The bloody side of economics: the case of Chiquita Banana in Colombia

For Kyle of Immigration Orange who solicited posts on this subject.

A few months ago it came out that Chiquita Banana admitted to paying "protection money" to right wing terrorist groups in Colombia.   In Colombia, a country still engaged in a 40 year old ongoing low-scale civil war, this is nothing new.  For a company that works in the area that Chiquita did* (an area that has a heavy presence of armed actors), to have to pay una vacuna to ensure their continued operation is pretty normal.  It's one of the ways the illegal armed groups on both sides finance their war.  It is, however, the first time a US company has admitted such actions to US authorities and it's notable --and commendable-- that it was the US Justice Department who was one of the ones who initiated the investigation (Colombians complain that in their country corruption and apathy mean something like this is rarely investigated).

But Chiquita did more than allow themselves to be extorted, according to this article from La Semana. The general manager of the Chiquita subsidiary, Banadex, met personally with the infamous Carlos Castaño, former head of the largest paramilitary group in the country, the AUC.  Banadex even smuggled in 3,400 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition for the group.  That's not simple extortion; that's active collaboration with a terrorist organization. 

"During the time Chiquita was paying the paramilitaries, thousands of people across Colombia died at the hands of the right-wing militias" (according to this article from the Christian Science Monitor).  For many of them, being affiliated with a union made them targets.  Colombia is the most dangerous country on the planet for a union organizer.  Paying off/working with the paramilitaries is not exactly an effective policy if your goal is to protect workers. If your goal is to intimadate them however it makes much more sense.  It is reasonable to inquire into what sort of incentives a company doing business in that country would have to collaborate with a terrorist organization that targets those trying to subvert or protect themselves from the capitalist system.

And, still, a big business in alliance with paramilitary forces in Colombia is not anything new.  It's long been known that Coca-Cola used paramilitary thugs to intimidate workers as well (for more info see www.killercoke.org).  As the article from La Semana says:

"The Chiquita case reveals the responsibility of the private sector for the reach of paramilitary dominion in large parts of the country.  And just as we speak of the para-political alliance, there is also a para-industrial alliance"

That's the nature of the conflict in Colombia.  The war is between right-wing paramilitary forces that support neoliberal economics in which the few become wealthy while the majority remain poor and Marxist guerrilla groups who, inspired by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and the wave of insurrectionary movements across Latin America in the 1960s, believe that it is not only possible but imperative that a different system be put into place.  And both sides are willing to kill and die for what they believe in.

Any particular corporation may engage in bloody practices such as these but those of us concerned with justice have to ask why.  It’s not because of an irrational hatred for humanity.  It’s because such behavior is profitable. In a neoliberal economic system, a corporation thinks only of the bottom line; human life is of secondary concern.  It’s a bloody political economy.

To pressure individual companies to NOT rely on paramilitary armies to make a country safe for capitalism is like trying to convince water to NOT flow downhill.  We can put some dams up but that will just redirect the flow.  Until we have an economic system that does not encourage or give incentive to this sort of behavior more cases of gross human rights violations will continue to occur.

So sure, boycott Coca-Cola and condemn Chiquita for being shitty corporate citizens, but understanding the bigger picture of the role economics plays in the world of business and politics pushes us further towards a more lasting resolution to human rights violations by corporations not only in Colombia but around the world.

* Chiquita sold off its Colombian subsidiary in 2004.

Comments

[Bob]

Columbia is one deadly place for trade unionists.