Mark Moberg

Myths of ethnicity and nation: immigration, work, and identity in the Belize banana industry

Mobergs excellent book tells the story of how unionized Belizean workers were replaced with cheaper immigrant workers from neighboring countries. He helps us understand the economic impact of export-oriented development strategies and how they foster ethnic prejudices and social conflict. -- O. Nigel Bolland, Colgate UniversityThe only officially English-speaking country in Central America, Belize has, in recent years, seen its identity challenged by a flood of immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador -- an influx that has given Belize the highest proportion of immigrants to native population in the hemisphere. In this penetrating study, Mark Moberg examines the conflicts in Belizes ethnic and national identity by focusing on their effects and manifestations in the countrys banana export industry.Moberg explains how an array of local and transnational forces -- government strategies for economic growth, the policies of the multinational company that exports Belizean bananas, the actions of plantation owners -- have combined to exploit and manipulate ethnic tensions among workers within the banana industry. The result, Moberg shows, has been the imposition of oppressive and often fatal working conditions designed to create a subservient labor force. Workers, for their part, have responded with an extensive repertoire of everyday resistance, ranging from slander to sabotage and ambush. Moberg explores the ways in which these patterns of labor control and employee resistance reflect the rising ethnic conflicts at the national level and how these, in turn, are rooted in an arduous history of Afro-Caribbean and Hispanic confrontation throughout lower Central America.Myths ofEthnicity and Nation integrates a finely detailed historical and ethnographic analysis of labor relations with a survey of the transnational dilemmas that have come to the forefront in Belize. Its keen insights and thoughtful, empirically based analysis will be of great use to any student of Central American peoples and cultures, Latin American development, ethnicity and nationalism, and the anthropology of work.

Crown Colony as Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company in British Honduras, 1900–1920

In much historiography of the colonial Caribbean, British administrators are portrayed as mediators between domestic elites, foreign capital, and the working class. Such scholarship converges with popular belief in Belize, whose institutions are seen as a legacy of ‘impartial’ British rule. This article examines the relationship between the United Fruit Company and the colonial government of British Honduras. Contrary to claims of administrative impartiality, colonial officials facilitated the companys monopoly over the banana industry and acted as company advocates before the Colonial Office, actions that ultimately undermined the colonys independent banana producers.