-5000-miles-columbia-wales-supermarket-bananas-12950188/.

142 Colleen Oakley, “It All Started with a Safari Jacket: The Banana Republic Story,” Forbes (Jersey City: May 2013), https://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2013/05/10/it-all-started-with-a-safari-jacket-the-banana-republic-story/#7d54d6391005.

143 Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2007).

144 R. Elton Smile, The Manatitlans, Or, A Record of Recent Scientific Explorations in the Andean La Plata, S.A. (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Razon, 1877), https://books.google.com/books?id=qG8SAAAAYAAJ.

145 Jonathan Hofmann et al., “Mortality among a Cohort of Banana Plantation Workers in Costa Rica,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 12, no. 4 (2006), https://doi.org/10.1179/oeh.2006.12.4.321.

146 Michael Warren Davis, “Modern Art: When a Banana Is Just a Banana,” The American Conservative, December 12, 2019, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/modern-art-when-a-banana-is-just-a-banana/.

147 Steven Wakelin et al., “Bacterial Community Structure and Denitrifier (Nir-Gene) Abundance in Soil Water and Groundwater beneath Agricultural Land in Tropical North Queensland, Australia,” Soil Research 49 (2011): 65–76, https://doi.org/10.1071/SR10055.

148 Dr. Victor C. Meyers and Dr. Anton R. Rose, “The Nutritional Value of the Banana: Strong Medical Endorsement of the Food Value of Bananas,” in Food Value of the Banana: Opinion of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities (United Fruit Company, 1917).

149 Randy C Ploetz, “Panama Disease: Return of the First Banana Menace,” International Journal of Pest Management 40, no. 4 (1994): 326–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/09670879409371908.

150 Alex Barekye et al., “Selection of Banana Hybrids Based on Resistance to Black Sigatoka Disease in Uganda,” The East African Agricultural Journal 78 (2012): 84–88.

151 Dan Koeppel, “Can This Fruit Be Saved?,” Popular Science, October 7, 2021, https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-06/can-fruit-be-saved/.

152 Soomi Lee Chung, “Bioprotein from Banana Wastes,” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1976), https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses.

153 Opeyemi A Oyewo, Maurice S Onyango, and Christian Wolkersdorfer, “Application of Banana Peels Nanosorbent for the Removal of Radioactive Minerals from  Real Mine Water,” Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 164 (November 2016): 369–76, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvrad.2016.08.014.

154 Brianna Wippman, “Bananas Could Be Heading for Extinction,” Food & Wine Magazine (Birmingham: June 2017), https://www.foodandwine.com/fruits/banana/bananas-could-be-headed-extinction.

155 “13 Rice Krispie Treats That Are Definitely Not for Kids,” Chowhound, 2015, accessed August 23, 2020, https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/166657/13-rice-krispie-treats-that-are-definitely-not-for-kids/.

156 Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, "U.S Congress Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Sixty-First Congress, First Session, Vol. 44, Part 3” (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), https://books.google.com/books?id=JjRCAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

157 D. J. Greathead and J. K. Waage, “The World Bank Technical Paper 11: Opportunities for Biological Control of Agricultural Pests in Developing Countries” (Washington D.C.: 1983).

158 “The Monkey’s Gnaw: Banana Ruse Ended 24-Hours’ Roof Tour,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, March 1, 1932.

159 Bhikkhu Bodhi, ed., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. 1 (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000).

160 “Top Ten Corporate Criminals Alumni,” Global Exchange, accessed August 23, 2020, https://globalexchange.org/corporate-criminals-alumni/.

161 Amazon Staff, “What Is the Banana Stand?,” Amazon.com, accessed August 23, 2020, https://www.aboutamazon.com/the-community-banana-stand.

162 U.S. House of Representatives, Eighty-Fourth Congress, Distribution Problems: Hearings before Subcommittee No. 5 of the Select Committee on Small Business (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), https://books.google.com/books?id=HbaXFG2f6-QC.

