afterward by a pair of Englishmen, Mansel Carr and Laurence Bradbury, who partnered with a firm in New Orleans to deliver bananas regularly to the Crescent City. This enterprise took off around the time Keith began buying farmland in South America. His purchases were subsequently absorbed by United Fruit, as was the Santa Marta Railway Company (originally a British-owned business and Carr’s former employer). Like Keith’s holdings in Central America, northeastern Colombia was thus drawn into the multinational’s orbit, where it remained until World War II.10
Holland in the Tropics
With its fertile soils, abundant hydrologic resources, and direct access to European ports and the southern and eastern coasts of the United States, the Caribbean Basin has been the source of most of the bananas traded internationally since the late 1800s. But while Europe and the United States are farther from the costa, the region is well suited to fruit production, more so than many other parts of the Western Hemisphere. Northern Chile and the entire Peruvian littoral, for example, are extremely dry. Arid conditions result partly because the Andes impede the movement of moisture-laden clouds out of the Amazon Basin, east of the mountains. Also, clouds that form in and around the Humboldt Current, which has low temperatures owing to its origins in the frigid seas near Tierra del Fuego and which flows northward along the Pacific coast of South America, are thin as a rule and therefore the source of little precipitation. For hundreds of kilometers along the coast, the only green places are the narrow valleys of rivers careening down from the nearby Andes.
A little north of Peru’s boundary with Ecuador but still below the equator, the Humboldt Current turns away from the continental mainland and heads straight to the Galápagos Islands, 1,000 kilometers due west and the only setting anywhere on the equator where the seawater is cool enough to suit penguins. The ocean is like a warm bath a little farther north and the resulting cloud formation is the source of torrential precipitation and lush vegetation in the surrounding region. In stark contrast to the deserts bordering the Pacific Ocean in Peru and northern Chile, rainforests formerly extended from northwestern Ecuador through western Colombia and into Central America. Patches of this ecosystem remain intact. Where Colombia and Panama meet, for example, impenetrable jungles and broken terrain combine to this day to block construction of the final segment of the Pan-American Highway, which otherwise runs the whole distance from Alaska to Patagonia.
Neither arid nor excessively wet, western Ecuador includes locations south of Guayaquil where precipitation falls short of bananas’ water requirements, which are substantial. However, the southern costa is traversed by various rivers and streams flowing out of the Andes, so irrigation is fairly easy. Also, low clouds persist in the area during the dry season, which runs from May to December. As a result, solar radiation and the transpiration of moisture from plants are both limited, thereby reducing the need for irrigation. Geographer James J. Parsons highlighted these climatic advantages in an early description of Ecuador’s tropical fruit industry.11 A few years later, another geographer, David A. Preston, drew attention to an additional benefit of the dry conditions prevailing for half the year in the southern costa, which was that an airborne fungus called Yellow Sigatoka12 (Mycosphaerella musicola Leach) moved slowly from field to field. Left unchecked, this pathogen manifests itself initially as spots on leaves, yet in short order reduces yields and causes the quality of fruit to deteriorate.13
According to Parsons, soils throughout western Ecuador are “good to excellent” and “perhaps as promising as any to be found within the rainy tropics of the New World.”14 Other observers provide more tempered assessments, emphasizing that soil properties vary. All experts agree that fertility levels are high on average, although problems such as excessive clay content and poor drainage are encountered in many settings.15
While the soils of western Ecuador may not be superior to soils in different parts of the Caribbean Basin, the costa enjoys geographic advantages of considerable importance. Since the region extends from one degree north of the equator to a few degrees south, bananas are harvested year round. Production peaks from September through March, which coincides with the time of year when demand is elevated in North America and Europe. This timing is advantageous for Ecuadorian growers because bananas cannot be warehoused for months on end, as is an option with apples, for instance.
The costa is also largely free of severe tropical storms, of the sort that hammer one part of the Caribbean Basin or another each and every year. Weather-related risks are correspondingly modest for the costa’s banana farmers. The significance of such risks in other places was put in sharp relief as growers in northeastern Colombia were making a sizable investment in order to convert from Gros Michel to Cavendish. In 1966, when this conversion was under way though not yet complete, a hurricane destroyed 45 percent of the banana crop. Another hurricane struck the following year, which reduced harvested area from 15,000 to 11,000 hectares.16
By no means are the costa’s environmental attributes valued only by Ecuadorian growers and exporters. So that Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte can supply their customers with fresh produce regularly and without fail, the three companies purchase bananas in western Ecuador, especially when production falls short in other places. Doing business in the costa is a good way for any firm to cope with the disruptions in Central American and Caribbean supplies caused by hurricanes, which helps explain why multinationals have been willing to share technology with the region’s growers.
While natural resources, the climate, and a location astride the equator all work in the costa’s favor, great obstacles formerly stood in the way of the region’s agricultural development. Yellow fever, which is often fatal, was not brought under control until the second decade of the twentieth century, when critical assistance was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. Public Health Service.17 Likewise, the Ecuadorian and U.S. governments launched an anti-malaria program in the late 1940s, which among other things involved disease monitoring and eradication of the anopheles mosquito.18 As long as illnesses such as these were unchecked, there was untold human suffering. Also, agricultural activities that put large numbers of people in close proximity to one another, such as banana production, were impeded due to the risk of disease transmission.
Tropical illnesses were a problem that the costa shared with the Caribbean Basin. However, the region had an additional disadvantage owing to its location. Before the Panama Canal existed and especially before completion of the railroad traversing the Panamanian Isthmus, a long and arduous voyage was needed to reach New York, Hamburg, and other places where Ecuadorian goods could be sold. Setting out from Guayaquil, a ship would first beat its way south against the Humboldt Current. Once off the coast of southern Chile, a sharp look-out had to be kept through the fog and mists that shroud the region’s fjords and mountains for the Strait of Magellan, since missing this passage would necessitate a perilous detour around Cape Horn through heavy seas and gale-force winds. Leaving the Pacific Ocean in its wake and veering north, the ship then had to travel nearly the entire length of the Atlantic before reaching the world’s leading markets.
In spite of mortal diseases and the great distances that separated western Ecuador from its most important customers, the agricultural potential of the region was extolled long before the turn of the twentieth century, including by foreign visitors. On taking up his post as French vice consul in Guayaquil, Charles Wiener was struck in 1879 by the commercial hustle and bustle of his new home as well as the flat, fertile ground surrounding the port city. Indeed, the diplomat was impressed enough to make comparisons with The Netherlands,19 a nation that coincidentally is not much larger than the valley drained by the river emptying into the Pacific a little south of Guayaquil. Pleased with Wiener’s description, the costa’s inhabitants have called the Río Guayas watershed una Holanda tropical ever since.
Tropical Burghers
While the comparison Charles Wiener made 135 years ago between the costa and The Netherlands had much to do with farmland and its productivity, Guayaquileños were
