Prompt for Stuffed and Starved --Chapters 4 and 5--due 9/8

Raj Patel writes:

The complicity of the United Fruit Company [Chiquita Brands] in Central American poverty has rarely been acknowledged in the US. It is a history that has been erased. Indeed, the shorthand phrase through which most people come to know of banana-exporting countries . . . reflects not a history of rapacity and violence but the comically inept regimes installed by the export corporations. Such countries are known not as victims of empire, but as 'Banana Republics'. It's a taint which sullies the reputations of these countries' citizens, rather than reflecting back on the cause of their impoverishment. It is, in short, a textbook case of blaming the victim. (101)

What is Patel saying in these chapters about the ways in which the global food system arose with and is embedded in foreign policy and economics. Who profits and who suffers? What role does the rhetoric of freedom play? There's a lot in these two chapters, so follow the thread that interests you the most and write about it here. Make sure to use quotes from the book to support and illustrate your point.