163 “Banana Cue,” Pinoy Cooking Recipes, 2019, accessed September 4, 2022, https://www.pinoycookingrecipes.com/banana-cue.html.

164 Fairtrade International, “Banana Workers Are Helping to Rebuild a Peaceful, Just Society in Colombia,” The Guardian Sustainable Business (London: July 2016).

165 “Our Test of Making Canned Bananas at Home,” Just Plain Cooking, accessed September 6, 2020, https://justplaincooking.ca/is-it-possible-to-can-banana/.

166 “Breakfast Loaves For Staff Appreciation,” Are You Eating That?, accessed September 6, 2020, https://carolbankseats.blogspot.com/2010/05/breakfast-loaves-for-staff-appreciation.html.

167 Handelman, “Ecuadorian Agrarian Reform: The Politics of Limited Change.”

168 Henry J. Frundt, “Toward a Hegemonic Resolution in the Banana Trade,” International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique 26, no. 2 (September 7, 2005).

169 John Gaylord Coulter, Twenty Chapters of a Nature-Study Reader for the Philippine Islands (Ann Arbor/Manila: University of Michigan, 1903), https://books.google.com/books?id=DEfVAAAAMAAJ.

170 U.S. Department of Defense, Classified Information Report: Colar 17th Brigade Responsible for the Uraba Antioquia Region (Washington D.C.: April 29,1996), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB217/doc02.pdf.

171 Lise Josefsen Hermann, “Danish Bananas May Be Sprayed with Highly Toxic Pesticides,” Danwatch, 2017, last accessed September 4, 2022, https://danwatch.dk/en/undersoegelse/danske-bananer-kan-vaere-sproejtet-med-livsfarlige-pesticider/#overblik.

172 Anabeth I. San Gregorio, Financial Assessment of Shifting from Aerial to Ground Spray in Banana Plantations in Davao Region, Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (Davao, Philippines: 2011).

173 Robert Sass, “Agricultural ‘Killing Fields’: The Poisoning of Costa Rican Banana Workers,” International Journal of Health Services, vol. 30, 2000.

174 Liz Alderman, “Sterilized Workers Seek to Collect Damages Against Dow Chemical in France,” The New York Times, September 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/business/energy-environment/dow-chemical-pesticide-banana-workers.html.

175 Frances Robles, “A Woman, a Banana and a $120,000 Question About What a Life Is Worth,” The New York Times, December 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/us/art-basel-banana-cancer-florida.html.

176 Human Rights Watch, Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations, Document 2734 (New York: April 25 2002), https://www.refworld.org/docid/45cc342f2.html.

177 Harry Belafonte, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” track 1 on Calypso, RCA Victor, 1956.

178 Joseph Agius and Sandra Levey, “Humour and Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Malta Journal of Health Sciences, 2019, https://doi.org/10.14614/HumourAUTISM/10/19.

179 Larry Elkin, “Will Banana Crisis Force More Rational Consideration of GMOs?,” Genetic Literacy Project, December 11, 2015, https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/12/11/will-banana-crisis-force-more-rational-consideration-of-gmos/.

180 Virginia Gewin, “Can the Banana Be Saved?,” Nova / PBS, November 3, 2016, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/rewilding-the-banana/. 

181 Belafonte, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).” 

182 Alistair Smith, Unpeeling the Banana Trade: A Fairtrade Foundation Briefing Paper, Fairtrade Foundation and Bananalink (London: 2009).

183 Big Boi, Killer Mike, El-P, “Banana Clipper,” track 2 on Run the Jewels, Fool’s Gold Records, 2013.

184 Steve Mirsky, “Attack on the Clones: The Fate of the World’s Favorite Fruit,” Scientific American (2008), https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0408-46.

185 Imtiyaz Rasool Parrey, “A Survey on the Health Advantages and Pharmaceutical Employments of South Indian Musa Acuminate,” Journal of Analytical & Pharmaceutical Research 7, no. 4 (August 9, 2018), https://doi.org/10.15406/japlr.2018.07.00264.

