Sam Zemurray

Zemurray's house on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans is now the official residence of the President of Tulane University.

Samuel Zemurray (born January 18, 1877 in Chișinău , Russian Empire as Shmuel Zmurri , † November 30, 1961 in New Orleans ) was an American banana entrepreneur. He founded the Cuyamel Fruit Company , which played an important and controversial role in the history of Honduras .

Life

Zemurray's original name was Shmuel Zmurri. His poor Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1891. Zemurray had no formal education. Since 1895, he participated in the banana trade in Mobile , Alabama . His early fortune was based primarily on a very successful company in New Orleans, where he bought ripe bananas on the transport ships and immediately resold them on site, penetrating the previously untapped market segment of ripe to overripe bananas. His success earned him the nickname " Sam Banana Man ". By the age of twenty-one, he had a fortune of $ 1 million. In 1905 he and his partner Ashbel Hubbard bought a bankrupt steamship line in which the United Fruit Company (UFCO) took a 60% stake. Zemurray went to Honduras and bought bananas along the Río Cuyamel . Despite their large debts, they developed a profitable business. The UFCO sold its shares in 1907; In 1910, Zemurray became President of the Cuyamel Fruit Company . In 1910 he bought 5000 hectares of land along the Río Cuyamel and went into debt for it.

The governments of Nicaragua and Honduras negotiated with US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox and JP Morgan to repay their debts with British and French banks. It was agreed with the government of Nicaragua that the customs administration would be placed under the US regime in order to collect the debt. Zemurray wanted to negotiate the customs with the President of Honduras Miguel R. Dávila personally. Knox warned him not to do so and had the Office of Naval Intelligence monitor him. Zemurray returned to New Orleans, where he met Honduran President Manuel Bonilla , who had been overthrown in the Battle of Nacaome . Zemurray brought Bonilla back to Honduras with a mercenary force, in March 1911 Bonilla and his mercenaries occupied the Islas de la Bahia off the east coast of Honduras and on March 28, 1911 Miguel R. Dávila fled. Manuel Bonilla secured land concessions and low taxes for Zemurray. In 1916 Zemurray had paid his debts. Because of the fierce competition with the UFCO, Zemurray bought into other parts of Central America. In 1922 he bought the Bluefields Fruit & Steamship Company in Nicaragua from his father-in-law Jake Weinberger in New Orleans. In 1930, Zemurray sold the Cuyamel Fruit Company to UFCO in Boston for $ 31.5 million in shares. In the Great Depression , the share price of UFCO by 90% down against its resale value. In 1933, Zemurray convinced the majority of the shareholders to make him director of the United Fruit Company. He reorganized the company, decentralized decision-making, and the company returned to profitability. 1951 commissioned Zemurray Edward Bernays to carry out an advertising campaign against Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán . In 1951 he retired as President of the UFCO.

Zemurray and his family made generous donations to Tulane University , the Escuela Agrícola Panamericana El Zamorano, and the Zionist Movement . He had known Chaim Weizmann personally since the 1920s . Zemurray also supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal .

Others

The influence of Zemurray and Bernays on the history of Guatemala in the middle of the 20th century is illustrated in the historical novel Harte Jahre by Mario Vargas Llosa , which will be published in German in 2020 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sylvia R. Frey, Betty Wood From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World , Taylor & Francis, 1999