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death squads
US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad's Murder of Banana Workers
"The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed," said one attorney, "but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep."
Jun 11, 2024
In what case litigants are calling the first time an American jury has held a U.S. corporation legally liable for atrocities abroad, federal jurors in Florida on Monday found that Chiquita Brands International financed a Colombian paramilitary death squad that murdered, tortured, and terrorized workers in a bid to crush labor unrest in the 1990s and 2000s.
The federal jury in West Palm Beach, Florida found the banana giant responsible for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and awarded eight families whose members were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary group $38.3 million in damages.
EarthRights International, which first filed the case—Doe v. Chiquita—in 2007,
called the verdict "a milestone for justice."
"The jury's decision reaffirms what we have long asserted: Chiquita knowingly financed the AUC, a designated terrorist organization, in pursuit of profit, despite the AUC's egregious human rights abuses," the group said.
"By providing over $1.7 million in illegal funding to the AUC from 1997 to 2004, Chiquita contributed to untold suffering and loss in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena, including the brutal murders of innocent civilians," EarthRights added. "This historic verdict also means some of the victims and families who suffered as a direct result of Chiquita's actions will finally be compensated."
One of the plaintiffs in the case called the verdict the "triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years."
Plaintiffs' attorney Agnieszka Fryszman said that "the verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep."
The U.S. labor reporting site More Perfect Unioncalled the verdict "an unprecedented win against corporate violence, which could [be] the first of many."
A Chiquita spokesperson toldFruitnet that the company plans to appeal the verdict.
The AUC was formed in 1997 via the union of right-wing paramilitary groups battling leftist guerrillas—mainly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN)—in the South American nation's civil war. Closely linked to Colombia's U.S.-backed military, the AUC—some of whose members were trained by Israelis—was designated a terrorist organization in 2001 by the U.S. State Department, which cited its "massacres, kidnappings of civilians, and participation in the trafficking of narcotics."
In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty in federal court to funding the AUC and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The company admitted to paying the AUC via its wholly owned Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, which was also its most profitable operation. Chiquita recorded these transactions as "security payments" or payments for "security" or "security services" in its corporate records.
Chiquita said that it began making the payments after Carlos Castaño, who led the AUC at the time, implied that Banadex's employees and property could be harmed. However, despite—critics say because of—the payments, AUC members brutally targeted Banadex workers in what victims and their advocates say was an effort to suppress labor unrest.
An earlier lawsuit described the fate of one victim, who is identified by the pseudonym "Pablo Pérez":
In the early morning hours of November 1, 1997, a group of heavily armed paramilitaries dressed in camouflaged uniforms stormed Pablo Pérez's home in the village of Guacamayal, in the banana zone of Magdalena, while he was sleeping. The paramilitaries broke down the door to the home, found and seized him, tied him up, and forced him to accompany them at gunpoint, beating him as they kidnapped him. His corpse was found the following morning with signs of torture and two gunshots, one to the head and one to the body.
According to plaintiffs in that case, in 2001 a ship carrying 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition left Nicaragua and, instead of heading to its declared destination in Panama, dropped off the arms at a Banadex-run port in Turbo, Colombia. Castaño called the procurement "the greatest achievement by the AUC so far."
The earlier lawsuit states that in addition to using the money provided by Chiquita to "drive the leftist guerrillas out of the Santa Marta and Uraba banana-growing regions," AUC militants would "resolve complaints and problems with banana workers and labor unions."
"Among other things, when individual banana workers became 'security problems,' Chiquita notified the AUC, which responded to the company's instructions by executing the individual," the document states. "According to AUC leaders, a large number of people were executed on Chiquita's instructions in the Santa Marta region."
Chiquita has a long history of deadly repression against workers. Formerly the United Fruit Company (UFC)—the infamous "Octopus"—the New Orleans-based behemoth monopolized land and markets throughout Latin America in the 20th century. Through slick marketing campaigns, UFC introduced the previously unknown banana to consumers in North America and beyond. The company propped up so-called "banana republics"—extraction economies characterized by state repression, severely stratified social classes, and compliant local plutocracies—throughout the region.
UFC stopped at nothing, including participation in U.S.-backed coups, to protect its property and profits. By the 1930s, UFC controlled around 90% of the U.S. banana import business. It owned or controlled nearly half of Guatemala's land in the 1940s.
In Colombia, where UFC workers earned the approximate equivalent of $1 per month, UFC refused to negotiate with workers who went on strike in 1928 in Ciénaga, near Santa Marta. U.S. and UFC officials falsely portrayed the strike as communist subversion and Colombia's right-wing government deployed 700 troops to crush the labor action. The U.S. Embassy subsequently informed then-Secretary of State Frank Kellogg that "I have the honor to report... that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded 1,000."
Violence against Colombian banana workers continued into the 21st century, often with impunity for the perpetrators. Litigants in Doe v. Chiquita said Monday's jury decision marked the beginning of a new era of accountability.
"This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished," EarthRights International general counsel Marco Simons said in a statement. "These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process."
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On Coup Anniversary, Examining the US Role in Honduras
Today marks seven years since the coup d'etat in Honduras - the day that former President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped by the Honduran army and then flown out of the country from an air field controlled by the U.S. military. That event sent shockwaves through the region and the world and was denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union. Honduras was suspended temporarily from the OAS.
