Chiquita charged in terror investigation

[MAGICBULLET]

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070314/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terrorism_bananas_3>

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Banana company Chiquita Brands International was charged Wednesday with doing business with a terrorist organization.
Federal prosecutors said the company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers did business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. The group is described in court documents as a violent right-wing organization that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.
The company also did business with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, according to prosecutors.
The payments were approved by senior executives at the Cincinnati-based company, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Corporate books were kept to conceal the deals, prosecutors said.

is this sort of a distraction from the rest?

Edited to correct headline.

[olddad56]

1. Anyone why pays taxes could be accused of that.

[sakabatou]

7. LOL

[Roland99]

2. Terrorists have to eat, too.

:-)

[Donnachaidh]

3. seems to me they do business with both right and left organizations

soooo -- is it different than any other business? Or is it JUST because they do business with companies that don't like the Bush Regime?

The US does business with left and right organizations. They call it business. Are they going to put themselves up on charges, too?

[olddad56]

4. okay, now that we have caught the banana growers

when are we going after the diamond industry?

[w4rma]

5. Good. The banana republics have been a huge problem for democracy. (nt)

[pinniped]

6. The POS* must have some stock in a rival banana plantation or something.

Those Hallibuttholes do business with everyone, where the fuck are their charges?

[Judi Lynn]

8. More:

Chiquita to pay $25 million to settle terrorism probe

WASHINGTON - Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to pay a $25 million fine and admit paying a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming part of the country.

The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with terrorist organizations in Colombia.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and is responsible for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The right-wing group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in September 2001.
(snip/...)

http://www.examiner.com/a-619099~Chiquita_to_pay__25_million_to_settle_terrorism_probe.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All efforts are made in news reports designed for American readers to juxtapose the leftist rebels with the incredibly violent right-wing paramilitaries, which have PROVEN connections going all the way up to at least as high as President Alaro Uribe's Foreign Minister, her retired Congressman father, her brother, who has been the head of Uribe's secret police, who is also on the run, a host of lower officials, like a governor, also related to these beanbags, who is on the run, and a TON of Senators.

These right-wing politicians have had their political enemies zapped, had human rights workers killed, etc.,etc. Colombian reporters have the highest rate of murdered writers IN THE WORLD, and labor /union workers are slaughtered, assassinated with no protection whatsoever.

The reason our right-wing government wants to squash publicity to these right-wing monsters is because of the political entanlement
with Uribe, as _Bush's puppet in a rapidly leftist leaning Western Hemisphere, and the investment of American soldiers and specialists who are there for reasons not shared with the U.S. public. _Bush recently increased the number of soldiers to be stationed in Colombia very significantly, not to mention contractors, etc.

As long as they can get shills in the "news" business to claim "but the FARC" kill people, too, all Americans who can't be bothered to keep up, to research will simply gulp it all own indiscriminantly, imagining they are very well informed. Yeah, well-informed on a steady diet of bogus news! They will learn only later how misled they've been unless they get off their asses and start paying attention, and go ape, and lower themselves long enough to RESEARCH this crap!

[Bacchus39]

9. protection money nothing new in Colombia

and the FARC is not a ghost.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/14/colombia.kidnapping.ap/index.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Leftist rebels kidnapped nine geologists as they searched for gold in northwestern Colombia, authorities said Wednesday.

The geologists -- employees of Compania de Servicios Logisticos de Colombia -- were abducted Tuesday evening in the province of Choco by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said Colonel Carlos Pinto, commander of the army's 15th brigade.

"We are carrying out operations to find and rescue them," Pinto said.

The rebels left a note saying they would contact the company with their ransom demands, Pinto said.

[Judi Lynn]

10. U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG "IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS" IN

For Release, August 2, 2004
For more information contact
Michael Evans - 202/994-7000
[e-mail]

U.S. INTELLIGENCE LISTED COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT URIBE AMONG
"IMPORTANT COLOMBIAN NARCO-TRAFFICKERS" IN 1991

Then-Senator "Dedicated to Collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at High Government Levels"

Confidential DIA Report Had Uribe Alongside Pablo Escobar, Narco-Assassins

Uribe "Worked for the Medellín Cartel" and was a "Close Personal Friend of Pablo Escobar"

Washington, D.C., 1 August 2004 - Then-Senator and now President Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia was a "close personal friend of Pablo Escobar" who was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels," according to a 1991 intelligence report from U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials in Colombia. The document was posted today on the website of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research group based at George Washington University.

