The Banana Massacre: A Story of Corporate Violence 

On December 5th, 1928, Colombian laborers and their families gathered at Ciénaga’s train station to negotiate the terms of their strike against the United Fruit Company with the Governor of Magdelena. Just before midnight, the Colombian military opened fire on the crowd, as the government declared a state of siege in the banana zone.​ This atrocity, ending the morning of December 6th, is known as the Banana Massacre.¹ 

The 1920s was an era known for its trends of excessive consumer culture. Although this is often exaggerated, there is still some truth to this assessment, as material goods gained increasing popularity during the decade. Such atypical purchases were also more affordable to the general public, and many were eager to purchase them.³ One such item that gained popularity amongst the 1920s consumer culture crowd was the banana, which was not part of the typical American diet until after the United Fruit Company (U.F.C.) vigorously advertised it. The company began advertising bananas in 1917, at which time they already had established plantations in Central and South American countries, and they used the typical “logic” form of advertising to sell the exotic fruit. For this reason, they had scientists promote the nutritional value of bananas, and banana sales began to increase. However, it would only truly reach its peak in the 1920s, when Edward Bernays changed American advertising forever as he targeted people’s emotions as opposed to using logic. One of the largest projects the U.F.C undertook with Bernays as advertising director was the launch of the “Great White Fleet” cruiser that brought Americans to tour United Fruit’s plantations in Latin America. This endeavor would prove to be very successful in increasing the banana market. However, the visitors only saw a theatrically created plantation that aimed to portray it as a humane and peaceful place. In reality, U.F.C. plantations were corrupt and the laborers were subjected to terrible work conditions.⁴

Colombia was home to a number of United Fruit plantations, where the banana workers were subjected to long hours and low pay. Laborers from the U.F.C.’s Magdalena plantation organized a strike on October 6, 1928, in which they issued nine demands to the company.⁵ Their demands included receiving real money payments and transitioning to a six-day work week.⁶ The strike lasted two months, and on December 5th, the Governor of Magdalena summoned the strikers to Ciénaga in order to settle the strike. Strikers gathered in the thousands and, at the same time, the government issued Decree Number 1 that ordered the military to open fire on the unarmed strikers and their families.⁷ It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 2,000 people were killed in Ciénaga’s train station that night.⁸ Despite this, once daybreak came around, only nine bodies were left behind. Some strikers theorized that the nine bodies were symbolic of the nine demands of the strikers. The Colombian military did not end there, with them killing over 1,000 strikers. Laborers responded by destroying a number of United Fruit’s buildings.⁹

This massacre was not the effort of just the Colombian government. In fact, the United Fruit Company leveraged their power in the United States government to ensure that the strike was brought to an end. Considering that the strikers’ demands would have resulted in higher operation costs for the company, U.F.C. utilized their ties with the United States government to have the Marine Corps threaten to invade Colombia if the Colombian government did not protect the company’s interests and bring an end to the strike.¹¹ Such corporate interference in international relations would not have been possible prior to World War I, when there was a greater amount of suspicion of corporate power. However, by the 1920s, corporations and businessmen were idealized, as the American public viewed them as instrumental parts of the war effort.¹² The American government in the 1920s therefore supported corporations like the United Fruit Company to expand their markets and acquire raw materials through applying economic, diplomatic and military pressure. This was particularly common in Latin America. The pressure could be subtle or indirect. However, in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Santo Domingo, the U.S. government took more direct and bold action to protect corporations’ interests by sending troops.¹³ The Banana Massacre was the direct result of American military threats and pressure against the Colombian government. 

Justifying such violence and anti-union activity required the use of fear-mongering, with the most effective tool being the apparent threat of the spread of communism. The strike in Colombia did in fact occur in alliance with the Colombian Communist Party, which helped mobilize the poor and small business owners to provide support for the strikers and their demands.¹⁴ Prior to the massacre, from 1919 to 1920 the United States was the site of a Red Scare, which was the successful result of the Bolshevik Revolution in what became the Soviet Union. During the Red Scare, the American public feared that communism would create a revolution in the United States. Due to this, significant hysteria spread throughout the United States, with people such as organized laborers falling under intense scrutiny.¹⁵ For this reason, corporations that suppressed strikes were viewed as safeguards against communism.¹⁶ This was not coincidental, as corporations, with the help of the press, made it seem as though all strikes were part of a larger communist plot.¹⁷ Furthermore, companies like the United fruit Company hired public relations firms to ensure that such bloody stories like that of the Banana Massacre did not reach the American public.¹⁸ Despite these efforts, the memory of the massacre has remained deeply ingrained in Colombian culture, with it even inspiring a scene of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Nobel Peace Prize winning book One Hundred Years of Solitude.¹⁹

Citations

Footnotes

1.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See,” Visualizing the Americas, accessed March 31, 2025, https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. ↩︎
2.  Handling Bananas, Backing the Bunch, Colombia, 1924., ReVista (Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, 1924), https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/making-a-difference-repatriating-photographs-revista/. ↩︎
3.  Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, ed. Eric Foner (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995), 77. ↩︎
4.  Lindsey Morey, “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire,” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014, https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. ↩︎
5.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ↩︎
6.  Mariana Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power,” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023, https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/. ↩︎
7.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ↩︎
8.  Aviva Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094, 95. ↩︎
9.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ↩︎
10.  Comisaría de La United Fruit Company En Ciénaga, 1928., 1928, Wikimedia Commons, 1928, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comisariato_cienaga.jpg. ↩︎
11.  Ramirez Cabal, “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” ↩︎
12.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31-32. ↩︎
13.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 36. ↩︎
14.  Chomsky, “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone,” 95. ↩︎
15.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 218. ↩︎
16.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 32. ↩︎
17.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 220. ↩︎
18.  Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 31. ↩︎
19.  “Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” ↩︎

Bibliography

Chomsky, Aviva. “Globalization, Labor, and Violence in Colombia’s Banana Zone.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 72 (2007): 901–115. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673094. 

“Colombia: A Photograph We Were Not Supposed To See.” Visualizing the Americas. Accessed March 31, 2025. https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1. 

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Edited by Eric Foner. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995. 

Handling bananas, backing the bunch, Colombia, 1924. ReVista. Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, 1924. https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/making-a-difference-repatriating-photographs-revista/. 

Morey, Lindsey. “Blood For Bananas: United Fruit’s Central American Empire.” Roots of Contemporary Issues, 2014. https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/. 

Ramirez Cabal, Mariana. “The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power.” Harvard International Review, June 9, 2023. https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/.