A Camera in the Garden of Eden. The Self-Forging of a Banana Republic

331 Pages·2016·24.034 MB·English

by  Kevin Coleman

A Camera in the Garden of Eden
THE SELF-FORGING OF A BANANA REPUBLIC
Kevin Coleman
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN
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Copyright © 2016 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
First edition, 2016
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Coleman, Kevin P., author.
A camera in the garden of Eden : the self-forging of a banana republic / by Kevin Coleman. — First
edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4773-0854-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4773-0855-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4773-0857-8 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-1-4773-0856-1 (non-library e-book)
1. Photography—Social aspects. 2. Plantation workers—Honduras—Social conditions. 3. Banana
trade—Honduras—History. 4. Visual communication—Social aspects. 5. Honduras—History. 6.
Photography—Honduras. I. Title.
TR183.C66 2016
770.97283—dc23
2015024075
doi:10.7560/308547
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For my mom and dad, and Hema and Saagari
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Taken and retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising
of rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has
scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. . . . The
guns of the rovers are silenced; but the tintype man, the enlarged photograph
brigand, the kodaking tourist and the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs
have found it out, and carry on the work.
O. Henry, Cabbages and Kings
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CONTENTS
PROLOGUE. Foto Arte and Corporate Seeing
ONE. Photography as a Practice of Self-Forging
TWO. Visualizing Progress
THREE. Vaudeville and Empire
FOUR. An Egalitarian Optic
FIVE. Transnational Imagescapes
SIX. In Visibility in an Exceptional Space
SEVEN. Photographs of a Prayer
EIGHT. Possibility Eruption Exists
NINE. Between Is and Ought
EPILOGUE. A Bridge Called Democracy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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Fig. 0.1. Courtesy of the Rafael Platero Paz Archive.
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PROLOGUE
Foto Arte and Corporate Seeing
In the early 1930s on the Caribbean coast of Central America in a town called
El Progreso, a domestic servant posed for a studio photographer named
Rafael Platero Paz (figure 0.1).
As she leaned against the front porch rail, her demeanor was serious. With
her gaze slightly askance, she watched the photographer, who was also her
employer. Her clothes were neat and clean. Her earrings were modest, her
sandals, practical. She was employed by Platero Paz to help his family with
the cooking and cleaning. She was probably around seventeen years old when
he took this picture. So many years later, no one in the family is able to
remember her name. For whom was the photo made? For the worker herself?
Or was the photographer simply testing out a new camera on the closest
available subject?
In the background, we see the house of Platero Paz’s neighbors, Pedro
Amaya and his wife, Gertrudis (everyone called her Tulita). The laundry
drying on the line was probably hand-washed by Tulita, or by a young
woman whose social status was similar to that of the one depicted here.
Platero Paz took this picture on the veranda of a house that he rented from
Manuel María García, a wealthy Mexican lumberman and local benefactor.
This was the place that Platero Paz called home. Above the door facing the
street, he tacked up a shingle that announced the name of his business: Foto
Arte—Naturalidad, Arte y Belleza.1
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Fig. 0.2. Rafael Platero Paz created this advertising still and projected it onto the big screen at the local
movie theater, Teatro Moderno. Courtesy of the Rafael Platero Paz Archive.
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Fig. 0.3. Self-portrait by Rafael Platero Paz. Courtesy of the Rafael Platero Paz Archive.
Inside, he had a studio and darkroom where I lived for several months
while I was looking into the histories of images and politics in El Progreso.
Throughout the twentieth century, El Progreso thrived as a town that serviced
the vast banana plantations of the fertile Aguán Valley of northern Honduras.
Situated near the industrial city of San Pedro Sula and connected by railroad
to the port of Tela, El Progreso has two excellent access points to the world
economy and to the cultural worlds pulsating beyond the shores of Honduras.
For a relatively small city, El Progreso has had a disproportionate impact
on the life and culture of the nation. Smallholders and mahogany traders
founded the town in 1893. By the 1920s, the United Fruit Company had
acquired much of the fertile land across the Caribbean coast of Central
America. In 1954, workers for the United Fruit Company, now known as
Chiquita Brands International, went on strike for sixty-nine days. The town of
El Progreso served as a primary base of support for the striking workers. In
the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of subsistence farmers, or campesinos,
organized a massive and relatively successful movement for land reform.
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