Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
has been made clear to me. If the honorable minister were to visit, he
would be convinced that the nineteenth century had not shined its light
on the jungles in which these men live, jungles that tomorrow could be
made useful for their country and family.''
82
He added that the people
were''littleinclined''towork,sustainingthemselvesduringthedryseason
with fish, game, and a beverage (atoldeguineo) made from a banana ''that
practically grows wild'' in the flatlands of the region's rivers. One hun-
dred years after Humboldt's journey, literate visitors to the tropics con-
tinued to associate bananas and plantains with sloth and backwardness.
This view of bananas and their cultural landscapes would be appropri-
ated by both Honduran liberals and U.S. entrepreneurs anxious to dem-
onstratetheneedforYankeeingenuity(andcapital)totapthepotentialof
the tropics. Ironically, the ambivalence expressed by nineteenth-century
writers was rooted in theveryaspect of banana cultivation—high returns
on low labor inputs—that would make it a viable export crop for small-
scale growers possessing little or no capital.
If the symbolic meanings of the banana changed little over the course
of the nineteenth century, the same cannot be said for its economic im-
portance. The first recorded bunch of bananas to reach New York City
arrived in 1804 aboard a schooner from Cuba.
83
During the first half of the
nineteenth century, very small shipments of bananas, primarily a variety
known as Cuban Reds, reached port cities on the eastern seaboard dur-
ing the spring months.
84
As late as the 1840s, a single Cuban Red banana
soldfortwenty-fivecents—anindicationthatthefruitremainedanexotic
luxury. By 1850, a small number of importers were regularly bringing ba-
nanas and other tropical fruits from Cuba to North Atlantic ports. When
Irish Catholic bishop James Donnelly traveled in the United States be-
tween1850and1853,hetastedabanana,anexperiencenoteworthyenough
to make it into his journal.
85
The fruit remained su
ciently exotic—and
well known—to drawcrowds at the Philadelphia Centennial exhibition in
1876.Populardescriptionsofthebananacontinuedtorefertothetallplant
as a ''tree'' and seldom distinguished between dessert bananas and plan-
tains.
86
In 1880, the chef of Delmonico's restaurant in New York City pre-
paredabananamousseasoneofseveraldessertsfeaturedataposhdinner
for General Winfield Scott Hancock, an indication that the fruit retained
something of its exotic status. Four years later, the U.S. government lifted
duties on banana imports and customs ocials began listing ''bananas''
as a statistical category for the first time. In 1892, more than 12 million
bunches of bananas passed through U.S. ports (principally New Orleans
