1. The Banana-Littered Floor
By: Molly Walker
APWH Lesson 29
PBA
(oriented around the Guatemala
Revolution of the mid to late twentieth
century)

2. Illiteracy still permeates our culture, despite the
American flags that said we would succeed.
Land and wealth was once unequal, and still today United
Fruit ensures this status quo.
Arevalo’s “spiritual socialism” was the answer, he fought for
rural and industrial rights!
His nationalism ran deep but United Fruit stepped in and
plucked him off the scene,
Like a fruit that simply wasn’t ripe.
Propaganda
associating United Fruit
with murder and the
military rule of
Guatemala

3. (Refrain)
We cannot read the words we write,
Bananas and coffee dictate the status of our lives.
We wait for change, we work for stability.
Our fate is not ours – it resides in foreign hands;
The star-spangled hands that dabble in the affairs of
others.
We are Guatemala, Indian and small.
We are Guatemala, poor and riddled with mortality.
We are Guatemala, and the reforms we were promised
were not won at all.

4. Colonel Jacobo
Arbenz, featured
here on both
TIME magazine’s
cover and in a
campaign poster.
Then comes 1951, and a more radical Colonel* takes the
reigns,
“Improve hydroelectricity! Nationalize transportation!”
Such rhetoric won the leader many fans,
Yet the last straw for that belligerent Fruit Company was the
expropriating of unused lands.
*Colonel Jacobo Arbenz, nationalist leader elected under free
election in Guatemala in 1951 with a very strong radical agenda

5. We cannot read the words we write,
Bananas and coffee dictate the status of our lives.
We wait for change, we work for stability.
Our fate is not ours – it resides in foreign hands;
The star-spangled hands that dabble in the affairs of
others.
We are Guatemala, Indian and small.
We are Guatemala, poor and riddled with mortality.
We are Guatemala, and the reforms we were promised
were not won at all.

6. President
Eisenhower and John U.N. Secretary
Dulles, author of the General Dag
coup d'état in Hammarskjöld
Guatemala, discuss said that the
logistics. coup violated
the United
Nations' charter.
Glory-coated America steps into our midst, as the
democratic idealists often do!
Fearing communist aggression, they played into United
Fruit’s twisted plans.
My precious Guatemala was subjected to economic
sanctions and left to brood.
The socialists took up Arbenz’s battle; the Americans
declared this an act of war.
Simultaneously they lined up a dissident military force to
make the Arbenz government crumble to the banana-
littered floor.

7. (Bridge)
These new American-supported governments
promised us reform,
But reform means little next to nothing.
Social and economic, our problems run the
gamut.
Just as our sinks run dry and our bellies
grumble with a hunger for true change.
Instead of guns and coffee beans, we want
our government run by people.
Instead of external concern, we want internal
relief.
Instead of today’s Guatemala, instead of
yesterday’s Guatemala,
We want a Guatemala that gleams shiny and
new.

8. We cannot read the words we write,
Bananas and coffee dictate the status of our lives.
We wait for change, we work for stability.
Our fate is not ours – it resides in foreign hands;
The star-spangled hands that dabble in the affairs of
others.
We are Guatemala, Indian and small.
We are Guatemala, poor and riddled with mortality.
We are Guatemala, and the reforms we were promised
were not won at all.