This map was drawn by illustrator Ernest Hamlin Baker in 1933 for the American company United Fruit Company. The illustration shows Bananaland (Bananaland), the name the company used to refer to the territory in which it operated.
This is a promotional map, in which the borders of sovereign countries are blurred and the focus is solely on representing the infrastructure of the United Fruit Company in the region: radio stations, banana plantations and sugar plantations.
The choice of title is no accident, as it is an attempt to limit the potential rights that different countries could claim by referring to the entire region with the fictitious name of Bananaland. The United Fruit Company was a company that put its interests above those of the region throughout the 20th century, interfering politically in all the countries in which it operated, particularly notable for its involvement in the coup d'état in Guatemala in 1954.
The map also includes an interesting note about Trujillo, Honduras, referring to the meeting between O. Henry and Al Jennings in that city, as well as the burial place of William Walker, a symbol of American adventurous imperialism.
The pejorative expression banana republic It stems precisely from the corruption and control that occurred in many of these countries with the financing and pressure of the United Fruit Company.
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