How propaganda built a banana republic
Stephen Bailey
Intended professional Fortnite gamer
Stephen Bailey is an intended Math and Economics double major from Connecticut. This past fall, he was the starting quarterback on the Grinnell College football team, but is now working to pursue his true passion of becoming a professional Fortnite gamer and law school student simultaneously. When he is away at college, Stephen dearly misses his pet yorkie-poo dog, Mae.
Read More:
• National Security Archive. “CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents.”
National Security Archive, accessed December 7, 2025.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/. (National Security Archive)
This declassified archive collects CIA documents from Operation PBSUCCESS, shedding light on how assassination, media manipulation, and covert operations played critical roles in the 1954 overthrow of Guatemala’s democratic government.
• Koeppel, Dan. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. New York:
Hudson Street Press, 2008.
Koeppel explains how the banana became a global industry and how this simple fruit helped shape political and economic power around the world.
• Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/106672332/BITTER-FRUIT-The-untold-story-of-the-american-coup-in-Guatemala
Schlesinger and Kinzer present a detailed, evidence-rich investigation of
how the U.S. government and corporate interests orchestrated the 1954
overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected president.
• Bowen, Gordon L. “U.S. Foreign Policy toward Radical Change: Covert Operations in Guatemala, 1950–1954.” Latin American
