In 1954, United Fruit Company — now known as Chiquita — talked the CIA into overthrowing a government. In 1952, the goverment of Guatemala started giving unused farmland to landless peasants. The fallow land actually belonged to the United Fruit Company. Even though the company wasn’t using the land for anything at that time, they certainly didn’t want peasants to have it. So the higher-ups lobbied the United States government, asking it to intervene, and telling the CIA that the Guatemalan government was run by a bunch of Communists. It wasn’t; the Guatemelan president, Jacobo Arbenz, had come to power in a fair and democratic election in 1950. But the Central Intelligence Agency bought the fruit company’s story, and held a coup d’etat. They overthrew the elected government and replaced it with a military dictatorship that was pro-business. This is where we get the term “banana republic.”