The Lives and Time of Miss Chiquita - Banana Cultures - page 170

But consumer longings for bygone days could not single-handedly
sell Chiquita bananas. At the heart of the campaign was an effort to in-
culcate consumers with the idea that not all bananas were the same. The
ChiquitaandCabanabrandnamestriedtore-definewhatconsumerscon-
sidered to be a quality banana by emphasizing features such as bunch
symmetry, the fullness of individual bananas, and blemish-free peels that
ripened uniformly. In order to bear the Chiquita label in 1970, a banana
hadtobeaminimumofeightincheslongandfreeofalonglistof ''defects''
primarily related to the visual appearance of the fruit. 105 Standard Fruit
also based its quality ratings on the number of ''outward defects'' and the
''fresh appearance'' of the peel. 106 Achieving and maintaining these new
quality standards required new production techniques and new forms of
labor. The most important innovation was the on-farm boxing of fruit.
Theempacadora,or packing plant, became the key component of the
industry's ''post-harvest'' operations designed to ensure greater quality
control. Former Standard Fruit employee Henry Muery noted that the
empacadoras virtually eliminated ''in-farm defects,'' and enabled the fruit
companies to export ''essentially blemish-free'' fruit. 107 Boxing bananas
was a multi-step process. At one end of the plant, workers armed with
sharp knives removed the hands of freshly harvested bananas from their
stems and placed them in tanks filled with water.The bath served the dual
purpose of cleaning the peels and cooling the temperature of the fruit
prior to boxing. A gentle current carried the fruit to the other end of the
long, rectangular tanks where another group of workers sorted the pre-
mium grade fruit (e.g., ''Chiquitas'') from both the second grade bananas
(known as ''specials'') and the rejects. Export grades were then treated
withchemicalstopreventfungalrotsbeforebeingweighed,stickered,and
packed into boxes.
TheempacadorasprovidednovelemploymentopportunitiesforCen-
tral American women. Although women had found employment in the
o ces, hospitals, and schools of the fruit companies, thework of growing
and shipping bananas remained a masculine domain in Central America
prior to the creation of packing plants. In Honduras, United Fruit began
using women in packing operations no later than 1962. Women entered
Standard Fruit's empacadoras no later than 1967. 108 Both companies ini-
tially hire women for packing plants in small cohorts. These first hires
often had family connections that helped them to secure a position. For
example, Esperanza Rivera Nájera was offered a packing plant job by her
husband's supervisor in 1968. She recalled that ''if you weren't related to
an employee, you were not able to get a job.'' Other women secured posi-