Chiquita Bananas admits financing terrorist organisations
On Monday 11 May, Chiquita Bananas, the North American banana company,
publicly admitted that they financed a terrorist group in Colombia.
They refused to name which group, or how much they paid or for how
long. They just released the following statement “ The voluntary
admission to the Department of Justice was made because the company’s
administration found out that this group had been classified as
a terrorist group, and that under United States law, it is a crime
to assist or support this type of organisation.”
So, who could this group be? It is absurd to even
imagine that Chiquita might have financed either the FARC or the
ELN. Furthermore, by the mid 90s these two groups had been all but
destroyed in Uraba and Cordoba, where Chiquita grow most of their
bananas. The AUC however is in complete control of the region. Could
Chiquita Bananas have been financing the paramilitary AUC?
History would suggest this behaviour to be nothing
out of the ordinary for Chiquita. In 1928, the United Fruit Co,
the name that the company went by, until they changed their name
to the much friendlier “Chiquita” ordered one of the worst massacres
in Latin American history. 3,000 banana workers and their families
were slaughtered in Cienaga, on Colombia’s Atlantic coast. In 1950,
the United Fruit Co financed the overthrow of the democratically
elected government of Guatemala, an act that led to years of bloodshed
and barbarity. In fact, the term “banana republic” was coined to
refer to Latin American and Caribbean countries where the United
Fruit Co enjoyed virtual control of whole governments and countries.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, Uraba and Cordoba
suffered some of the worst political violence in Colombia, and the
banana workers have been in the eye of the storm. In the 90s alone,
over 1,000 members of the Union Patriotica were assassinated there,
many of them union leaders and banana workers. Today, the banana
workers unions have ceased to exist in any real way.
Chiquita Bananas statement suggests that they
came clean when they found out that the group they had been financing
were included on the US government’s list of terrorist organisations,
and that they had no idea that the paramilitaries were responsible
for literally countless crimes against humanity. This at a time
when every human rights organisation in Colombia had documentary
evidence of the brutality visited by the paramilitaries on this
region of Colombia. Chiquita have just announced that they are selling
all their Colombian interests. The are quite literally getting away
with murder.
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