Peering out from under the brim of her extravagant fruit-covered hat, Miss Chiquita smiles at consumers from banana labels in grocery stores worldwide. Like a modern- day, commercial Mona Lisa, she represents more than what meets the eye. For seven years, from 1997 to 2004, her parent company, Chiquita Brands International, Inc., supported Colombian paramilitaries, which the U.S. has labeled terrorist organizations. While the U.S. waged its war on terror, paradoxically, it could not prevent its very own corporations from funding terrorist groups.
Though the Chiquita website touts a commitment to the “people of Latin America” that “comes from a simple but powerful belief—we want to do what is right,” events in Colombia suggest otherwise. Beginning in 1997, Banadex, the Colombian subsidiary of Chiquita, paid over $1.7 million to the newly-formed paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). More significantly, Banadex gave a further $825,000 after the U.S. declared the AUC a “foreign terrorist organization” in September 2001, funds that served to strengthen and arm a group known to orchestrate brutal massacres. Chiquita claimed these payments were made after a Banadex official met with Carlos Castaño, then leader of the AUC, who implied that failure to pay would result in the physical harm of workers.
Three years later, in May 2004, Chiquita Brands announced that it had informed the U.S. Justice Department of its payments to the AUC. “The issue is that we were victims of extortion,” Michael Mitchell, director of Corporate Communications at Chiquita Brands International, explained to the Globalist. Yet financial support continued after the Justice Department was notified of the company’s relationship to the paramilitaries and even months after the Justice Department warned Chiquita Brands of the arrangement’s illegality.
When asked whether Chiquita was aware of the paramilitaries’ numerous crimes, Mitchell responded, “Certainly the political situation in the country was known to have a complex political and legal atmosphere. It’s important to remember that we were employing over 4,000 people in a region where jobs are scarce. We believe we have a responsibility to try to protect our employees.” Still, chances were slim that employees benefited in the long run from the blurred boundaries between paramilitary, state, and corporation. When Chiquita was forced to sell its Colombian farms in 2004, trying to control the scandal, it became even more clear that workers did not benefit from Chiquita’s support of the AUC. This so-called “protection of employees” served to cultivate not bananas but a climate of fear and insecurity.
While Mitchell insisted on characterizing the violations as necessary for the continued safety of banana farm workers, a recent plea agreement with the Justice Department indicates the vulnerability of this defense. According to the Justice Department, Chiquita Brands will have to pay $25 million for “engaging in transactions with a specially-designated global terrorist.”
However, the Chiquita debacle constitutes more than just another instance of corporate interference in Latin America. It also demonstrates the extent to which paramilitaries are connected with the Colombian government—and now, with U.S. affairs.
Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. has pursued a vigorous war on terror, mostly in the Middle East, where the invasion of Iraq was first justified as a security measure against weapons of mass destruction and then as the liberation of a country from a despotic leader who terrorized his own people. While some left-wing critics attack the term “war on terror” as a contradiction of terms, most people agree that measures should be taken to prevent terrorism.
But what threatens the sincerity of such an endeavor is the fact that a banana company based in the U.S., the country that most ardently purports to condemn terrorism, could fund a terrorist organization for seven years and escape with only a fine. In the end, $25 million is the amount for which Chiquita sold its Banadex subsidiary. From a company that made $4.4 billion in net sales in 2005, such a fine for Chiquita constitutes a mere slap on the wrist for actions that, in addition to jeopardizing relations between the U.S. and Colombia, have undoubtedly enabled the survival of a group that willfully engages in the murder of its own countrymen.
If the U.S. is to be hard on terrorist groups around the world, it must also be tough on its own companies that support a practice the U.S. has invested $522 billion in defense spending annually to end.