Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Not surprisingly, fruit company managers and scientists were con-
cerned first and foremost with controlling the pathogen and disciplining
the human sprayapplicators towork eciently. In an effort to lower labor
costs and increase control over fungicide applications, company research-
ers began experimenting with an overhead spray system during the 1940s.
The overhead system's purported advantages included ''the elimination
of the human element to a large degree, in the application of spray.'' Other
potential benefits included lower costs due to more e
cient use of fungi-
cides and a reduction in the number of laborers needed.
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Company re-
searchers continued to run trials with overhead sprayers as late as 1951.
Echoing earlier reports, the technicians noted that the experimental sys-
tem lowered the per-acre cost of controlling Sigatoka in addition to pro-
viding ''indirect savings in housing, schooling, and hospital facilities'' by
eliminating workers.
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One year later, the research department reported
thatfieldcrewsusingoverheadsprayapplicatorsworkedwithnearlythree
times the eciency of those using the ground spray system. However, the
new system required more thorough supervision than did hose spraying:
''the quality of supervision of spray operations should be stressed by the
selection of conscientious foremen and spray masters. Supervisory per-
sonnel must pay close attention to all details such as pressure, wet leaves,
wind, timing of application, etc.''
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To judge by its internal reports then,
United Fruit's research department saw fieldworkers as little more than
piecesofapuzzlethatneededtobecarefullyinterlockedwithotherinputs
in order to establish control over persistent pathogens.
The distanced, analytical descriptions of Sigatoka control produced
by fruit company scientists during the 1950s stand in sharp contrast to
the images of spray work found in Ramón Amaya Amador's 1950 novel,
Prisión verde. For Amaya Amador, head of the Honduran Communist
Partyand an outspoken critic of U.S. imperialism, Bordeaux spraying was
not only disagreeable and hazardous—it epitomized the injustice of the
plantation regime. The contested meanings of Sigatoka control work are
best captured by the terms used to describe the workers themselves: fruit
company documents referred to Bordeaux applicators as ''spray gangs,''
but Amaya Amador—and the workers themselves—preferred the term
veneneros (poison applicators).
Early inPrisiónverde,readers meet Martín Samayoa, a formerpoqui-
tero who, having sold his land to the company, finds himself broke and
without a livelihood. When a sympathetic worker offers to secure him a
position as a Bordeaux spray applicator, Martín hesitates:
