Bananas and freedom!

Roy Edroso reports on a Reason libertarian article explaining the phenomenal success of United Fruit that portrays it as a visionary company (which it may well have been) brought low by irrational government regulation. The article ignores the company’s ruthless and violent willingness to dabble in Central American politics—and I by dabble I mean support the overthrow of Democratic, left-leaning governments that tried to stop United Fruit exploiting their citizens and replacing them with murderous, genocidal autocrats (another comment on this here). Remember, United Fruit-backed military dictatorships are why we have the term “banana republic.”
Roy sums up the theme of this (and other) nostalgic whitewashings like this: “As such as Stoll tell it, history is a fairy tale in which the lovely maiden Capitalism skips merrily through the woods sprinkling fairy dust; occasionally labor unions, suffragists, civil rights workers and so forth come around and plague her, but there can be no reason for this except the influence of the devil, because she is so good. Eventually a knight, in the form of U.S. troops or hired assassins, comes along and rescues her, and everyone lives happily ever after, until the devil stirs some other wretches to trouble her.”