186 Carlos Arguedas, in conversation with Ricci Elizondo Calderón, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde, November 2004, http://www.greengold.org.uk/Riccy.htm.

187 Md. Shafiqul Islam, “Study on Plant of Paradise: Multiple Uses of Banana for Sustainable Development,” European Journal of Agricultural Sciences 10 (2013).

188 “Banana-Pecan Oat Waffles,” Vanilla and Bean, accessed September 12, 2020, https://vanillaandbean.com/banana-pecan-oat-waffles/.

189 Hunter Saklad, Platanera Rio Sixaola, S.A., World Resources Institute (Alajuela, Costa Rica: 1994).

190 Bob Perillo, The Current Crisis In The Latin American Banana Industry, US/Labor Education in the Americas Project (Washington D.C.: 2000), accessed September 4, 2022, http://members.tripod.com/foro_emaus/Banana_Crisis.htm.

191 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (London: Printed for Her Majesty’s Stationary Office by Eyre and Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, 1894), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158005466676&view=1up&seq=7.

192 Paul Barbano, “Banana Peels Are Good for Gardens,” The Delaware Cape Gazette, June 3, 2020, https://www.capegazette.com/article/banana-peels-are-good-gardens/202889.

193 Stephen Roblin and Armin Rosencranz, “Tellez v. Dole: Nicaraguan Banana Workers Confront the U.S. Judicial System,” Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal 7, no. 2 (2014),  http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/ggueljhttp://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/gguelj/vol7/iss2/4.

194 Ted Nace, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berkeley: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005).

195 William Mark Adams and Martin Mulligan, Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-Colonial Era (Earthscan Publications, 2003).

196 David C. Sloane, “Bad Meat and Brown Bananas: Building a Legacy of Health by Confronting Health Disparities around Food,” Planner’s Network, 2004, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.plannersnetwork.org/2004/01/bad-meat-and-brown-bananas-building-a-legacy-of-health-by-confronting-health-disparities-around-food/.

197 “Fungus Could Cause Banana Shortage, Drive up Prices,” KRON4, originally broadcast on CNN, August 15, 2019, https://www.kron4.com/news/national/fungus-could-cause-banana-shortage-drive-up-prices/.

198 Aziz Elbehri et al., Ecuador’s Banana Sector Under Climate Change: An Economic and Biophysical Assessment to Promote a Sustainable and Climate-Compatible Strategy, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome: 2016), www.fao.org/publications.

199 Bruce K. Kirchoff and Riva A. Bruenn, “How Do Banana Flowers Develop?” Frontiers for Young Minds 6 (November 20, 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2018.00060.

200 Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy,” performed by Prince and the Revolution, track 1 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros. Records, 1984.

201 Vickram Doctor, “Balking at Banana Flowers: Indians Are Rediscovering Old Ways of Cooking Food during Covid-19 Lockdown,” The India Economic Times, July 27, 2020, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/balking-at-banana-flowers-indians-are-rediscovering-old-ways-of-cooking-food-during-covid-19-lockdown/articleshow/77192053.cms.

202 John Soluri, “People, Plants, and Pathogens: The Eco-Social Dynamics of Export Banana Production in Honduras, 1875-1950,” Hispanic American Historical Review 80 (2000), https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-80-3-463.

203 Alyssa Navarro, “Climate Change Favors Growth of Fungus That Causes Banana Disease Black Sigatoka,” Tech Times, May 8, 2019, https://www.techtimes.com/articles/243006/20190508/climate-change-favors-growth-of-fungus-that-causes-banana-disease-black-sigatoka.htm.

204 Amy Grant, “Banana Trees Harvesting: Learn How and When to Pick Bananas,” Gardening Know How, 2020, https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/banana/banana-tree-harvesting.htm.

