Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

by Eduardo Galeano

With the price falling continually between 1964 and 1968, the consuming country—the United States—helped itself to more and more millions from the producing country, Brazil. But for the benefit of whom? Of the coffee-drinking citizen? In July 1968 Brazilian coffee cost 30 percent less in the United States than in January 1964, but U.S. consumers did not pay less: they paid 13 percent more. Thus in the 1964-1968 period middlemen kept the 13 percent as well as the 30 percent, feathering their nests twice over. In the same period the price Brazilian producers received for each sack of coffee dropped by half.28 Who are the middlemen? Six U.S. concerns control more than a third of the coffee that leaves Brazil, and another six control more than a third of what enters the United States: these firms dominate the business at both ends.29 Just as United Fruit monopolizes the sale of bananas from Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador, as well as their importation and distribution in the United States, so U.S. firms run the coffee business and Brazil only participates as supplier and victim. The Brazilian state takes over the stocks when overproduction demands the accumulation of reserves.

Profits of middlemen