Background info for United Fruit Co

So I decided to go with a short poem for my last blog of the midterm. Pablo Neruda uses an American owned company that specializes in the sales of fruit from third world countries - bananas in particular. I have never really been one to read into a poem and try to find the underlying story, but in this one, I feel that we can not ignore what the writer is trying to say.

For some background information, The United Fruit Co was disliked by many of the indigenous people from the Latin Americas. The company specialized in screwing the little guy by land control. What I mean by this is that the company purchased way more land than they would ever use, and then withheld it from peasant farmers who wanted a cut in the banana industry. Capitalism at its finest... right?

So just when we all thought preventing a poor man from supporting his family, we find out the company may have been involved in killing some of the low-lifes. On November 12, 1928 a group of workers were striking against the banana king. Unfortunately for these workers, Mr Banana King got pissed. The Columbia army, led by General Cortés Vargas opened fire on the strikers. The shooting of unarmed strikers, according to some congressman, was ordered by the United Fruit Company. I know the numbers vary greatly, but it is estimated that between 47 and 2000 people were murdered in what is now known as the Banana Massacre. I guess this picture below shows how they meant business.

Jacob Lawrence

Well, today I opened the book up to find something cool to blog on. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed at the underwhelming selection. I troubled for a bit, but then decided to do a blog on Jacob Lawrence. At first I did not know who he was - all I knew is that he draws just like all of the little junior highers. With a quick wikipedia expedition, I learned a decent amount about Mr. Lawrence.

Besides his name sounding like some boring banker, Jacob was born in 1917 and croaked it 11 years ago in 2000. He describes himself as having a style of "dynamic cubism." However, I would refer to it more as "dynamic boring-ism."

His self portrait, featured right below here, looks more like the work of someone who can't seem to figure out depth or colors.

Jacob Lawrence was known (though I have not figured out how he ever became famous) for portraying the life and struggle of African Americans. One thing I actually like about this dude is that he used multiple paintings to tell a story. His most famous story series is "Migration of the Negro" which is comprised of 60 panels. Ironically, people must have felt uncomfortable using the given title, so it is now called "The Migration Series" which sounds tons more politically correct.

In 2007, the white house was spruced up with one of Lawrence's paintings. It was called "The builders" and was painted in 1947. A staggering 2.5 million dollars was spent on the painting - don't worry, I took the time to look up whether or not it was tax dollars; it wasn't.

Frank Lloyd Wright - Out of nature and into the city

Most of us known Frank Lloyd Wright as the guy who has all of those nature based buildings... At least that is what I thought of him until I opened our marvelous book and saw some very different Frank Lloyd Wright buildings than what I expected. At first, I just marveled at the architectural genius that was displayed in three out of the four pictures on pages 92 and 93 (Yes, I regret to inform you that the mundane Seagram Building did not make the cut).

After the "wow" factor had its time to work, I actually began to think about the FLW buildings a little more. Then it dawned on me; I have seen one of these before. I realized that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was from a movie produced not too long ago. After a quick google search, I came to find that it was featured in The International. As I recall, the movie was a bit of a let-down, except for one pretty sweet shootout scene that took place in Mr. Wright's creation.

This building, so very much unlike Fallingwater, shows just how versatile FLW really is. It takes skill in order to be able to create a style of building such as Fallingwater, but it takes an extremely talented person to be able to have one style, and then to be able to completely put on a different hat and create something so unlike his other works.

Frank Lloyd Wright has the ability to captivate those who view his works. Just now, as I wrote this blog, a friend walked up, stopped, and said "Man, that's a cool building!" while she indicated the bottom right picture on page 93. Frank Lloyd Wright chose to stand out with this creation, while other times he chooses to blend in.

Here is a link to the scene, but I warn it is quite gruesome, and your mother may not approve of the language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyaAuRYNuS0
The architecture of the building can been seen more towards the end of the scene, starting around 6 minutes.