American Studies Plenary with MATT GARCIA (Dartmouth College): 'Breaking Good?: Eli Black and the Reformation of United Fruit Company'

We are familiar with the sins of the United Fruit Company, a U.S. multinational corporation so controlling of its Latin American hosts that it earned the dubious nickname “the Octopus.” Its audacious acts of economic imperialism hastened its disappearance from corporate America today, but how exactly did it end?

Matt Garcia will explore how Eli Black went about rebuilding United Fruit. Black embraced an ethic of “social responsibility” that earned United Fruit the reputation as “the most socially conscious American company in the hemisphere” by 1972. Garcia will also examine how and why we must study the United States in a transnational context, including revising our use of “American” to apply to the Western Hemisphere.