People, Plants, and Pathogens: The Eco-social Dynamics of Export Banana Production in Honduras, 1875 –1950 John Soluri In July 1899, six municipal officials in El Paraíso, Honduras, placed their signatures on a document that listed the names of area residents who grew bananas for export. The municipal secretary, Bartolomé Bueso, signed with a heavy hand, perhaps an indication of the fatigue running through his fingers after recording more than two hundred names complete with several columns of statistics related to banana production. Similar scenes took place in other Honduran municipalities in response to a national survey carried out with the intention of making known “one of the great sources of wealth of our Atlantic Coast.” 1 That same year, another group of men met in Trenton, New Jersey, to sign a different type of document — a corporate charter that established the United Fruit Company. The creation of both documents reflected a shared perception that export banana growing was a lucrative livelihood. However, the survey was never published and passed into obscurity on a dusty shelf in the Honduran National Archive. In contrast, the United Fruit Company — known in Central America as El Pulpo (the Octupus) because of its far-reaching I sincerely thank HAHR editors Gilbert M. Joseph and Anupama Mande, along with Steven Striffler, an anonymous reviewer, and David Nohara for their insightful comments and advice about this piece. Earlier versions of this work benefited immensely from my discussions with Sueann Caulfield, Frederick Cooper, Amy Crosson, Darío Euraque, Ivette Perfecto, Rebecca Scott, and Richard Tucker. Judy Brooks of Carnegie Mellon University’s Technology Enhanced Learning Laboratory provided invaluable assistance with map production. A Mellon Candidacy Fellowship awarded by the University of Michigan in 1994 funded fieldwork in Honduras on which this article is based. 1. Honduras, Junta Registradora, “Datos relativos a las fincas de bananos,” July 1899, ms., Archivo Nacional de Honduras (hereafter cited as ANH). Due to its unique nature and deteriorated state, the manuscript has been removed from the shelf on which it was found. Inquiries should be made to the director of the ANH. Hispanic American Historical Review 80:3 Copyright 2000 Duke University Press