Repeating Islands

Apparently, the banana wars are not over.  African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are stepping up their lobbying against planned cuts in Europe’s banana import duties. Hoping to give a boost to broader WTO talks, the European Commission wants to make a steep cut in its banana import tariffs in order to end a long-running trade dispute with Latin American producers. Some banana producing countries in Africa say if Europe goes ahead with its current schedule, it would worsen their socio-economic problems and some have already dropped out of the banana industry as a direct result of the tariffs cuts.  ACP nations are worried that the cuts would undermine their preferential access to the European Union market.

In an effort to compensate their losses, the EU’s executive body is said to be ready to offer $135 million for the 2010-2013 period, which ACP countries deem is barely enough to have an impact. Federico Alberto Cuello Camilo, the Dominican Republic’s EU ambassador said the money being offered – in his words – “doesn’t even scratch the surface of the needs of ACP banana growers.”

With the hope to put an end to the “banana wars” that have dragged on since the 1990s, EU regulators have been negotiating with Latin America’s leading banana suppliers towards an agreement that would gradually reduce import tariffs to $US150 by 2016. This has given Caribbean and other ACP banana producers a major headache; they claim that their development is being sacrificed on the altar of free trade.

Many books and documentaries have focused on these banana wars and perils of free trade policies from various perspectives. Books include Cynthia Enloe’s Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000)*, Tim Josling and T. Taylor’s Banana Wars: The Anatomy of a Trade Dispute (2003), Steve Striffler and Mark Moberg’s Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (2003), Gordon Myers’ Banana Wars – The Price of Free Trade: A Caribbean Perspective (2004), and Harriet Lamb’s Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles (2008).

Life and Debt (2001) a documentary film directed by Stephanie Black, which examines the impact of the IMF and the World Bank’s globalization policies on Jamaica, includes a segment on the banana industry. Jamaica had been granted preferential treatment from the British through the Lome Convention, providing a tax-free import quota for 105,000 tons of fruit per year to England. Through a case the U.S. brought to the WTO, the U.S. government demanded that the Lome Convention quota be removed, forcing Jamaica to compete with exporters from Central and South America. In the 90s, bananas brought in 23 million dollars to Jamaica, comprising 8% of all its exports; in the Windward Islands, bananas accounted for 50% of total exports. In St. Lucia and St. Vincent, bananas also comprised a significant percentage of total exports, so quota loss impacted the entire Caribbean. However, the quota that was being so forcefully contested by U.S. multinationals was under 5% of all global banana production.

This ongoing battle over protective tariffs and import quotas was protested by people such as Randall Robinson – lawyer, writer, and activist – who dumped crates filled with bananas onto the steps of the United States Trade Representative in an effort to thwart U.S. attempts to end the Caribbean’s access to the European banana market, as Lisa Paravisini recounts in her April 21^st entry “Randall Robinson Gives Keynote Address at Vassar Conference.”

For full BBC article on present-day banana politics, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2009/04/090413_bananapolitics.shtml

Photograph (Doug Fishbone’s Trafalgar Square) is from mocoloco.com/art/archives/000932.php.

[Artist Doug Fishbone's projects have involved up to 40,000 bananas piled up in public places. These works, which are then dismantled and bananas given away to the public, touch upon the themes of consumerism, violence and globalization.]

*Our thanks to Elizabeth Deloughrey for the Enloe reference.