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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between large-scale banana cultivation, tourism, and environmental governance in twentieth-century Guatemala. Capitalist activities shaped environmental management and triggered debates about the role of region and landscape in national geographies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between two capitalist industries in the construction of Guatemalan national geographies in the first half of the twentieth century: large-scale banana cultivation, and tourism. Both these industries managed and transformed environments in profound, though sometimes contradictory, ways. The United Fruit Company (UFCO) turned large swathes of Guatemala’s eastern lowlands into banana monocultures, while an emerging tourist industry sought to preserve archaeological sites in the midst of “picturesque jungle” territory. In the Guatemalan lowlands, UFCO was from 1910 onwards emblematic of both these industries, since the country’s most visited Maya archaeological site at the time, Quiriguá, was located on UFCO land and the Company was central to developing it as a tourist site.

However, the management of archaeological sites and tourist itineraries was increasingly also shaped by local rather than foreign historical actors. Archaeologists, the national museum, and the tourism club brought the political and environmental management of archaeological sites into sharper focus. In the era of Jorge Ubico’s UFCO-friendly dictatorship, few elites openly questioned foreign political and economic influence on the country. Nevertheless, specific concern about tourism and the significance of archaeological monuments for the nation led Guatemala City elites to debate the ability of the state to control these lowland regions both politically and environmentally. I contrast Guatemalan and North American archival material to argue that environmental factors and the tourist industry helped to drive a claim for territories previously dominated by United Fruit to become part of the Guatemalan national imaginary.