Pineapple is delicious. It’s a cluster of berries that grow into a multiple fruit, the number of berries often Fibonacci. It’s a symbol of wealth and hospitality. It’s often identified with Hawaii (to the extent that anything with pineapple on it is deemed “Hawaiian”). It’s also a bit of a con.
Pineapple is not native to Hawaii, and it (like other crops) has not always been good for the islands or their people. The plant’s origins are in South America; the Spanish introduced it to Hawaii, making it a plant of colonizers. Maui is currently undergoing extensive reforestation after decades of loss of land to sugar and pineapple plantations. While there may be a place for commercial pineapple cultivation (currently dominated by Costa Rica and the Philippines), Maui may not be it.
It’s strange to consider how places can be so closely identified with things that are not truly of them, reducing the place and the thing associated with it alike to mere specters of themselves.
It’s almost appallingly easy to be in Hawaii without reckoning with its history, without peeking behind the pineapple. My recent trip to Maui felt more like a family reunion–surrounded by large white Midwestern tourists, the people of my own homeland–than an opportunity to learn about the history of the place I was in.
In Maui, I toured a pineapple plantation. The word “plantation” itself makes me uncomfortable. I know little of the history of slavery in Hawaii. A little bit of research shows that it wasn’t slavery so much as brutal resource exploitation, starting with the sandalwood trade, that led to the disruption of native Hawaiian culture. This mirrors the resource exploitation of land and timber (and of course silver and gold) in California, which disrupted indigenous ways of life and displaced indigenous people, paving the way for their ultimate genocide at the hands of whites.
The pineapple plantation tour was touristy. It was fun, if a bit shallow. There were a lot of those tour bus jokes that everybody groans at, the type that are so bad I don’t even really remember any. They’re just feel-good ambiance. The tour put a lot of emphasis on the idea that Maui Gold is the only place on Maui where pineapples are grown. It didn’t grapple with the idea of whether pineapples should be grown on Maui at all–if there was better work for the land. There were many mentions of the fact that the workers who plant the pineapple are paid well–$30 an hour, likely rivaling or exceeding any hospitality jobs on the island. So there’s that, at least.
But workers in Hawaii didn’t always have it so good (and many likely still don’t). One resource on the history of labor in Hawaii puts it baldly: “while the [sandalwood] trade grew the people of the nation were being ruined.” Missionaries and whaling were also introduced as sandalwood supplies dwindled. The lands of Hawaii were used to cultivate non-native plants that foreign whaling captains expected to eat, and the hearts and minds of Hawaiians were turned away from traditional belief systems to the gospel.
Hawaiian culture was organized around working for the self or the family, not an employer. Sugar plantations changed this, and the conditions were so poor that sugar workers organized a strike. Unfortunately, the owners organized as well, bringing workers from China to cultivate sugar as contract laborers. While the system differed from slavery in the American South, it also had harsh working conditions, bad pay and harsh treatment of workers, including the essential inability to escape the contract labor without being penalized with additional labor. Interestingly and/or ironically, the Civil War disrupted sugar production in the south exacerbating demand for sugar from Hawaii and making already poor working conditions even worse.
I learned that pineapples are washed, in part to see if they float. Pineapples that sink are not kept, opposite of witches. These innocent pineapples can be used for compost or livestock feed, but not shipped to stores. I came home from Maui with three pineapples. I ate one, gave one to a friend, ate another after twisting off the top and putting it in a bag. When it sprouts roots I will put it in water for a while. Then, I will put it in the earth. It’s been cold here, recent–under 40. Much too cold for pineapple. So I might have to raise mine inside. I will have to cover it to protect it from hummingbirds, who will otherwise suck its sweet nectar. In two years, if my tiny Maui Gold pineapple survives, it might grow to bear fruit. Most likely, it won’t take and I’ll toss it. I’ll go to the store to get my pineapple. But part of me will remember trying to grow.