Wedded to work: Class struggles and gendered identities in the restructuring of the Ecuadorian banana industry

From 1934 to 1962, the United Fruit Company owned and operated Hacienda Ten guel, an immense banana plantation in Ecuador's southern coast. In an effor t to control the working-class of Tenguel, United Fruit implemented a syste m of plantation management that was rooted in the support and manipulation of gendered institutions and practices. In the end, the system backfired an d the workers invaded the entire property, using the same sets of gendered relationships, rights, and identities that the company had developed in ord er to produce a docile labor force. In contrast, the current system of cont ract farming, backed by the state, has made it impossible to adopt the iden tity of "worker" in a more subjective and political sense. Plantations, now severed from the daily life of the family and community, are no longer sit es where a politically meaningful sense of class identity is forged. In exa mining this process of restructuring, this essay explores the complex and c hanging relationships between political struggle, the formation of class an d gender identities, and processes of capitalist transformation.