205 “Is Banana Sexy? Is Banana Racist?,” Fields Magazine 3 (Austin, Texas: 2016), https://subtile.co/fields/is-banana-sexy-is-banana-racist.

206 Luis Prima and His Orchestra, “Please No Squeeza Da Banana,” Luis Prima, Jaffe Ben, and Jack Zero, Universal Music Corp., 1945.

207 Alicja Sowinska, “Dialectics of the Banana Skirt: The Ambiguities of Josephine Baker’s Self-Representation,” Michigan Feminist Studies 19, Bodies: Physical and Abstract (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2005), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.ark5583.0019.003.

208 E. S. Ismail, Control of Crown Browning in Banana (Musa Sp.), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Rome: 2002).

209 George Andreas and Chris Sutherland, “Da Banana Bunch" track 1 on Da Banana Bunch, the Donkey Kong 64 Original Soundtrack, Nintendo, 1999.

210 Annie Correal, “The Secret Life of the City Banana,” The New York Times, August 4, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/nyregion/the-secret-life-of-the-banana.html.

211 Carmen Lyra, Bananos y Hombres (San Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial Costa Rica, 1931).

212 Martina Köberl et al., “Members of Gammaproteobacteria as Indicator Species of Healthy Banana Plants on Fusarium Wilt-Infested Fields in Central America,” Scientific Reports 7 (March 27, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/srep45318.

213 “How Much Care Do Bananas Need?” Dole Europe, accessed November 29, 2020, http://www.dole.eu/dole-earth/farmtour/bananito/hotspot/plant-care.html.

214 Shirley Mak, “Movie Review Friday: Bananas!*” The Sierra Club, 2011, https://blogs.sierraclub.org/greenlife/2011/04/movie-review-friday-bananas.html.

215 Hendrik Snakenburg, “The Latest Glory of the Hartenkamp Estate, Clifford’s Banana, Seen for the First Time in Flower and Fruit, as a Result of Special Care; Adorned and Described from Personal Observation by Carl Linnaeus of Sweden, M.D. and Most Eminent Botanist,” in Carl Linnaeus’s Musa Cliffortiana (Leiden, 1736), translated by Stephen Freer (Vienna: A.R.G. Gantner Verlag, 2007).

216 Jon Daly, “Scientists Race to Find Wild, Ancient Bananas to Save the Popular Fruit from Climate Change,” ABC News, Australia, November 25, 2020, https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12917960.

217 Alan Levinovitz, “The First Superfood: Doctors Believed Bananas Could Cure Celiac Disease,” Slate, 2015, https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/the-first-superfood-doctors-believed-bananas-could-cure-celiac-disease.html.

218 “Securing the Future of the Banana: Why We Need to Find New Wild Species,” Universal-Sci, 2020, https://www.universal-sci.com/headlines/2020/11/19/securing-the-future-of-the-banana-why-we-need-to-find-new-wild-species. 

219 Deepak Rughani, Report from Colombia Emergency Conference "Global Crisis, Human Rights and Agrofuels," Biofuelwatch UK, 2007.

220 Report #1 - Todos Somos Honduras Delegation 1/23-1/24, Honduras Resists: Honduras RESISTE, 2010, https://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2010/01/report-1-todos-somos-honduras.html.

221 Jonathan Renshaw, Guyana: Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples, Inter-American Development Bank (Washington D.C.: 2007).

222 Atalia Shragai, “Do Bananas Have a Culture? United Fruit Company Colonies in Central America 1900-1960,” Iberoamericana XI, no. 42 (2011), https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268401744.pdf.

223 Jennifer Gordon, “People Are Not Bananas: How Immigration Differs from Trade,” Northwestern University Law Review 1004 (2010), Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1547153, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1547153.

224 Michael F. Kay, “What Do You Mean The Market Makes You Nervous?,” Forbes (Jersey City: 2015), https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkay/2015/09/01/what-do-you-mean-the-market-makes-you-nervous/?sh=32ed66416703.

