Reply #1: More: Chiquita Bananas admits financing terrorist organisations

[Judi Lynn]

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.
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http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=45