Uribe's inclusion on the list raises new questions about allegations that surfaced during Colombia's 2002 presidential campaign. Candidate Uribe bristled and abruptly terminated an interview in March 2002 when asked by Newsweek reporter Joseph Contreras about his alleged ties to Escobar and his associations with others involved in the drug trade. Uribe accused Contreras of trying to smear his reputation, saying that, "as a politician, I have been honorable and accountable."

The newly-declassified report, dated 23 September 1991, is a numbered list of "the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection and enforcement of narcotics operations." The document was released by DIA in May 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Archive in August 2000.

The source of the report was removed by DIA censors, but the detailed, investigative nature of the report -- the list corresponds with a numbered set of photographs that were apparently provided with the original -- suggests it was probably obtained from Colombian or U.S. counternarcotics personnel. The document notes that some of the information in the report was verified "via interfaces with other agencies."

President Uribe -- now a key U.S. partner in the drug war -- "was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the United States" and "has worked for the Medellín cartel," the narcotics trafficking organization led by Escobar until he was killed by Colombian government forces in 1993. The report adds that Uribe participated in Escobar's parliamentary campaign and that as senator he had "attacked all forms of the extradition treaty" with the U.S.

"Because both the source of the report and the reporting officer's comments section were not declassified, we cannot be sure how the DIA judged the accuracy of this information," said Michael Evans, director of the Archive's Colombia Documentation Project, "but we do know that intelligence officials believed the document was serious and important enough to pass on to analysts in Washington."
(snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/index.htm

[donkeyotay]

33. Thanks Judi Lynn. I learn a lot from you

Drugs again. I just spent a couple hours reading Sibel Edmonds on drugs and Turkey. The corruption is mind boggling. I heard the apples-oranges (in this case, bananas) left-right stuff on the bidness news and came here for the scoop. Funny how a corporation can pay a fine, stop being a terrorist and it's just bidness as usual. Wonder if Osama can do that. I'll never eat another Chiquita banana. Thanks for helping me keep up with news from the south.

[Judi Lynn]

11. In case some DU'ers don't know, Chiquita Bananas used to be "United Fruit,"

in its past throughout Latin America.

Washington's Role in
Colombian Repression
The myth and the reality
by Matthew Knoester
Z magazine, January 1998



Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian-born 1982 Nobel Prize winner in literature, almost single-handedly changed the way Latin American literature is read around the world. Writing in a style others coined "magical realism," Garcia Marquez narrated the history of a town called Macondo in such classics as One Hundred Years of Solitude. In Macondo "civilization" came and went, civil wars were fought without end, and massacres of banana workers appeared only as figments of a character's imagination. At one point, Garcia Marquez described the event in Colombian history in which hundreds of striking United Fruit workers were massacred in the town of Cienega in 1928. As Garcia Marquez told the story, one banana worker survived and returned to Cienega to find no traces of what had happened. He asked the police chief about the morning's occurrence and the chief said "Massacre? What massacre is he talking about? He must have been dreaming. "Aqui, no pasa nada." Nothing happens here. Macondo is a happy town.

The Macondo Garcia Marquez describes is a spiraling history of his native Colombia. Macondo reveals an official Colombian history, surrounded by a whirlwind of myth. The official history becomes "magic." It erases the government repression in Colombia from history, just as Bogota daily newspapers misname those who are at fault for daily homicides, disappearances, and the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Colombia.

Today Colombia suffers from the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. Throughout the century, myths about Colombia have endured with rhetoric about the oldest functioning "democracy" in Latin America, a booming economy for the Colombian people, and perhaps a slight problem with drug trafficking which requires military assistance from the United States. But in Macondo, official history is myth, only human dreams are real. Let us take a look at today's "mere dreams" in Macondo, which happen to be documented in the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report of 1997, among other places.