225 Cameron Gallagher, Mike and McWhirter, “Chiquita Secrets Revealed; Life on a Banana Plantation,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1998.

226 “Overview of the Global Banana Market,” Fresh Plaza, 2018, https://www.freshplaza.com/article/196980/OVERVIEW-GLOBAL-BANANA-MARKET/.

227 “Trade Policy Review - Costa Rica 2001,” World Trade Organization (Geneva: May 11, 2001), https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tpr_e/tp162_e.htm.

228 Thomas McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976).

229 Countries Where Bananas Are Reportedly Produced with Forced Labor and/or Child Labor, Verité, Inc., Amherst, MA, 2020, https://www.verite.org/project/bananas-2/.

230 Manuel Rueda and Candice Choi, “Banana Industry on Alert after Disease Arrives in Colombia,” ABC News, August 25, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/banana-industry-alert-disease-arrives-colombia-65188401.

231 “Lonely Banana Cultivation in Vietnam,” Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (Quezon City, Philippines: 2019), https://asianfarmers.org/vietnam-lonely-banana-cultivation/.

 232 Dore Strauch, Satan Came to Eden: A Survivor’s Account of the “Galapagos Affair” (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), http://www.galapagos.to/TEXTS/STRAUCH-3.php.

233 “Fine Art Watercolor Painting - Blossom of the Banana Tree II,” product description, UNICEF Market (New York), accessed January 10, 2021, https://www.market.unicefusa.org/itemdetail/?pid=U17315.

234 Annual Catalog: Native and Exotic Plants, Trees, Shrubs (Royal Palm Nurseries, Oneco Florida: Reasoner Bros., 1899), https://books.google.com/books?id=vnHnAAAAMAAJ.

235 A. R. Ennos, H.-Ch. Spatz, and T. Speck, “The Functional Morphology of the Petioles of the Banana, Musa Textilis,” Journal of Experimental Botany 51, no. 353 (2000), https://doi.org/10.1093/jexbot/51.353.2085.

236 U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, Information Report: Communist Activities among the Banana Workers (Washington D.C.: 1953).

237 The Real Price of Bananas, short documentary directed by Jose Daniel Lopez (2014; Ecuador: Youtube), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9-KQepO3t8&t=612s.

238 Central Intelligence Agency, Current Support Brief No. 47.5294: The Deepening Banana Crisis in Ecuador.

239 Orellana is the General Secretary of the Port Workers Association in Puerto Bolivar, Ecuador. He says, “Basically, the rights of the workers shouldn't be trampled on…We're not registered with Social Security. As a result of our struggle, we've won that right. It is not something we have just won; it is something that already existed within the law, the constitution and the Social Security system. Every worker must by law be registered with the Social Security system and we have managed to achieve that. We've been fighting for getting our benefits paid, for workers to get paid what they are due…We want a decent canteen. We are asking for clean drinking water, not a dirty bucket where all the sweaty port workers have dip in their glasses. We want the companies to ask for a space for a canteen, or to build one. Otherwise, they should pay for workers' meals and the stipends established by law… The working class will continue to fight for a better future for the entire population of Ecuador.”

Washington Orellana, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde, May 2003, http://www.greengold.org.uk/washington.htm.

240 Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases.

241 “Path Breaking Research on Fair Trade Flowers,” Center for Fair and Alternative Trade, 2010, https://cfat.colostate.edu/2010/05/path-breaking-research-on-fair-trade-flowers/.

242 Ana Paula Bispo Gonçalves et al., “Physicochemical, Mechanical and Morphologic Characterization of Purple Banana Fibers,” Materials Research-Ibero-American Journal of Materials 18 (2015).

243 Kantarawee Khayhan et al., “Banana Blossom Agar (BABA), a New Medium to Isolate Members of the Cryptococcus Neoformans/Cryptococcus Gattii Species Complex Useful for Resource Limited Countries,” Mycoses 61, no. 12 (December 2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/myc.12833.

