"Like multi-national companies today, United Fruit made alliances when and where it could to survive. It sought out malleable elements: politicians with whom it could cut a deal and presidents-in-exile awaiting their call to sail back to power. United Fruit might even help find a boat. Its efforts showed that as long as it did not unduly offend the contemporary mores of its home base, then it could probably get away with much overseas. Its levels of bribery in Honduras in the 1920s did prompt a debate in the US Congress which concluded that that was the way business was done in such parts of the world."

- Excerpt from Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Changed the World, by Peter Chapman, 2007.

Using the excerpt, what is the common term given to the Latin American countries whose economies were indirectly controlled by the United Fruit Company in the 19th and 20th centuries?
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