A little article I wrote for the Hamilton SDS chapter's Newsletter.

Chiquita Banana Caught Funding Death Squads
On March 13, 2007 Chiquita Brands International was found guilty of funding a Colombian terrorist organization and fined $25 million dollars by the US justice department. (Narco News) The organization - the right-wing United Self-Defense forces of Columbia (AUC in its Spanish initials) - has a long history of involvement in the narcotics trade in Columbia, as well as kidnapping, extortion, murder, and has been cited by human rights organizations for massacring entire villages.
The Defense
The payments were made through Chiquita’s wholly-owned Columbian subsidiary Banadex. The company paid the terrorist paramilitaries roughly $1.7 million dollars in what it called “protection payments.” (International Herald Tribune) Chiquita claimed that it made similar payments to the similar leftist organizations the FARC-EP and the ELN, despite the fact that these groups were driven out of the regions where Banadex operated by the AUC. Furthermore, there are a couple of holes in Chiquita’s story that indicate that the corporation’s funding was less due to extortion and more an endorsement of the AUC’s policies. The first hole is that the during the AUC’s 1997 offensive in the Uraba province - where many of Banadex’s banana plantations are located - the group began killing off many of the human rights officials and trade unionists that have constantly criticized the conditions on the company’s plantations; also, the paramilitaries drove villagers off of especially fertile farming lands, making way for Banadex. (Narco News) Payments were first made in 1997 during this offensive and continued until 2003, and, during this period, Banadex became Chiquita’s single most profitable venture. (International Herald Tribune) The second serious hole in Chiquita’s claim that it was simply attempting “to protect its employees” is that the multinational went on to smuggled 3,000 AK-47’s and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition into the country for the AUC. (USA Today, International Herald Tribune) In fact, one of Banadex’s legal representatives, Giovanny Torres, was held in prison for a year in connection with the case, though he was eventually released due to lack of evidence. (AP) Such an act, in concert with the AUC’s bloody and profit-friendly approach to worker relations, sheds considerable doubt on just how much “duress” the company was under.
Extradition and the Government Involvement
Currently, the chief federal prosecutor Mario Iguaran is seeking to extradite 8 Chiquita executives over the smuggling and payments. (USA Today) This conflicts with one of the provisions of the penalty the US Justice Department waged against Chiquita, which allows anonymity to the executives in question. (National Security Archives) One of the most interesting aspects of this case are the roles of the US and Columbian governments. The payments Banadex made were done through a Columbian government security program known as “Convivir.” (National Security Archives) This program was in effect in Uraba while the current Columbian president, Uribe, was governor of the region. (Socialist Worker) On the American side of the issue is the fact that the US Justice Department knew about the payments for 10 months before taking any action. (International Herald Tribune)

"And just like that, it was over... The last flames flickered and died amidst the rubble of an empire[.] As the smoke rose into the blackened sky, we realized that the world we had known was gone forever." - Eric "Doc" Griffin on the fall