244 Jeff Daniells et al., New and Alternative Banana Varieties Designed to Increase Market Growth, Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, Queensland Government, Horticulture Australia (Sydney, Australia: 2011).

245 Exploring Intersections of Trafficking in Persons Vulnerability and Environmental Degradation in Forestry and Adjacent Sectors, Verité, Inc., Amherst, MA, 2020, https://www.verite.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Burma-Case-Studies-Full-Report-–-Verité-Forestry.pdf.

246 “‘Eating 10 Bananas a Day Saved My Life,’” New York Post (New York: November 12, 2013), https://nypost.com/2013/11/12/eating-10-bananas-a-day-saved-my-life/.

247 Central Intelligence Agency, Labor Situation in the Banana Zone.

248 Joseph Orton Kerbey, The Land of Tomorrow: A Newspaper Exploration Up the Amazon and Over the Andes to the California of South America (New York: W.F. Brainard, 1906), https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=VQQNAAAAIAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA43.

249 “Peruvian Farmers Do Not Stop," Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago, Chile, 2020, http://www.fao.org/americas/noticias/ver/en/c/1297221/.

250 Morton, Fruits of Warm Climates.

 251 Juan Forero, “In Ecuador’s Banana Fields, Child Labor Is Key to Profits,” The New York Times, July 13, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/world/in-ecuador-s-banana-fields-child-labor-is-key-to-profits.html. 

252 Jason M. Colby, The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2011).

253 Hussein Abaza and Veena Jha, Integrated Assessment of Trade Liberalization and Trade-Related Policies, United Nations Environment Programme (New York and Geneva: 2002).

254 Samuel C. Prescott, “The Banana: A Food of Exceptional Value,” in Food Value of the Banana: Opinion of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities (United Fruit Company, 1917).

255 Ganesh C. Bora et al., “Application of Bio-Image Analysis for Classification of Different Ripening Stages of Banana,” Journal of Agricultural Science 7, no. 2 (2015), https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v7n2p152.

256 Annika Durinck, “‘The Pandemic Increased Production Costs for Our Banana Producers,’” Fresh Plaza, July 17, 2020, https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9235660/the-pandemic-increased-production-costs-for-our-banana-producers/.

257 Identification and Integrated PEST Management in Banana and Plantain, Magdalena and Urabá Colombia, AUGURA - Asociación de Bananeros de Colombia (Medellín, Colombia: 2009).

258 Report No. 947 a-EC - Ecuador: Appraisal of a Second Guayaquil Port Project, The World Bank, Latin America and the Caribbean Projects Department (Washington D.C.: April 20, 1976), http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/pt/298791468260685603/text/multi-page.txt.

259 Anna Canning, “The Many vs. The Mighty: A Story of Small-Scale Banana Farmers,” Fair Food, Issue 19, Voices of Fair Trade (Portland, Oregon: Fair World Project, September 4, 2019), https://fairworldproject.org/many-mighty-a-story-of-small-scale-banana-farmers/.

260 “Can Banana Pseudostem Help Clean the Waters in the Amazon?,” Sterlitech (Kent, Washington, September 11, 2019), https://www.sterlitech.com/blog/post/can-banana-pseudostem-help-clean-the-amazon-waters.

261 “Banana Farmers and Workers - About Bananas,” Fairtrade Foundation, London, accessed January 26, 2021, https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/farmers-and-workers/bananas/about-bananas/.

262 Ben Wesley Brisbois, Leila Harris, and Jerry M. Spiegel, “Political Ecologies of Global Health: Pesticide Exposure in Southwestern Ecuador’s Banana Industry,” Antipode 50, no. 1 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12340. 

263 Wolfram Hoetzenecker, Emmanuella Guenova, and Matthias Moehrle, “Banana Leaves: An Alternative Wound Dressing Material?,” Expert Review of Dermatology (Expert Reviews Ltd., 2013), https://doi.org/10.1586/17469872.2013.835925.

