Canibalia

a visual archive of the atlantic cannibal by julia morandeira arrizabalaga

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Julia Rometti & Victor Costales on amerindian perspectivism, the unstable object of psychophysics and much more.

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“ La United Fruit Company (UFCO) (1899–1970), era una firma comercial multinacional estadounidense, fundada en 1899 que producía y comercializaba frutas tropicales (principalmente banano) cultivados en América Latina, y que se convirtió en una fuerza política y económica determinante en muchos países de dicha región durante el siglo XX, influyendo decisivamente sobre gobiernos y partidos para mantener sus operaciones con el mayor margen posible de ganancias, al extremo de auspiciar golpes de estado y sobornar políticos. Durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX se dice que los negros en Costa Rica no tenían el permiso de viajar hacia el oeste del país. Con ello, la United Fruit Company pretendía evitar que los negros consiguieran trabajo en la nueva ubicación de la bananera o se desplazaran a los cafetales de Turrialba. Esta acción fue reforzada por la política gubernamental de "blanquitud", cuyo pretexto era impedir que los negros ingresaran ciertas enfermedades endémicas al Valle Central. La propuesta consiste en la intervención in situ de cubrir las antiguas oficinas de la United Fruit Company en Limón, Costa Rica, utilizando la bolsa con plaguicida con la que se cubren los racimos de banano en las plantaciones para que estos no se llenen de plagas y pierdan su calidad y valor.” 

Oscar Figueroa

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United Fruit Company headquarters in Puerto Limon, back then and as they stand (unactive) today. The difficult engineering endeavour of building the railroad connecting San José to Puerto Limón in the Caribbean to export coffee to Europe, was even further complicated when the Costa Rica government defaulted on its payments in 1882. In exchange for this, the administration agreed to give Keith 800,000 acres (3,200 km2) of tax-free land along the railroad, plus a 99-year lease on the operation of the train route. The railroad was completed in 1890, but what proved lucrative, was the export of #bananas to the USA and Europe, which Keith planted in his land alongside the rails to provide cheap food for his workers. Merging with others fruit trading corporations, 1899 saw the birth of the #UnitedFruitCompany, whose neo-colonial exploitation and intervention in the whole of Central America to Colombia would be determinant of the politics of the region for the whole of the XXth century.

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Oscar Figueroa, “The Most Beautiful Bill”, 2011

Highlighting the absences History

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Marton Robinson, "Money talk", 2012-2015. 

Hacking the famous national image "Allegory of the coffee and banana".

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“The Allegory of the Coffee and Bananas” is a mural painting on the ceiling of the National Theatre of Costa Rica. It was painted in 1897 by Italian Aleardo Villa, who had never set foot in the tropics. This is evidenced in the multiple mistakes the image contains: the man holding (effortlessly) upside down the bunch of bananas; coffee plants growing at sea level, when they normally grow in the mountains; and coffee pickers are white jovial women dressed like Italian peasants, far from the working reality and conditions that applied. The theatre was funded by special coffee tax, and embodies in its style and architecture the european aspirations of the ruling elites at the turn of the century. Used for a long time on the back of 5 colones notes, the image  became a iconic symbol of the official national identity.

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Louis Henderson account on the colonial management of labour and slavery through De Bry’s America and Bartolomé de las Casas:

‘ As I turned the pages of the book, De Bry’s images started to offer the answer to James’ question above: “without the coercion of the natives how could colony exist?” and they clearly indicated how this politics of indigenous protectionism on the part of Las Casas led to an extended horror: “Las Casas, haunted at the prospect of seeing before his eyes the total destruction of a population within one generation, hit on the expedient of importing the more robust Negroes from a populous Africa; in 1517, Charles V. authorised the export of 15,000 slaves to San Domingo, and thus priest and King launched on the world the American slave-trade and slavery.”’

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Oscar Figueroa, "Panama and Costa Rica railroad drawings made out of Chinese people natural hair", 2015. Coffee trade was 19th century Costa Rica most important economy. In 1871, the government hired businessman Minor Keith to build a route to connect the plantations with the Atlantic, in order to meet the European demand. The construction of the railroad entailed numerous accidents and losses due to the rugged tropical terrain, weather and diseases. Keith recruited then Jamaican workers as well as Chinese, amongst others, in practically indentured labour conditions and died in large amounts. A much invisibilised chapter of history, it is known that Chinese workers came to organise collective suicides as a response to that situation, hanging themselves from their braided pony tail. Knitted in natural hair collected from the Chinese community in CR, Figueroa's work embodies this story in its representation through the architectural, unused railroad remnants which still punctures nowadays landscape and history.

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Images of labour: A banana plantation in William Eleroy Curtis' "The Smallest of American Republics" published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1887

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Joaquín Rodríguez del Paso, "Hotel América - Cheap Labour". Or how under the lush pacified tropical Arcadia laid the exploitation logics of global labour.

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"The Hand Car" from Oran, contained in the article "Tropical Journeyings: the Panama Railroad" and published in the 1985 January edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. It perfectly condenses the constructed imaginary of Central America: three white executives intent on their conversation, cross the lush tropical vegetation in a hand car, worked by workers whose faces and bodies blur into the dark of the forest. Exotic landscapes and bodies, racial stereotypes, labour hierarchies and mechanical progress. An imaginary forged in colonial relations that still pervade in many discourses and representations of the region.

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Kadiview: Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga & Jeleton on Canibalia

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Oscar Figueroa, No title (Caribbean), 2012. Serigraphy on recycled bags used to cover bananas’ bunches on the fields and protect them from plagues. 

The neocolonial exploitation, manipulation and intervention of Central American countries by the United Fruit Company led to the coining of the concept “banana republics”. The term was used to define impoverished, backwards and politically unstable countries, whose economy depends on a few goods of scarce value, and is normally governed by a dictator, the military or doubtfully legitimated plutocracy. In these series of work, Oscar Figueroa deconstructs the cartographical representation of the so-called “banana republics” and the regions where banana plantations were located, by erasing the continental rims and just leaving the names of towns and nations. This abstract, de-materialized cartography is impressed on the plastic bags which are normally used the cover the bananas’ bunch in order to protect them from plagues and other diseases. Overlapping cartography and pesticide effect, the pieces are a powerful reflection on the construction and contention of the region as a periphery. The works are installed on the floor, as a reference to the Caribbean sea.

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Minerva Cuevas, mural painting and installation: Del Monte Criminal

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Adriana Varejao, Landscapes (1995) Oil on wood , 110 x 140 x 10 cm

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Minerva Cuevas, America

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Minerva Cuevas, mural painting and installation:  Rituals of Value

Installation at the Weltkulturen Museum in Francfort, for the Foreign Exchange project.