Booming Banana Business

Mayra Velazquez de Leon stepped into her parents’ banana plantation business when she was just a sixth-grader. She could speak English — and her folks couldn’t — and they needed her help when they began exporting bananas to San Diego from the states of Colima and Jalisco in Mexico in the 1970s.

Velasquez de Leon eventually began working full time for her father, who had found a niche in organic bananas. Read more