264 Raoul A. Robinson, Return to Resistance: Breeding Crops to Reduce Pesticide Dependence, Online Access: EBSCO Environment Complete (Davis, CA: AgAccess, 1996), https://books.google.com/books?id=2cFDhH0wlIkC.

265 Staffan Muller-Wille, introduction to Linnaeus's Musa Cliffortiana, translated by Stephen Freer.

266 Maria Eugenia Angulo Durán, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde.

267 This quote comes from a Guaymí laborer on a United Fruit plantation spanning the border of Costa Rica and Panama via Philippe Bourgois, Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

268 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information.

269 T. Wright, “Fruits and Vegetables of Tropical Queensland,” in Descriptive Geography of Australia and Oceania from Original Sources, ed. A.J. Herbertson (London: A&C Black, Ltd., 1919), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.a0009598517.

270 Gustavo Murillo, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde.

271 Leiton Valverde was the Secretary General of SITRAP, a union representing tropical fruit workers across Costa Rica. The translations are my own.

Didier Alexander Leiton Valverde, “La Libertad Sindical y la Negociación Colectiva en las Plantaciones Piñeras de Costa Rica,” SITRAP (Sindicato de Trabajadores de Plantaciones Agrícolas), Sept 17, 2012.

272 Jean-Max Andre, Window Into The Eyes Of A Lone Black Nation (Lulu Press, Incorporated, 2008).

273 Carlos Arguedas, interview by Jan Nimmo, Green Gold, Oro Verde.

274 Diaro Extra is a newspaper based in San José, Costa Rica. The translations are my own.

Didier Leitón, interview with María Siu Lanzas, “Piñeras y Bananeras No Respetan Derecho Sindical,” Diario Extra, April 12, 2012.

 275 The chapbook this is sourced from is full of interviews with women who work in maquiladoras or banana plantations. Guadelupe Martinez grew up on a plantation washing administrators’ laundry before she got a job on the plantation itself. She talks about the challenges of working 12-hour workdays six days a week while still being a mother and managing a home. She speaks of sexism, not just from the company but within the union itself. “The men have this mentality that we can’t do certain jobs. But what you see is that we often do the same work, out of necessity. You can see it now with [hurricane] Mitch. There are a lot of women with shovels taking the mud out of the houses. We have sufficient ability, but the men don’t want to recognize that.” Martinez is one of the women that joined the male-dominated union, incorporating the fight for issues that were beneficial for families, such as access to schools. In the interview, she says, “When I first started working, I didn’t know how to demand my rights. The boss unnerved me really easily. But the compañeras on the women’s committee helped me to understand unions, labor rights, and women’s issues. Being involved in the committee changed my life, not just at work but also at home.” This idea was a theme in women’s interviews in this chapbook as well as Dana Frank’s Bananeras. By working towards equal gender participation in the collective, sometimes that balance was transferred home, with men more likely to play an active role in domestic issues.

Guadelupe Martinez, “Being Involved in the Women’s Committee Changed My Life,” in Women Behind the Labels: Worker Testimonies from Central America, ed. Marion Marion Traub-Werner and Lynda Yanz (Washington D.C.: STITCH and the Maquila Solidarity Network, 2000).

276 Bethany Oxender, “Bananas: Naturally Sweet and Simple Fruit Enjoyed Around the Globe,” Food & Nutrition Magazine, October 29, 2018, https://foodandnutrition.org/from-the-magazine/bananas-naturally-sweet-and-simple-fruit-enjoyed-around-the-globe/.

277 Middle America Information Bureau, Background Information on Bananas.

278 Liliana Maria Cardona, John Doe, Angela Maria Henao Montes, Adanolis Pardo Lora, Aidee Moreno Valencia, and Albinia Delgado, et al. v. Chiquita Brands International, Inc., an Ohio corporation, and Chiquita Fresh North America LLC, a Delaware corporation, On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, 760 F.3d 1185 (11th Cir. 2014).

