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1 " A much more serious labor dispute was the two-year struggle in the late 1940s between the company and stevedores at Puerto Barrios over the issue of mechanization and a change in company pay policy from hourly to "piece" wages. As a result of intense lobbying in Washington by United Fruit officials, members of Congress denounced the strife. From that point on, all efforts by workers to confront the fruit company were reported in the United States as purely political disputes, the result of deliberate government or "Communist" intrigues to harass the company rather than of genuine worker complaints. "
― Stephen Schlesinger , Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
2 " The view of Central America as a region to be kept "safe" for American corporations was naturally not shared by all the people who lived there. To many guatemalans, United Fruit represented with perfect clarity the alliance of American government and business arrayed against their efforts to attain full economic independence. "
3 " With intimidating financial resources and shrewd planning, the United Fruit Company thus deployed a platoon of lobbyists and publicists at a cost of over a half million dollars a year to convince Americans that something evil was afoot in guatemala. The company worked both the left and the right of the American political leadership and won the backing of both liberals and conservatives for its policies in Guatemala. This campaign, so ably executed by Edward Bernays, Thomas Corcoran, John Clements and Spruille Braden, had a remarkable impact on the U.S. government. "
