Bush Administration Condoned Supporting Terrorism in Colombia

LOS CRÍMENES DE LA CHIQUITA BRANDS EN COLOMBIA

El 6 de diciembre de 1928 en la plaza municipal de Cienaga Magdalena fueron asesinados cerca de 3000 hombres y mujeres, por exigirle a la transnacional estadounidense UNITED FRUIT COMPANY solución al pliego de peticiones presentado por el sindicato. Ese día el ejercito colombiano al mando del general Carlos Cortés Vargas disparo sus armas contra la multitud para aniquilar la protesta de los trabajadores.

Bush Administration Condoned Supporting Terrorism in Colombia
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Thursday, 09 August 2007

In April 2003 a former Chiquita executive told Secretary of Homeland Security (who at the time was assistant attorney general) Michael Chertoff that the company was paying off this paramilitary group. Chertoff recognized that the payments were illegal, but wasn't quite sure whether they were really that wrong. It was reported that he told the company to wait to do anything--like possibly stop financing a terrorist group--until he got back to them.

Chiquita's hundred year history in Colombia

Advocates for the families of 173 people murdered inthe banana-growing regions of Colombia filed suit today against Chiquita Brands International, in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. The families allege that Chiquita paid millions of dollars, and tried to ship thousands of machine guns to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is a violent, right-wing paramilitary organization supported by the Colombian army. In 2001, the Bush Administration classified the AUC as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Its units are often described as "death squads."

Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?
Written by April Howard

When the army fired on strikers during a demonstration in the city of Cienaga, killing a disputed number of workers (between 47 and 2,000), it created waves that contributed to the downfall of the Conservative Party and features in the masterworks of two famous Colombian authors.[13] The Santa Marta Massacre, as it came to be known, appears in Álvaro Cepeda Samudio’s novel "La Casa Grande" (1962), and Gabriel García Márquez’s epic novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1966). Nobel-awarded Chilean writer Pablo Neruda also recognized the influence of the United Fruit Company with a chapter of the same name in his epic work "Canto General" about the history of Latin America.