“Crazier than a half dozen opium-smoking frogs.” That’s how one observer described Guatemala’s former President Gen Jorge Ubico.

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” →