The Flowers of El Dorado: Gender, Production, and the Cut Flower Industry in the United States and Colombia, 1908-Present

This dissertation traces the rise of the international flower trade in the Americas over the course of the twentieth century. Today, the majority of cut flowers purchased in the United States begin their lives in Colombia. In the U.S. the primary consumers of flowers are women; in Colombia the vast majority growing and harvesting flowers are women. The impetus for this gendered hemispheric flower trade dates back to the early twentieth century when U.S. retail florists used cultural links between flowers and ideas of love and appreciation to transform two gendered holidays, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day into major floral holidays. U.S. growers, however, many of whom were located in the Northeast and Midwest, struggled to keep up with this rising demand. Flower shortages, coupled with rising unionization and labor costs in the North, pushed a mid-century geographical shift in flower production first to the U.S. Sunbelt and eventually to Colombia as retail florists and wholesalers sought a location with the ideal physical, labor, and economic environment in which to source cheap flowers year-round.

Starting in 1965, commercial floriculture rapidly expanded in Colombia, aided by Cold War efforts to diversify agricultural exports. As the industry grew, Colombian cultivators increasingly depicted flower production as a cure to the nation’s social and economic ills, including unemployment, violence, and drug production. Others, however, challenged this idyllic image of flower cultivation. Governments and residents of small towns near the flower farms, flower laborers, and U.S. growers all critiqued Colombian cultivators for causing environmental damages, mistreating workers, and participating in unethical business practices. Ultimately, however, the symbolic power of flowers as an economic and social savior for Colombia proved too powerful for critics to overcome. Cut flower production in Colombia continued to expand until, today, flowers represent the nation’s second largest agricultural export behind coffee and Colombia supplies almost seventy percent of the flowers imported into the United States. In analyzing the intertwined histories of U.S. and Colombian commercial floriculture, my work demonstrates how producers and consumers imbue commodity goods with symbolic power and how that power can promote international exchange and global capitalist relationships.