Reverse Looting, or liberating archival records of colonization? The United Fruit Company fonds at University of Toronto Mississauga Library

In the early 1980s, anthropologist Phillipe Bourgois stumbled upon a cache of documents in an aging warehouse attic near the border of Costa Rica and Panama. This archive, now known as the UFC papers, documents nearly a century of one of modern global capitalism’s most notorious multi-national corporations, whose corruption, exploitation, and meddling in Latin American politics in collaboration with the U.S. government is well-known. Bourgois’s theft of these papers, which were slated for destruction by the Company, perhaps constitutes a “reverse looting” – through their theft, the history of the UFC’s plunder of Latin America can also be revealed. In this event, we will consider the implications of this unique archival story and discuss what it tells us about the nature of looting and the role archives can play in liberatory movements and counter-histories. See full event details at: www.lootinglab.ca/ufc

The Looting Lab is a JHI working group + UTM-based interdisciplinary research hub for the study of looted and contested cultural heritage. Learn more about the Lab at www.lootinglab.ca.