American capitalism was ever as powerful as the 20th century. It's a memorable stage of time that companies were infamous for involved into foreign scandal that was written in history. More specifically, United Fruit Company, an American company, created relationships with Central America's dictators, manipulated government to gain enormous privilege in that region and left behind labor unrest and economic crisis. The term "Banana Republic" was first used to describe small, poor and unstable country with widespread corruption by O. Henry, in his novel 'Cabbages and Kings'. He was inspired by what he saw in Honduras, a corrupted country suffered from poverty, strongly under control by a foreign fruit company. It's tremendous to see how American capitalism has influenced the history of an entire continent in Western Hemisphere that the result are still exist until nowadays.
During the first half of 20th century, Central America was under control of some of the most infamous dictators, highly trained military leader, who had a lot of power in their hands. By maintained unequal social status, poverty and chaos inside the country, these leaders received a gigantic benefit from landowners and foreign investors. Furthermore, they often conflicting with each other to compete for foreign investing, mostly from Great Britain and the United States, who promised to back up their power regime and brought plantations, built constructions in their countries. It's a huge amount of benefit that many governments ever dreamed of: "[but] the Central America had no such resources. The land and wealth they possessed had long since been locked away by a relatively few oligarchs. New opportunities would need to come from the outside, from foreign investors and traders whose interests" (LaFeber, 27). The history of Central America during that time related closely to the history of the foundation of United Fruit Company.
