Multinational Banana Corporation Displaces Afro-Colombian Peace Communities

[Judi Lynn]

Multinational Banana Corporation Displaces Afro-Colombian Peace Communities
Written by Megan Felt
Wednesday, 02 February 2011 20:24

Since early December, hundreds of private contractors of multinational banana corporation Banacol have illegally invaded and occupied Afro-Colombian peace communities in the Curvaradó river basin in order to clear the land for banana cultivation. Their actions have been supported and assisted by local paramilitaries, army soldiers and municipal governments.

The peace communities’ collective territory is protected under Colombia's Constitution and protective measures under the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

According to documents released by the Colombian human rights organization, Intereclesial Comisión de Justicia y Paz (Justicia y Paz) , Banacol workers are displacing vulnerable Afro-Colombian peace communities, thus enabling the corporation to occupy sections of communal, resource rich land. This violates the sovereignty of the long-standing communities, and puts them at risk for complete displacement from their collective territory in a country with almost 5 million internally displaced people. They are also bulldozing the subsistence farmers’ crops, destroying natural habitats and contaminating waterways.

~snip~
Banacol's Bloody Bananas

The Colombian tropical fruit company Banacol bought all of Chiquita Brands Inc.'a Colombia banana plantations back in 2004, while accusations were mounting that Chiquita was funding the paramilitary group the A.U.C. (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). This purchase made Banacol the largest banana producer in Colombia. Chiquita pled guilty in 2007 to the felony, “Engaging in Transactions with a specifically designated Global Terrorist,” admitting to funneling funds to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) through its subsidiary Banadex Inc. (now Banacol), from 1997 through 2004, totaling 1.7 million.

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More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2895-multinational-banana-corporation-displaces-afro-colombian-peace-communities-

[Peace Patriot]

1. Classic "divide and conquer." And wouldn't you know, Chiquita Brands is behind it all?!

Gawd.

So here's basically what happened: Chiquita Brands-Colombia was hiring Colombian death squads to take care of their "labor problem" (murder trade unionists). Survivors of the dead sued them in U.S. court. Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, got them off the hook (as Chiquita's private attorney--how he earned becoming A.G.). Chiquita then transfered their Colombian ops to local thugs--Banacol--to continue these Murder Inc. ops in Colombia's banana fields without risk of lawsuits in the U.S.

This reminds me of Chevron's corporate shuffle in Ecuador. Texaco inflicts a toxic oil spill that covers an area the size of Rhode Island, in Ecuador's rainforest. Chevron buys out Texaco and tries to act like that ends all liability. They get sued, here, by the 30,000 Indigenous tribespeople whose livelihoods and health have been ruined. Chevron-Texaco then moves the lawsuit to Ecuador, where they think they have an advantage as to bribing and bullying the judges, the government and the rightwing elite. But in this situation, Ecuador undergoes a democracy revolution in the meantime and elects an HONEST government--and an Ecuadoran judge recently ruled against Chevron-Texaco.

The point of all U.S. government/military and Colombian government/military policy over the last decade--besides Bush Cartel consolidation of the cocaine trade and its trillion dollar-plus revenue stream (under color of the U.S. "war on drugs")--has been to prep Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich" by the forced displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers and by murdering human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists and peasant farmers (decapitating the leadership of movements for human and labor rights). The Clinton State Department feels obliged to cover all this up--and is actively doing so--resulting in some new tactics, such as pitting one displaced farmer group against another. Both will be screwed, in the end, but meanwhile, the displaced farmers from one area are given incentives to take over the ancestral farms of areas that U.S. corporations (and their local operatives) want cleared out--prepped for biofuel production, GMO crops, resource theft, big protected cocaine ops and other U.S. corporate/military uses.

Thus, Banacol. The Colombian government can LIE that they are restoring land to displaced peasant farmers. What they are really doing is CLEARING the land of the small farmers who actually own the land and have always farmed it. Murder and terror have not stopped. But they are muffled by these sort of tactics. (For instance, starving to death inconvenient persons and communities, rather than just shooting them, dressing their bodies up like FARC guerrillas and claiming high "body counts" in the "war on drugs" that the Bushwhacks smooshed together with the "war on terror.")

I wondered, when Santos announced policies to deal with the Uribe/Bush brutal displacement of peasant farmers, what the scam was going to be. Well, here it is.

And a big THANK YOU to Judi Lynn, Upsidedown World and writer Megan Felt for bringing it our attention!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Banacol/Chiquita/United Fruits has been draining the life out of both the people, and the land

in Latin America going as far back at LEAST as far as the Eisenhower administration, which it used to overthrow and destroy the populist Arbenz in Guatemala. Then we learn, much later, that George H. W. Bush was a major shareholder in United Fruit himself at one time. This rape, betrayal, and vampirism seems eternal, unstoppable.

As criminal, and powerful as it has all been, there will have to be an end to it, in time. One day the basic security and well-being of everyone will finally become more important than the excessive luxury of the very few.

It's hard to believe a government like Colombia's could operate this way at the great disadvantage, grief, and suffering of the masses so damned long. It wouldn't have happened without assistance from the world's most powerful country in the interests of its political contributors, the utterly soulless corporations.

[roody]

2. k