This book was made possible in part by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of California, Santa Cruz Academic Senate Committee on Research, and the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment, to all of which I am deeply grateful. My thanks also to Victor Schiffrin for scanning photographs. I also want to thank the History Department at UCSC for its support and friendship, especially Meg Lilienthal, Stephanie Hinkle, and Tim Guichard.
On the home front and beyond, thanks to many friends, loved ones, and colleagues for keeping my heart warm, my head clear, and my eyes on the prize: Frank Bardacke, Cheri Brooks, Anne Callahan, Nancy Chen, Sami Chen, Adriana Craciun, Gerri Dayharsh, Clare Delano, Eleanor Engstrand, Miriam Frank (no relation!), Marge Frantz, Julie Greene, Beth Haas, Hamsa Heinrich, Desma Holcomb, Julie Jacobs, Ann Kingsolver, Nelson Lichtenstein, John Logan, Stephen McCabe, Becky Dayharsh McCabe, Ramona Dayharsh McCabe, Wendy Mink, Amy Newell, Paul Ortiz, Sheila Payne, Thomas Pistole, Mary Beth Pudup, Katie Quan, Gerda Ray, Karin Stallard, and Alice Yang Murray. My special thanks to Carter Wilson for the joy of being writers together. My great thanks to Vanessa Tait, too, for so much support, fun, and political wisdom; and to Craig Alderson for that invaluable boxful. Thank you to my parents for their boundless enthusiasm for my endeavors, even when they seemed dangerous.
Finally, my most profound thanks to three people whose vision, wisdom, and comradeship lie at the core of this project. With great generosity and warmth, German Zepeda welcomed me into COLSIBA and trusted me with its story. I want to thank him deeply for his friendship and for his breathtaking political wisdom; and for my first, still-inspiring trip to Nicaragua.
Thank you, Stephen Coats of US/LEAP, from the bottom of my heart for that proverbial phone call that changed my life. Stephen not only pulled me into the banana world but continues to provide a humbling example of political commitment, respect for Latin American working people, insight into true international solidarity, and steady patience in the face of seemingly overwhelming corporate power. It’s been a great, if bumpy ride, Stephen.
Lastly, and most importantly, my greatest thanks go to Iris Munguía, the center of the whole story—of this book, of the women banana workers, and of my own work with them. I am still astonished at the amazing generosity with which she has invited me into her home, her family, and her work for weeks on end; and at the trust and patience with which she has shared so much with me (and also at her endless politeness, albeit with a giggle here and there, in the face of my evolving Spanish). My thanks to Ivan, Jessica, and Toño Munguía, too, for sharing the house, driving me around, helping me out, and welcoming me into the family so warmly; and to Olimpia Figueroa for welcoming me into the extended family. My own greatest hope is that this book will somehow live up to the faith that Iris placed in it, and, most importantly, serve the struggle of banana workers worldwide to build a just world for themselves and their children.
Iris Munguía (COSIBAH), Gloria García (SITRATERCO), Zoila Lagos (COSIBAH), and Domitila Hernández (SITRAESISA), near Omoa, Cortés, Honduras, returning from COSIBAH workshops in Guatemala, November 2002 (left to right).
Of the four, Domitila Hernández, secretary of women for the Dole banana workers’ union in the Aguán Valley, Honduras, came the farthest the morning of November 6, 2002. It took her four hours on a bus that left at dawn just to get to La Lima, the old United Fruit company town near San Pedro Sula in the north. Domitila was also the quietest of the four. In her early fifties, roundly built with small laughing eyes, she occupied herself on the trip weaving a pink and white plastic cover for a kleenex box. Gloria García—a bit more serious, maybe ten years younger, with tiny black braids pulled up into a knot and wearing, as usual, the snazziest outfit—got to La Lima in half an hour from her house in El Progreso. As secretary of organization for the biggest, oldest banana union in Honduras, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Tela Railroad Company (the Union of Workers of the Tela Railroad Company; SITRATERCO), she was the highest-ranking woman in the Honduran banana unions.
Iris Munguía, the political and personal force at the center of the whole story, was waiting in La Lima with the truck. In her mid forties, self-possessed, and an expert at the art of tight jeans, she had her own black braids tied back with a scarf she’d gotten in Europe from the global campaign against the World Bank. Since 1995 Iris had served as secretary of women for both the Coordinadora de Sindicatos Bananeros y Agroindustriales de Honduras (Coalition of Honduran Banana and Agroindustrial Unions; COSIBAH) and the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Sindicatos Bananeros (Coalition of Latin American Banana Unions; COLSIBA). As it began to rain she wrapped the women’s luggage, their packets of notebooks, pencils, and felt pens, and the video projector into big black plastic garbage bags and heaved them into the back of the little two-seated Nissan pickup truck.1
Once on the highway the three mujeres bananeras—banana women, as they call themselves—wove through San Pedro Sula and out of town. Passing Choloma, where the maquiladoras hulk like concentration camps—row upon row of concrete warehouses with garment and electronics factories hidden behind barbed wire—they pulled over at a bus shelter to pick up COSIBAH staffer Zoila Lagos, at fifty the jolliest, artsiest, and most politically experienced of the four. She brought the soundtrack, a cassette compiled to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution. After an hour or so the women turned left at Puerto Cortés, at the coast, and headed southwest toward Guatemala, bouncing along the potholed gravel road, with Zoila and Iris belting out the songs all the way. The waters of the Caribbean lapped the coast about five hundred feet away on the right; steep green mountains loomed up to the left, as the now-afternoon light shot sideways through the palm trees. Half the bridges were out but Iris just plunged the truck right through the fords without missing a beat.
The Honduran side of the border turned out to be just a few shacks, a silent man with a stamp, and two black-market money changers. The Guatemalan side was much more serious: a bar across the road, creepier officials, and farther down the highway, a second inspection, this one by rifle-carrying, adolescent Mayan boys in camouflage fatigues. It was well after dark by the time they got to Morales and found the union hall. Selfa Sandoval, secretary of press, organization, and propaganda for the Del Monte banana workers’ union in Guatemala, came rushing out to greet them, and they all ambled down to a cafe for dinner, dripping with sweat in the heat. Selfa—laughing, round, and fortyish, too, in a trim black-and-white two-piece suit she’d sewn herself—flooded the visitors with a rapid-fire report of union and personal gossip, as the male union officers dropped by to say hi.2
This wasn’t just any union hall they’d arrived at, or just any group of union leaders. Three years earlier, in October 1999, two hundred armed paramilitaries acting in the interests of the Del Monte Corporation had kidnapped four of the union’s male leaders and twenty more of its members, held them captive in the hall, beaten them, threatened to kill them, and forced them to go on the radio to renounce their union activities. Only when each man had signed an affidavit denouncing the union did the paramilitaries allow them to leave. They fled into hiding in Guatemala City and remained underground for over two years. After a successful international campaign denouncing Del Monte, five of those men eventually went into exile in the United States; two remain in Morales as union officers. Selfa Sandoval, the only woman officer, wasn’t kidnapped. But she was the one who insisted on reopening the union hall four days later, and she got her share of death threats during the next few months.3