The Banana Companies

History

By Amanda Massello

In November of 1928 a unionized banana worker’s strike was put down by the Colombia government in the town of Ciénaga, outside of Santa Marta, on the northern coast. Military forces rolled in and the massacre of United Fruit (now known as Chiquita) employees began—the worst in the banana trade’s history. The government was afraid unions would give way to communism; workers were appealing for eight-hour days, written contracts, the abolition of food coupons—to be spent only in company stores—and no more than six days a week of work. The army barricaded the plaza and then proceeded to machine-gun down hundreds of workers from the rooftops.

The Colombian government claims that the violent incident was necessary to avoid an American intervention on behalf of the United Fruit Company’s interests. The true number of deaths is unknown, and most figures claim it to be between 47 and 2,000—though Gabriel García Marquez himself asserts that only three to five people died. Nonetheless, the legend of One Hundred Years of Solitude’s Macondo and the “Masacre de las Bananeras” seems to have been accepted more as historical, rather than fictional, truth. Marquez’s exaggeration, which intended to convey the repressive nature of the conservative government and the brutality of United Fruit, has now become “la historia oficial.” This was a pivotal event in Colombian politics, which bolstered support for the left.

The history of United Fruit doesn’t stop there: Chiquita was fined $25 million upon discovery that it had made 100 monthly payments totaling $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a Colombian right-wing terrorist group, between 1997 and 2004. While the company claims the payments were made to protect its workers, union organizers were targeted by the very same groups financed by Chiquita.

Oddly enough, the Colombia's Urabá plantation was the most lucrative of all of Chiquita’s global properties during the payment period. Additional reports allege that Chiquita boats have couriered cocaine and smuggled in machine guns for the AUC; a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of hundreds of Colombian families asserts that Chiquita’s payments financed both torture and murder.

Colombia's current Attorney General even demanded that Chiquita executives be extradited and tried in the country for their crimes, but to no avail. The U.S. refused.

The disturbing reality of Colombia under the banana companies seems to move closer to Macondo every day, as history repeats itself and one hundred years of silence dawns to a close.