This one in particular specifically required exploitation, though. It's an avered historical fact.

certainly in a marxist analysis wage-laboring banana pickers are being exploited because they're alienated from the fruits of their labor (which are in this case literal fruits)

nevertheless, 01992 was a long time after democracy was restored in honduras in 01981 and the civil war began in guatemala in 01960, and bananas are still cheap today, including here in argentina, so evidently cheap bananas don't require the particular much more severe kind of exploitation the term 'banana republic' was invented to describe

Banana republics are exploitative in literally every definition of exploitation, because there was literal military violence involved. And even nowadays, Marxist analysis is far from the only framework in which workers in the global south are exploited. In fact almost any theory of exploitation except for the most radical libertarian/neoliberal would see an element of exploitation.

It turns out that since 1980 there has been economic growth, making the production and shipping of various commodities more affordable.

If banana republics weren't necessary to keep bananas affordable and profitable they would never have existed in the first place.

you are reasoning from the implied functionalist premise that forms of domination exist because they are necessary

this is a false premise

forms of domination exist not because they are necessary but because they are achievable—because those who support them are better organized and resourced than those who oppose them

those of us here in the 'global south' are generally not a fan of the term, lumping together as it does botswana, myanmar, the philippines, and argentina under a single rubric; it reflects a cartoonishly shallow analysis of the real social relations in the world system