279 Adrian Mallory and Dario Giuliani, “Technology for Agriculture in Africa: A Fourth Revolution without a Third?,” Briter, July 10, 2019, https://briterbridges.com/stories/2021/5/27/technology-for-agriculture-in-africa-a-fourth-revolution-without-a-third.

280 Steve Striffler and Mark Moberg, Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003).

281 Johan Heinrich Jungius, “To the Very Famous Man Dr. Carl Linnaeus, Highly Experienced Doctor of Medicine, When he Commemorated Clifford’s Banana with Best Wishes from J.H. Jungius, Learned in Civil and Canon Law,” in Carl Linnaeus’s Musa Cliffortiana.

282 Middle America Information Bureau, Background Information on Bananas.

283 Pooja Manchanda et al., “Production of Superelite Planting Material Through In Vitro Culturing in Banana,” in Biotechnologies of Crop Improvement, Volume 1: Cellular Approaches, ed. Satbir Singh Gosal and Shabir Hussain Wani (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018).

284 Tim Adams, “Colombia: No Guns, No Drugs, No Atrocities, No Rape, No Murder. Just Bananas…,” The Guardian.

285 Sunil Naik, “Development of Protocol for Banana Cryopreservation Using Floral Explants” (ICAR - Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 2017), https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/displaybitstream?handle=1/5810064271&fileid=e7bfb349-47c5-4fcb-9900-6c34e5f23f64.

286 Thiago Costa Chacon, “The Phonology and Morphology of Kubeo: The Documentation, Theory, and Description of and Amazonian Language” (The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2012), http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/graduate/Dissertations/ThiagoChaconFinal.pdf.

287 Gwendolyn Stansbury, “Birds or Bananas? Strelitzia, Musa, and Heliconia,” Perennial Pastimes, April 8, 2015, https://perennialpastimes.com/2015/04/08/birds-or-bananas-strelitzia-musa-and-heliconia/.

288 This version of the text is from a 1983 English translation by Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc, via the University of Michigan text archives at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=845981.

Koran (56:27-28).

289 Middle America Information Bureau, Background Information on Bananas.

290 Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1971), translated by Cedric Belfrage (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997).

291 Greenearth Publishing, Inc., “Musa ‘Manzano’ (Apple),” Growing Banana Plants Banana Trees, accessed September 16, 2022, http://www.banana-plants.com/Apple.html.

292 Ambrose et al., “Techniques to Improve the Shelf Life of Freshly Harvested Banana Blossoms.”

293 Sumner Blossom, ed., American Magazine (Indianapolis: Colver Publishing House, 1940).

294 Ploetz et al., “Banana and Plantain—An Overview with Emphasis on Pacific Island Cultivars Musaceae (Banana Family).”

295 A. Devouard, “The World’s Largest Herb,” in Bananas, ed. Claudine Picq (Paris: Centre for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research and the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, 1998).

296 You may remember this speaker from near the beginning of the poem. His was the first assassination introduced to the reader with the line "On 8 December 2017, Hernán Bedoya – another Afro-descendant leader from Chocó – was heading home on horseback to his village." Bedoya founded the humanitarian zone “Mi Tierra” and fought against banana and palm oil plantations that were spreading in his home region in Colombia. I felt like I knew Hernán after reading so much about his work, and it was important to me that I ended on his words. He continues: “People used to live where you now find palm trees…all this land has been used for palm and cattle ranching. We are now hearing that they want to plant 1,000 more hectares of palm. But I don’t know where they are going to plant them, as we are here in this land. They will first need to remove us from this land to plant those 1,000 hectares of palm.” The full video can be seen at the website below.

Hernán Bedoya, from the film In Memory of Hernán Bedoya, directed by Nico Muzi and Nicolás Richat (2017; Argentina and Belgium: Gancho, and Transport and Environment), https://www.fronterainvisible.com.