Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
though there is no evidence that worker assaults on foremen were com-
mon, the potential for violence likely prompted bosses to act with con-
siderably more tact than that displayed by Amaya Amador's Benítez.
Supervisors who humiliated workers could find themselves in trouble.
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Conflict was only one possible outcome of the daily contact between
foremen and workers. Although former field hands complained of being
verbally harassed by foremen and/or fired, they also recalled amicable re-
lations withcapataceswho provided favors such as issuing medical passes,
or granting time to run off-farm errands. According to one retired em-
ployee,''many''capatacescolludedwithworkerstoextortmoneyfromthe
companies.
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Foremen, who were responsible for submitting daily work
sheets to timekeepers, could manipulate the number of hours worked
and/oradd assignments that had not been completed. Another simpleyet
hard to detect swindle was signing off on hastily completed work. For ex-
ample,acapatazcouldacceptaditchthathadnotbeendugtotherequired
depth in return for a small cash payment from the palero responsible for
completingthetask.Thisformofagreementenabledforementopadtheir
salaries while shortening the workday for field hands. Of course, the fact
that a foreman could fire an individual who refused to embezzle the com-
pany meant that there was a fine line between collusion and extortion.
The frequency with which farm supervisors and workers swindled
their employers is dicult to determine. Describing a conversation held
with the Tela Railroad Company's La Lima-based general manager Wil-
liam Turnbull in 1950, a U.S. diplomat concluded that central manage-
ment's power over its farm personnel had limits:
However forward looking and progressive the policy of the United
Fruit Company laid down by Boston and headquarters in La Lima may
be, overseers and time-keepers and other petty ocials in the remoter
areas are admittedly arbitrary and inconsiderate of some of their
workmen.
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By attributing the unjust treatment of workers to the ''arbitrary acts''
of ''petty o
cials,'' the consular o
cial—and presumably Turnbull—at-
tempted to divert attention away from the production processes and wage
structures created by the company's central management. In this sense,
Turnbull's statement can be interpreted as lending support to Amaya
Amador's depiction of Honduran bosses performing the dirty work for
the U.S. fruit companies. However, viewed from a different perspective,
the remark points toward the diculties confronted by fruit company
