FTM-July2017-Issuu

ook review
Bananeras: Women Transforming the
Banana Unions of Latin America
By Dana Frank
Haymarket Books, 2016
152 pages, $20.95
ISBN: 978-1-60846-535-4
REVIEW BY WILL RICHTER
Have you ever considered how you might bring gender
equality to an international union movement without
the help of a telephone—much less a computer?
Such were the challenges facing the women banana
workers of Central and South America in the 1980s, 1990s,
and early 2000s. Fighting for rights in the banana unions first
meant fighting for access to basic resources—phones, trucks,
computers, even chairs—which were all controlled by men.
And that was just one small, illuminating part of the struggle.
In Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of
Latin America, author Dana Frank chronicles the challenges
and triumphs of the women who call themselves mujeres
bananeras (“banana women”) as they work to shed multiple
layers of oppression and gain positions of respect and control
within their unions. Their story is at once intensely local—the
step-by-step development of a regional women’s movement
as it spreads from a small union office in Honduras—and also
broadly relatable. Women everywhere will recognize Frank’s
description of the grueling toll exacted by the workers’ “double
day,” when a long work day is capped off by a second shift caring
for children and, often, a man.
And in the case of the mujer bananeras, it is quite some
work day. Frank describes working up to 14 hours (typically 10
to 12) for six or seven days a week. The women remain standing
that entire time, doing dull, repetitive tasks in temperatures
ranging between 35 and 40 degrees. In that heat, the air in
the packinghouse sheds is dripping wet, the moisture laced
with fungicides and pesticides. Frank cites high rates of
miscarriage and rare cancers among packinghouse workers,
as reported by a regional banana union study. Few women
banana workers make it in the job past 40, unable any longer
to remain on their feet.
Under such conditions, says Frank, a union contract is a
vital lifeline. Unionized female workers typically earn equal
pay for equal work, whereas nonunionized women often earn
up to four times less than men doing identical jobs. Banana
unions also protect against sexual harassment and arbitrary
dismissal, and typically provide all-important medical benefits
such as prenatal and hospital care.
But the banana unions that Frank describes in Bananeras
are by no means havens of women’s rights. Until the 1980s,
women were entirely shut out of union leadership, and
husbands who expected their banana-worker wives to get
dinner on the table likewise expected them to stay out of union
business.
It took women of great personal strength and
resourcefulness to combat this culture of misogyny, and
in Bananeras Frank tells their story with skill, detail, and
immense respect. First published in 2005, the book has the
benefit of being written when many of the important figures
who helped transform the unions in the 1990s and early
2000s were still active. It features women like Iris Munguía,
a dynamic force who overcame many challenges to become
the first secretary of women for the regional union umbrella
organization (COLSIBA), and Selfa Sandoval, from Guatemala,
at the time one of the highest-ranking mujeres bananeras in
Latin America, who once faced down death threats when she
reopened a union hall only days after other union leaders had
been kidnapped and beaten by paramilitaries acting in the
interests of the Del Monte Corporation.
And that, of course, is the great complication that
hangs over this story. It is one thing to reform a union when
it is a stable, untroubled entity, quite another when it is
under constant threat by ruthless transnational banana
corporations. But then, from Frank’s telling, the mujeres
bananeras don’t seem the type to give up in the face of the
seemingly insurmountable.
Will Richter is a freelance writer living in Vancouver. His previous contributions
to Fair Trade Magazine include "Fairphone Dials up a Fairer Future for the Tech
Industry," which appears in the Winter / Spring 2017 issue.
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