The cliché “banana republic” is used by educated Americans without the slightest sense of irony. And it was no different in the frenzy of revelations about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday (8).
As soon as the agents left, Eric Trump went to Fox News to say that the searches of his father’s house were typical of a banana republic. Trump’s 03 son, a favorite target of comedians, demonstrates an, shall we say, intellectual affinity with another presidential third offspring.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who should have been celebrating because he wants to be elected president in 2024, feigned revolt and pressed the key to bananizing the country.
And journalist Derek Graham of The Atlantic magazine hailed the FBI searches as a sign that his country is not a banana republic, proof that everyone is equal before the law.
I ask permission to disagree, as a citizen of the country that exported Carmen Miranda. If any one of us “equals” stole more than 20 boxes of classified documents and objects belonging to the federal government, in a possible violation of national security, what is the chance that the FBI would wait a year and exhaust all negotiations with lawyers until asking the a judge to authorize the search of the swindled content?
Removing or hiding federal public property is a felony. Donald Trump has been committing crimes for half a century, trained by his father, Fred, who began transferring millions to his son using lame companies and fake receipts to evade the tax authorities.
The real estate entrepreneur has always treated New York as his underdeveloped republic, while benefiting from a world-class infrastructure and justice system.
He built Trump Tower with support from the Italian mafia, which brought undocumented foreign workers to the jobsite. He sold apartments in the building for cash to members of organized crime in the former Soviet Union. He hired a notorious cocaine dealer to operate the helicopters that took millionaire gamblers to his casinos in New Jersey, in a synergy between transport and supply of substances.
When politicians and journalists talk about banana republics to show indignation, they forget that the cliché is a direct result of American neocolonialism in Latin America from the 19th century onwards.
A bit of context: the term banana republic was coined in the novel “Cabbages and Kings” by the American writer O.Henry, in 1904. The tale takes place in Honduras, disguised in the plot under the name Anchuria. Honduras became the world’s largest exporter of bananas 100 years ago and was treated as a mere backyard controlled by the American banana corporations United Fruit and Standard Fruit.
Even before the founding of the CIA, at the end of World War II, the US planted FBI agents in Caribbean and Central American countries to support military dictators.
The Trump presidency was an extension of the criminality that the gangster businessman brought in from New York. But with much more serious consequences for the planet. The USA may not have become a banana dictatorship, which is the evident country project of the Republican Party.
But the reaction to the federal raid on Mar-a-Lago, from both the hypocritical right and liberals posing as worried about the executive’s potential abuse, suggests that critics do not look in the mirror.