Since 1986 more Colombians have been killed at the hands of the military and their "paramilitary" allies each year than throughout the entire 17 years of political repression in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship. Father Javier Giraldo, the Jesuit director of the Intercongregational Commission of Justice and Peace in Bogota, estimates that the military and paramilitary are responsible for 70 percent of the killings in Colombia. This amounts to over 14,000 people since 1986, if Amnesty International's figures are correct. And, as is well documented, even by the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report of 1997, the impunity rate in Colombia rests between 97-99.5 percent.
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/ColombiaRepression_Wash.html

[Bacchus39]

12. United Fruit= see Guatemala

n/t

[happydreams]

36. United Fruit was a cover for all sorts of nasty

little coups and general terrorist activities. Allen Dulles (later CIA head)and Sullivan and Cromwell, used UF extensively. S&C had links to United Fruit all the way back to the turn of the century.

This link to terrorism Chiquita just got nabbed for could be the beginning of a huge expose'.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Chiquita to plead guilty in Colombia payment case

Chiquita to plead guilty in Colombia payment case
Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:06PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chiquita Brands International Inc. said on Wednesday that it would plead guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist group, ending a three-year U.S. government probe into payments made by the banana company's former Colombian unit.

Chiquita, one of the world's largest banana producers, said it would pay a fine of $25 million as part of the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Justice Department filed in federal court in Washington a document detailing the payments made to a group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a violent right-wing group that has been designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.

The government of President Alvaro Uribe has been rocked by a scandal in which eight of his congressional allies and his former intelligence chief have been jailed for financing or otherwise supporting the paramilitaries.
(snip/...)

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN1432738920070314?pageNumber=2

[Judi Lynn]

14. More information already posted to DU on Colombia paramilitary trouble in the last 3 weeks:

Colombia political scandal imperiling US ties
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2745074

Colombia orders political boss arrested
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2752814

Scandal colors Bush visit to U.S. ally Colombia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2755783

Colombia criticizes Amnesty cartoon as "slanderous"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2762210
(Please be sure to note the Amnesty cartoon)

Colombia paramilitary scandal widens
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2765412

[Bacchus39]

15. more FARC fun

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0725/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu

The killings last week of more than a dozen rural woodcutters in a rural region of Colombia mark the most recent move by the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) "to exploit the power vacuum left by the demobilization of 32,000 right-wing militiamen."

The Boston Globe reported over the weekend that this and other recent attacks by the rebel group show that peace will not easily come to rural areas that have been plagued by violence for decades.

The guerrillas accused the woodcutters of collaborating with right-wing militias that until recently controlled northern Chocó Province's lucrative corridor for transnational arms and drug smuggling. With the militias laying down their arms in a peace deal with the government, the guerrillas taunted the men, saying they would now rule the territory and exact their revenge...

For those who hailed the disarmament of right-wing militias over the last 2 1/2 years as the first step to diffuse Colombia's long-running conflict, the violent campaign by the FARC to recoup strategic zones now vacated by their rivals shows that peace will be more elusive. The critical challenges for President Álvaro Uribe as he starts his second term this week are to extend state presence to regions where it has been absent for decades, and to disarm or defeat a leftist insurgency.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Background on United Fruit/Chiquita Banana:

"The yellow fruit that saw red." Traces United Fruit's background to Boston Fruit Company merged with the interests of Brooklyn-born Central American railroad baron Minor C. Kerith. "Their aim was to own and cultivate large areas of Central American land using well-organized, modern methods, providing predictable harvests of bananas which Keith, who controlled virtually all of Central America's railroads, could then carry to the coast for shipment to the USA......"As the company grew richer and the stakes grew higher, the company came to be known as "El Pulpo" (the Octopus). Local journalists accused it of corrupting government officials, exploiting workers and of generally exercising an influence far beyond its role as a foreign company....Personal financial interest in high places coupled with a general fear that Guatemala was on the brink of fullly embracing communism led to the CIA-engineered coup of 1954. The tremendous power of the United Fruit Company had succeeded in setting back democratic development in Guatemala by at least half a century."

