Last update 17:00 | 20/11/2017
“Crazier than a half dozen opium-smoking frogs.” That’s how one observer described Guatemala’s former President Gen Jorge Ubico.
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| Bananas’ limited shelf-life meant they weren’t likely to survive an onward journey from the port where they docked — Photo: ALAMY |
The general liked to dress up as Napoleon Bonaparte, and may even have believed himself to be Bonaparte, reincarnate.
Like many 20th-Century Latin American dictators, Gen Ubico had a cosy relationship with the United Fruit Company, which became known as “el pulpo”, the octopus, because its tentacles reached everywhere.
Ubico passed a law requiring indigenous Guatemalans to work for landowners – which is to say the United Fruit Company, which owned most of Guatemala’s arable land. Tiếp tục đọc “How refrigeration revolutionised global trade”
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