Mamita Yunai

The Atlantic banana zone of Costa Rica in the 1930s, worked by the United Fruit Company that the labourers called Mamita Yunai. The map runs from the Caribbean port of Limón inland along the banana railway to the flooded plantations of the Estrella valley, then south into the indigenous Talamanca highlands where the narrator serves as an electoral delegate.

José Francisco Sibaja

The port of Limón

The Atlantic zone

The Caribbean port through which the United Fruit Company shipped its bananas north and through which the migrant labourers arrived to look for work. Puerto Limón is the head of the railway that carries the story inland to the plantations, and the commercial heart of the exploited zone the workers nicknamed Mamita Yunai.

The banana-zone chapters

explicit Limón, the Caribbean port that is the gateway to the banana zone, is named directly; this marks the centre of the city and its harbour.

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José Francisco Sibaja

The banana railway at Penshurst

The Atlantic zone

The narrow-gauge railway the company built to move its fruit doubles as the only road into the plantations, and the labourers ride it out to the camps. Penshurst, on the line between Limón and the Estrella valley, stands for the rail spine along which the banana work and its abuses were organised.

The banana-zone chapters

explicit Penshurst, the railway hamlet where the Estrella branch line met the coastal railway, is a real place; the specific camps the narrator rides through are inferred, as the novel's finca names are not tied to single stops.

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