"Under dictator Jorge Ubico (1931-1944), American-owned United Fruit Company gained control of 42% of Guatemela's land, and was exampted from taxes and import duties. The other two of Guatemala's three main enterprises -- International Railways of Central America and Empress Electrica -- were controlled by United Fruit.

1954 Involvement in the Coup against President Arbenz

In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup ended what Guatemalans call the "Ten Years of Spring," which began with the bloodless overthrow of military dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. During this period, two democratically-elected civilian presidents governed Guatemala, trying to provide opportunities and raise the standard of living. Jacobo Arbenz, elected in 1950, began to push agrarian reforms more seriously than his predecessor. The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) (UFCo) protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to land-less peasants. The Guatemalan government paid the US company the tax-declared value of the land, but UFCo protested to the highest levels of the US government. Two UFCo stockholders at the time were the Dulles brothers, Secretary of State and head of the CIA in the Eisenhower administration. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace

Following the coup, Colonel Castillo Armas became the new president. the U. S. Ambassador furnished Armas with lists of radical opponents to be eliminated, and the bloodletting promptly began. Under Armas, thousands were arrested and many were tortured and killed. A "killing field" in the Americas: U. S. policy in Guatemala

The coup unleashed one of the most brutal military regimes in the hemisphere. Some 140,000 people have been killed and another 45,000 disappeared in a U.S. backed scorched earth campaign to wipe out dissidents, rebels and activists for peace and social justice in Guatemala. The abuses by the Guatemalan military and its death squads were so horrific that even Amnesty International reported that they "strained credulity." But next week, the guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity or UNRG, will sign a controversial peace accord with the government and formally end a generation of war. December 27, 1996 Democracy Now Broadcast,
(snip/...)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2767316

[PittPoliSci]

35. great post!

[Omaha Steve]

17. Chiquita to Pay $25M in Terror Case (AP update)

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070314/D8NS8BR01.html

Chiquita to Pay $25M in Terror Case
Email this Story

Mar 14, 7:30 PM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO


WASHINGTON (AP) - Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming region.

The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with terrorist organizations in Colombia.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.


Chiquita bananas are piled on display as Kyle Korensek unloads a cart of tomatoes at the Heinen's grocery store in Bainbridge, Ohio in this Aug. 3, 2005 file photo. Banana company Chiquita Brands International was charged Wednesday, March 14, 2007 with doing business with a terrorist organization. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta, file)

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The right-wing group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in September 2001.

FULL story at link.

[juno jones]

18. United Fruit Gets Whats Coming To Them...

They have 50 years of terror to account for...

[otherlander]

19. I'm actually more surprised that FARC

would agree to do business with Chiquita. I mean, they're pretty much United Fruit reincarnated.

[twiceshy]

20. I ate a banana this morning...

Am I complicit?

[olddad56]

24. I just ate one, and the FBI are already in my driveway. Damm those guys are good.

[Bacchus39]

22. business????? how about shake down?

that is the type of "business" they engage in.

[Bacchus39]

23. doing "business" in Colombia

http://www.ishr.org/activities/countries/colombia/hrcol...

The vaccine or "war tax"
The guerrilla groups request citizen to pay a war tax. If the person who is asked to pay this "tax" refuses to do so, he/she may be killed. In the rural areas it is a common practice to make farmers, shopkeepers and professionals pay a certain amount of money, on a monthly basis. This is the type of blackmail they call "vaccine" and the money goes to increase the guerrillas funds.


The armed dissident groups have continued their practice of taking hostages in order to exchange them for money and finance their activities. According to CINEP, between April and September 2000 the ELN allegedly abducted some 300 people, and FARC another 180. Among the victims were mayors, civil servants in the judicial branch of government, humanitarian workers, journalists and foreign citizens. According to the data of the Fundación País Libre, 165 hostages died in captivity, victims of the duration and extreme conditions of their captivity.

FARC continued the practice of enlisting children under the age of 15 into its ranks, which is contrary to international law and to Colombian domestic law.

