From Bunches to Kilos: Commodity-Induced State Weakness as a Predicate for Criminal Governance in Honduras

This thesis examines the ways in which Honduras' historic banana economy, in which the country was financially dependent on banana exports and in which United States-based fruit companies administered corporate enclaves and wielded significant leverage over the government, facilitated the subsequent emergence of the country as a major hub in the Latin American drug trade. Specifically, the banana economy incentivized economic planning based around a single commodity and governments willing to make concessions to foreign companies, and its subsequent decline led to a lack of economic opportunities, turmoil, and local institutions incapable of adequately meeting the needs of the population. These factors created an environment in which criminal organizations could readily infiltrate and operate. All of this occurred in the context of larger shifts in Latin American life, as players in the drug trade became more violent and more consolidated and as long-established paths were disrupted and new ones took shape, following and creating state complicity.