Jun 28, 2016
Today marks seven years since the coup d'etat in Honduras - the day that former President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped by the Honduran army and then flown out of the country from an airfield controlled by the U.S. military. That event sent shockwaves through the region and the world and was denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union. Honduras was suspended temporarily from the OAS.
Observers and experts warned that if Zelaya was not restored to office and the forces behind the coup were allowed to proceed without any accountability, it would be disastrous for Honduras and the region. Some feared widespread human rights violations and targeting of political opposition, harkening back to a time of CIA-trained death squads and disappearances when Honduras was a front in the U.S.'s covert war against liberation movements in neighboring countries.
Seven years and hundreds of lives later, those predictions have proven true. Opponents of the coup regime, leaders of the resistance, land rights activists, journalists, and human rights lawyers have been killed in the wake of the coup. Among the most recent tragic examples is that of Berta Caceres, a fearless, committed, and exuberant advocate for the Lenca people against the construction of a dam project at Rio Blanco. Berta was shot and killed in her home on March 3, 2016.
Three years before her death, she acknowledged the danger she faced:
The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top. I want to live, there are many things I still want to do in this world but I have never once considered giving up fighting for our territory, for a life with dignity, because our fight is legitimate. I take lots of care but in the end, in this country where there is total impunity I am vulnerable... When they want to kill me, they will do it.
Three months after her murder, a former Honduran soldier confirmed for The Guardian the existence of the hitlist, with Caceres' name on it, in the possession of a unit trained by U.S. special forces.
The U.S. has historically played a heavy-handed role in Honduras, which became an outpost from which it conducted covert action in the region during the Cold War, with disastrous results for human rights defenders and activists there. To date, there has been no real accountability for the role the U.S. played in Honduras in training and arming security forces who committed unspeakable violence against political opponents. Likewise, on the Honduran side of the equation, there has been little accountability over the years. Indeed, at least one confirmed member of Battalion 3-16, a notorious death squad trained by the CIA in the '80s, was active in the political intrigue after the 2009 coup.
Not that there weren't efforts at the time to hold the U.S. government accountable for its role in the region. Organizations like CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) were working to raise these concerns and stop economic, political and military intervention as early as 1980. The Center for Constitutional Rights, representing members of Congress and victims of human rights violations in the region, sought to bring these disastrous and harmful policies to light in court in cases like Crocket v. Reagan, challenging the administration's undeclared war in El Salvador, and Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan, which took aim at U.S. officials' complicity in murder, torture, rape and other human rights violations in Nicaragua. Dellums v. Smith sought to compel an investigation into credible allegations of illegality in the administration's conduct in Nicaragua, and some believe the case led to revelations about the sale of arms to Iran to fund support for the contras, who were largely trained from inside Honduras.
Then, there was the judgment of the International Court of Justice in a case brought by Nicaragua, which found the U.S. guilty of violating international law for its mining of Nicaragua's harbors and supporting and arming the contras. The court ordered the U.S. to pay reparations to Nicaragua. The U.S. ignored both the judgment and calls by the international community to comply with it.
Fast forward to Honduras after the 2009 coup: Here, the U.S. government helped to undermine democracy and the strong resistance that formed in the wake of the coup when it worked against the restoration of the democratically-elected president and pushed for the recognition of an election that was boycotted by respected election observers who saw no possibility of a free and fair process in the circumstances at the time. The U.S. was the first country to restore relations with Honduras after the controversial election officially and pushed others to normalize relations with the post-coup regime as well. Consistent with its long-standing modus operandi, the U.S. continued to provide aid and military training and support while expanding its base of operations there.
In doing so, the U.S. government has helped to seal the fate of hundreds of resistance activists, journalists, campesinos, and, yes, Berta Caceres. However, Honduran and U.S. human rights activists and organizations working across national lines have sought to keep speaking truth to the power on all sides of the equation by amplifying the struggle and stories from Honduras and the impact of the U.S. on events inside. CCR has again been part of these diverse efforts by representing family members of a youth killed by the Honduran military in a case against an engineer of the coup and de facto president Robert Michelletti, representing the alternative true commission in efforts to gain access to information about the coup from the U.S. government through FOIA requests, the submission of a complaint to the International Criminal Court, and joining with others in pushing for an end to the exploitive, extractive and self-serving policies of the U.S. in Honduras.
Last week, U.S. Representative Hank Johnson introduced unprecedented legislation to stop U.S. aid to Honduras. The Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act would suspend U.S. support for military operations, equipment, and training until the Honduran government investigates credible reports of human rights violations. The legislation is an important and necessary step and should be supported.
Another momentous event is the Border Convergence organized by SOA Watch that will be held October 7-10, 2016 in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico. CCR, along with many other organizations, is endorsing this event, which looks critically at the impact of U.S. policies in the region that exacerbate repression and economic crisis on the one hand and the xenophobic immigration laws and policies encountered by migrants and refugees in the U.S. on the other. It is a way of highlighting the absurdity of decrying immigration and blaming migrants and refugees for fleeing situations we helped create and, worse, benefit from.
While there is much to be done, and hearts are still heavy with the loss of Berta and so many others, these and other efforts are cause for hope in an otherwise very dark time.
To show your support for the Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, click here.
To support the Border Convergence, click here.
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