FARC have always obtained their resources illegally, through kidnapping and extortion. Later FARC began to receive funds through association with drug cartels, which provided the movement with arms and money. In exchange for the patronage, the guerillas movement ceased hostilities against the drug cartels, protects facilities for the production and commerce of drugs and facilitates the transport of drugs. It is also generally believed that some subgroups of FARC actually produce and sell drugs. (5)

One of the most productive sources of income is the extortion and so-called "war taxes" which is nothing but blackmail, as refusing to give FARC the amount of money they demand could cost people their life.

The paramilitary groups are financing themselves from a variety of sources. 70% of its funding is from the drug business, i.e. payment received from drug trafficker for protection. Carlos Castano called this income as a TAX imposed to the drug business. Secondly, farmers, land-owners and businessmen are required to pay the paramilitary groups protection money. (26)


The forced recruitment of children
In many civil wars children are recruited as soldiers by the guerillas. Children learn about terrorism, crime and massacres. Paramilitary groups recruit children to fight for their communities along with their parents.

In Colombia the guerillas call child combatants "little bees" (abejitas) and the paramilitaries call them "little bells" (campanitas).

Thousands of minors fill the ranks of rebel and paramilitary groups. Children as young as 12 and 14 years old shoot with rifles and serve on the front lines to protect adult fighters. (27)

[Judi Lynn]

21. Murderous Colombian mercenaries tied to Chiquita Brands

Murderous Colombian mercenaries tied to Chiquita Brands
David Edwards and Mike Sheehan
Published: Thursday March 15, 2007

Chiquita Brands International, famous for its bananas, has agreed to pay $25 million in fines for employing paramilitary groups to protect its farms in Colombia, according to a CNN report.

The corporation is also suspected of using hired military forces to exterminate workers who caused problems or had political beliefs that were not in the best interests of the company, says Karl Penhall on CNN's American morning.
(snip/...)

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Chiquita_Bananas_Mercenaries_kill_1000_in_0315.html

[Judi Lynn]

25. Did you ever hear about Bush's connection to Chiquita?

Discovered this last night in a search:

Corporate raider Eli M. Black bought 733,000 shares of United Fruit in 1968, becoming the company’s largest shareholder. In 1969 Zapata Corporation, a company in which George H. W. Bush held significant interest, acquired a controlling interest in United Fruit. Robert’s father, Ralph Gow, was on United Fruit’s board of directors.
(snip)

In June 1970, Black merged United Fruit with his own public company, AMK (owner of meatpacker John Morrel), to create the United Brands Company...
(snip)

After Black’s suicide, Cincinnati-based American Financial, one of millionaire Carl H. Lindner, Jr.’s companies, bought into United Brands. In August 1984, Lindner took control of the company and renamed it Chiquita Brands International. The headquarters was moved to Cincinnati in 1985.
(snip/)

http://www.newsfinder.org/site/more/chiquita/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joseph Hagin
Deputy chief of staff
Date of birth: January 6, 1956
A former vice president at Chiquita Brands International, Hagin is in charge of the daily operations of the White House. He was deputy campaign manager in George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
(snip/)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/administration/whbriefing/whoswho.html

In 1969 Zapata Corporation, a company in which George H. W. Bush held significant interest, acquired a controlling interest in United Fruit. The president of Zapata was Robert Gow, a friend of the Bush family. Robert's father, Ralph Gow, was on United Fruit's board of directors.
(snip)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

[happydreams]

37. Great post! This is a keeper.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

26. Chiquita Paid Terrorist Group

-snip-

Chiquita Brands International Inc. will pay a $25 million fine and plead guilty to federal charges that it paid a rebel Colombian group that the U.S. government had designated a terrorist group.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia charged Wednesday that Chiquita paid a group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, more than $1.7 million from 1997 to February 2004. The government says Chiquita also paid two other groups - dating back to 1989 - that were designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 1997.

-snip-

Republicans? Funding Terrorists? I'm shock! Shocked I tells ya!!

