Vaccaro Brothers

Vaccaro brothers (Joseph, Luca, and Felix), three Sicilian Americans who, with a son-in-law, Salvador D'Antoni, engaged in the produce business in New Orleans at the close of the nineteenth century. In 1899 a severe freeze destroyed their orange groves, and of necessity they began the importation of bananas from Honduras. Building railroads, wharves, and Honduras's first bank and hospital, Vaccaro Brothers and Company modernized the banana trade and became Honduras's largest investor and exporter before World War I, and second only to the older United Fruit Company in the international banana trade. The need for capital for research, and expansion to other nations, caused this family company to go public in 1925.

See alsoBanana Industry; United Fruit Company.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richard H. Rose, Utilla: Past and Present (1904); "The Story of the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company," in New Orleans Port Record, October 1947, p. 19.

Thomas L. Karnes, Tropical Enterprise: The Standard Fruit and Steamship Company in Latin America (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Chávez, Filander. Análisis crítico de las condiciones técnicas de los ferrocarriles de la Standard Fruit Company. Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios de Honduras, 1973.

Levi, Vicki Gold. Standard Fruit and Steamship Company. New Orleans: Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, 2003.

Ridgeway, Stan. "Monoculture, Monopoly, and the Mexican Revolution: Tomás Garrido Canabal and the Standard Fruit Company in Tobasco (1920–1935.)" Mexican Studies (Winter 2001): 143-169.

                                    Thomas L. Karnes