Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Both Gálvez and the U.S. State Department insinuated that the Gua-
temalan government under the leadership of Jacobo Arbenz helped to
foment the strike, but workers received far more support from San Pedro
Sula's business leaders than from communist-influenced foreign govern-
ments.Infact,theU.S.-orchestratedoverthrowoftheArbenzgovernment
notwithstanding, the events of 1954 ultimately served to weaken United
Fruit's power. In the United States, the Department of Justice's anti-trust
division opened an inquiry into the company's marketing practices. In
Honduras, the candidate of the resurgent Liberal Party, Ramón Villeda
Morales won a plurality—but not a majority—of the votes in the elec-
tion that followed in the aftermath of the strike. In the absence of clear
majority, Julio Lozano Díaz, vice-president under Gálvez, assumed dicta-
torial powers. Lozano Díaz's government promulgated a Charterof Labor
Rights that guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, legal-
ized about fifty unions, and recognized the right to strike.
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Coming only seven years after the end of the sixteen-year Cariato,
the legislation marked both the growing powerof pro-labor Liberal party
leaders and the reluctant acknowledgement on the part of some National
party leaders that in the rapidly shifting geopolitical contexts of the Cold
War, the United States frowned upon the repression of anti-communist
labor organizations. Villeda Morales at last assumed the presidency in
1957, following the overthrowof Lozano Díaz in 1956 by Colonel Oswaldo
López Arellano. The armed forces' motives for the coup were multiple,
but by forcing the discredited Lozano Díaz out of o
ce, the coup leaders
created an opening for the increasingly popular Liberal party to come to
power. During the presidency of Villeda Morales (1957-1963) the previ-
ously marginalized voices of workers and small-scale farmers resonated
loudly, expanding the boundaries of political discourse in Honduran so-
ciety and reshaping state-led development projects. In 1959, the Villeda
Morales administration created the Institute of Social Security (1959) and
promulgated a new national laborcode (1959).Threeyears later, the Hon-
duran government approved agrarian reform legislation.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. banana companies did not stand still in the
wake of the profound changes that took place between the end of World
War II and the early 1960s. In Honduras, the companies reacted to the
rising power of organized labor by finding ways to reduce the size of
their work forces. Under the terms of the strike settlement, the company
promised not to take reprisals against strike leaders, but it reserved the
right to transfer and/or release workers for ''general economic reasons,
acts of God, and unforeseeable events.''
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Company executives must have