If you know anything at all about Chiquita, you know that it's run by a clan of right-wing idiots. Chiquita claims they were paying the terrorists to protect their workers -- but oddly enough, people who are trying to unionize their field workers have an odd tendency to wind up dead in an irrigation ditch. Connection? Oh, goodness me, of course not.

Chiquita

[Bacchus39]

27. paying Colombian rebel and paramilitary organizations

for "protection" (shakedown) is nothing new. happens all the time. not that Chiquita (United Fruit) is exactly a "model corporate citizen"

[Bacchus39]

28. doing "business" in Colombia

http://www.ishr.org/activities/countries/colombia/hrcolombia2001.htm

The vaccine or "war tax"
The guerrilla groups request citizen to pay a war tax. If the person who is asked to pay this "tax" refuses to do so, he/she may be killed. In the rural areas it is a common practice to make farmers, shopkeepers and professionals pay a certain amount of money, on a monthly basis. This is the type of blackmail they call "vaccine" and the money goes to increase the guerrillas funds.


The armed dissident groups have continued their practice of taking hostages in order to exchange them for money and finance their activities. According to CINEP, between April and September 2000 the ELN allegedly abducted some 300 people, and FARC another 180. Among the victims were mayors, civil servants in the judicial branch of government, humanitarian workers, journalists and foreign citizens. According to the data of the Fundación País Libre, 165 hostages died in captivity, victims of the duration and extreme conditions of their captivity.

FARC continued the practice of enlisting children under the age of 15 into its ranks, which is contrary to international law and to Colombian domestic law.

FARC have always obtained their resources illegally, through kidnapping and extortion. Later FARC began to receive funds through association with drug cartels, which provided the movement with arms and money. In exchange for the patronage, the guerillas movement ceased hostilities against the drug cartels, protects facilities for the production and commerce of drugs and facilitates the transport of drugs. It is also generally believed that some subgroups of FARC actually produce and sell drugs. (5)

One of the most productive sources of income is the extortion and so-called "war taxes" which is nothing but blackmail, as refusing to give FARC the amount of money they demand could cost people their life.

The paramilitary groups are financing themselves from a variety of sources. 70% of its funding is from the drug business, i.e. payment received from drug trafficker for protection. Carlos Castano called this income as a TAX imposed to the drug business. Secondly, farmers, land-owners and businessmen are required to pay the paramilitary groups protection money. (26)


The forced recruitment of children
In many civil wars children are recruited as soldiers by the guerillas. Children learn about terrorism, crime and massacres. Paramilitary groups recruit children to fight for their communities along with their parents.

In Colombia the guerillas call child combatants "little bees" (abejitas) and the paramilitaries call them "little bells" (campanitas).

Thousands of minors fill the ranks of rebel and paramilitary groups. Children as young as 12 and 14 years old shoot with rifles and serve on the front lines to protect adult fighters. (27)

[Sequoia]

29. And let's not forget what they did in Cuba back in the day.

When they were called United Fruit Company. They've always been horrid, always!! Just google them and you'll know.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

31. They're still pretty horrid...

Backstory: My handle used to be "Jeff in Cincinnati" and in one of the few occasions when the Cincinnati Enquirer showed anything like journalists balls, one of their investigative reporters, with the help of an insider at Chiquita, obtained voicemails that detailed a number of ghastly crimes, including union-busting and the disappearance of a union organizer. My quess? Their protection money probably included a few "hits" against people Chiquita didn't like.

Threatened with a lawsuit, the Enquirer retracted the entire story, fired the reporter, and deleted the entire article from their web archives. I think it was captured and maintained by some other sites, but I don't know where they are. It was pretty much the last time they practiced journalism at the Enquirer.

I used to call it, "The Daily Newsletter of the Hamilton County Republican Party."

[Bacchus39]

32. I'd say paying extortion money was one of the more innocuous

activities of United Fruit

[Sequoia]

38. Maybe I'd better stay away from their products.

Wouldn't that be something...American consumers boycotting their products.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

40. Hard to find bananas otherwise...

I'm sure there are organic and fair trade bananas out there, but you'll have to go out of your way to get them. This is a freaky company, financially speaking. It seems like every 2-3 years they're on the verge of bankruptcy -- they're like a damned airline.

