While visiting my mother last weekend, I had occasion to look through some of the dozens of family photo albums that she has maintained. Some of the photos date back to prior to World War I, but most date from about 1920 or so forward to the present. Her father was a photography freak for decades, taking all kinds of photos. Many of the older pictures are from my mother’s childhood and her parents’ days in Honduras and Panama (my mother was born in Honduras in the small town of Puerto Castilla, which at the time was a main port in Honduras for United Fruit Company (“UFC”) – a view towards the peninsula where the town is located, with the town of Trujillo in the foreground is posted above. Later she lived in Puerto Armuelles, Panama, where her father was transferred to head up another hospital.
My mother’s childhood was definitely like something out of a novel or a movie involving a colonial style type of world: as chief surgeon and head of the local hospital owned and operated by UFC, her father was one of the most important people in the towns they lived in, they had servants, and traveled to the USA by ship – one of the 100+ ships of UFC’s “great white fleet,” among the first air-conditioned ships - generally at least once a year to visit my grandmother’s family in New Orleans and my grandfather’s family in New York State. I have been trying to get my mother to write some memoirs so that her memories will not be lost after she and her sisters are (at 80, my mom is the youngest of them).
While much maligned – sometimes with very good reason because of its political interference in local national government affairs - United Fruit Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company) did do a large degree of good in terms of building infrastructure: railroads, port facilities, schools, etc. My mother’s recollections are similar to these:
In addition to providing employment to tens of thousands of workers and paying them the nation's best rural wages, the Company also offered its employees excellent medical care, rent-free housing, and six years of free schooling for countless children. By clearing and draining thousands of acres of jungle that are today among the most productive farm lands, United Fruit converted Guatemala for example into a major banana producer, thereby ending the country's unhealthy dependence on its exports of coffee. The Company's pioneering work in eliminating malaria and other tropical diseases early in the twentieth century also allowed rich, previously unexploited agricultural zones.
Somewhere my mom still has some of the medical research journals published by the UFC medical staffs that we used to look at as children, with articles on exotic medical issues ranging from malaria and yellow fever to shark bites, some written by my grandfather. Since UFC provided free medical care, my mother still has some of the small gifts that local Honduran and Panamanian company employees gave to my grandfather to thank him for surgical and other procedures he did for them or their family members. Whatever, UFC’s failings, it provided my mother and her family a unique opportunity to live in a different culture and to experience a way of life that is now gone forever. Besides reprints of some of the photos I have had framed, as a reminder of that life in my bedroom at my home I have an amazing intricately carved cedar chest my grandparents bought from Chinese merchants circa 1920.
My mother’s childhood was definitely like something out of a novel or a movie involving a colonial style type of world: as chief surgeon and head of the local hospital owned and operated by UFC, her father was one of the most important people in the towns they lived in, they had servants, and traveled to the USA by ship – one of the 100+ ships of UFC’s “great white fleet,” among the first air-conditioned ships - generally at least once a year to visit my grandmother’s family in New Orleans and my grandfather’s family in New York State. I have been trying to get my mother to write some memoirs so that her memories will not be lost after she and her sisters are (at 80, my mom is the youngest of them).
While much maligned – sometimes with very good reason because of its political interference in local national government affairs - United Fruit Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company) did do a large degree of good in terms of building infrastructure: railroads, port facilities, schools, etc. My mother’s recollections are similar to these:
In addition to providing employment to tens of thousands of workers and paying them the nation's best rural wages, the Company also offered its employees excellent medical care, rent-free housing, and six years of free schooling for countless children. By clearing and draining thousands of acres of jungle that are today among the most productive farm lands, United Fruit converted Guatemala for example into a major banana producer, thereby ending the country's unhealthy dependence on its exports of coffee. The Company's pioneering work in eliminating malaria and other tropical diseases early in the twentieth century also allowed rich, previously unexploited agricultural zones.
Somewhere my mom still has some of the medical research journals published by the UFC medical staffs that we used to look at as children, with articles on exotic medical issues ranging from malaria and yellow fever to shark bites, some written by my grandfather. Since UFC provided free medical care, my mother still has some of the small gifts that local Honduran and Panamanian company employees gave to my grandfather to thank him for surgical and other procedures he did for them or their family members. Whatever, UFC’s failings, it provided my mother and her family a unique opportunity to live in a different culture and to experience a way of life that is now gone forever. Besides reprints of some of the photos I have had framed, as a reminder of that life in my bedroom at my home I have an amazing intricately carved cedar chest my grandparents bought from Chinese merchants circa 1920.
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