THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Bananagate was the newspapers’ name for a political scandal in Honduras in early 1975.  Donald Evans was delighted with the name and decided to make stamps for his own slightly corrupt Central American country, the Republic de Banana.  He used the Spanish standard of one hundred centavos to one peso for the currency and called the capital Chiquita, Little Girl in Spanish, after the United Fruit Company’s cartoon character who used to appear on a round sticker on nearly every banana in Holland and America.  He later invented the monuments of the city: the cathedral Santa Banana, the national palace, the plaza, the avenida, the Casino Banana d’Oro, as well as the national zeppelin La Banana Grande.

Eisenhart/Evans, 1981