[Sequoia]

41. Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today.

Dole has them where I live, plus another brand that I can't think of.

[Seabiscuit]

30. Chiquita Banana?

I'm Chiquita Banana
And I'd like to say
I'm helping out the terrorists
In every way

A Banana Republic
Is where I'd like to stay
I'm Chiquita Banana
And I'm cumming your way

[PittPoliSci]

34. boy some things never change.

They changed their name, but they're still United Fruit at heart.

[Cursive]

39. I deal with Chiquita products everyday

and as a low level employee of my company, had no idea of the the history behind Chiquita - United Fruits. Thanks for sharing all this info. I heard a few opinions about the whole thing today and most of it was playing the "protection" off as some kind of honorable thing. The treatment of union workers described in posts above doesn't sound very honorable. It makes me ill. Don't know if any of the articles included this, but I was told that Chiquita knew about the fine for like 3 years...so they prepared for it by putting money aside. Justice at it's finest, I suppose.

[Judi Lynn]

42. Is this what you call paying for "protection," Chiquita?

Coca-Cola, Nestle and Chiquita Brands on ‘Trial'

~snip~
Nestle, along with Chiquita Brands and Coca-Cola, is also accused of harassing unionised workers.

In 2003, Chiquita admitted that it had paid the AUC paramilitary network for what it called "protection" for its employees.

According to the PPT, there is also evidence that in 2001 the banana company transported 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and five million munitions to paramilitary groups in Córdoba and Urabá, regions in northwestern Colombia that are dominated by the right-wing militias.

The PPT stated that in order to force workers to quit a union or their job, to stop pressing legitimate grievances, or to accept poor working conditions, these corporations routinely turn to the paramilitaries who, by means of intimidation, threats, abductions, torture and murder, defend the "harmful designs of the corporations and the Colombian state."
(snip/...)

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/colombia/3871.html

[Judi Lynn]

43. More on Chiquita's record:

Chiquita sells bananas in about 70 countries making it the biggest banana company in the world. Throughout its history, Chiquita's operations have contributed to the destablization of at least one Central American country, and compounded the problems of poverty and deteriorating health among banana plantation workers. Chiquita's predecessor, United Fruit Company, used its political might to convince the U.S. to topple the popularly elected government of Guatemala in the 1950s. Over one-hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared as a result of the power struggle that ensued. The company still faces criminal charges for using toxic agrochemicals known to cause sterility and birth defects on Central American banana farms a decade after the substances were banned in the US. Chiquita has excelled past its competitors by using Rainforest Alliance environmental standards in banana production. Chiquita recently announced plans to break into the green marketplace with the production of Fair Trade Certified bananas, however plans were called off when a hurricane wiped out the plantation and all workers were laid off.
(snip/)

http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=202

[Judi Lynn]

44. Colombians seek extradition of U.S. banana executives who supported death squads

Colombians seek extradition of U.S. banana executives who supported death squads
The Associated Press
Published: March 16, 2007


BOGOTA, Colombia: Outraged Colombians called Friday for the United States to extradite American banana executives after the Cincinnati-based fruit giant Chiquita acknowledged funding illegal death squads in the region where it got its bananas.

Jaime Bernal Cuellar, a former Colombian attorney general, joined opposition lawmakers in calling for the extradition to Colombia of all those involved.

"A criminal investigation of the people who financed these illegal groups should begin immediately," he said.

The Colombians particularly want to know whether U.S. prosecutors learned anything more about a November 2001 scheme in which a Banadex ship was used to unload 3,000 rifles and more than 2.5 million bullets that came from Nicaragua on a different ship for use by Colombia's paramilitaries.

The shipment was revealed in a 2003 report by the Organization of American States.
(snip)

"The prosecutor will ask for details on the agreement, and see if that information strengthens the investigation into the arms-trafficking investigation," a prosecutor's office source said Friday on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record.

Some Colombian politicians also questioned the U.S. government's role in the scandal.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/16/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Terrorism-Bananas.php