8: United Fruit Company. Medical Department. Annual Report of the Medical Department of the United Fruit Company, 1917–1918 (1917)

Black and white photograph of a worker carrying an enormous bunch of bananas on his back at a port, with a large ship and warehouse visible in the background, 1913. — Abbot, Willis J. “Trabajador de la United Fruit Company en 1913.” Photograph. 1913. New York Public Library Digital Collections. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed May 4, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trabajador_United_Fruit_Company,_1913.tif.

This source is the Annual Report of the Medical Department of the United Fruit Company for 1917–1918. It is an internal document produced by the UFC. The report documents the company’s achievements in medical operations across its plantation network in Central America and the Caribbean. By 1917, the company had established a huge hospital network across its plantations. The medical facilities were made to maintain a healthy workforce. The purpose of the document was to demonstrate that its healthcare operations were functioning efficiently, but also to showcase to the world that the UFC was a benevolent superpower.

The document reflects the point of view of a company that believes and wants others to believe that they are doing good. The Medical Department authors present the UFC’s medical interventions in data, statistics, and professional achievement. Throughout the document, the author doesn’t mention the exploitative labor conditions that made the medical department necessary in the first place. This source is historically significant because it represents one of the earliest examples of a corportation using an internal document as a tool for public relations and information control. The source is used to better their image and to portray their presence in Central America as positive. These types of propaganda are critical to their success because it helped to hide the horrible labor conditions they forced on their workers. This source is great for my project because it demonstrates the complexity of the information control strategies used by the United Fruit Company. They use the honorable face of medicine to better their reputation and hide their wrongdoings.

“During the past year we have treated in our hospitals and dispensaries 20,075 cases of malaria…It is very gratifying to record that the number of outside patients seeking medical and surgical treatment in our hospitals has increased considerably, thus demonstrating that the members of our medical staff have the confidence of the communities in which we operate. In many cases patients have travelled for days in order to seek relief in our institutions.”

Source

United Fruit Company. Medical Department. Annual Report of the Medical Department of the United Fruit Company, 1917–1918. Boston: United Fruit Company, 1917. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/annualreport1917unit/page/n5/mode/2up.