West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1940 (ISBN 0-8071-1979-2) is a 1996 book written by Aviva Chomsky

Aviva Chomsky

Aviva Chomsky is an American historian, author, and activist. She teaches at Salem State College in Massachusetts, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies program. She previously taught at Bates College in Maine, and was a research associate at Harvard University, where she...

. It details the history of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company

United Fruit Company

It had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the...

, formed in 1899 from previous railroads and banana-growing interests in Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. It also describes how the local workers developed their own parallel socio-economic system. The book was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies.