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Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries
- thebeardisred 2y agoIt's about time one of these Chiquita (ex United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit Company, and others) / Dole (ex Standard Fruit Company) are held liable. [1]:https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/story-bananas-banana-republics-colonial-control https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/story-bananas-ban... [2]:https://growjungles.com/united-fruit-company-in-costa-rica/ https://growjungles.com/united-fruit-company-in-costa-rica/ [3]:https://www.biggerlifeadventures.com/chiquita-bananas-cia-funded-coups-and-colombian-hit-squads/ https://www.biggerlifeadventures.com/chiquita-bananas-cia-fu... [4]:https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/ https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/ Edit: formatting
- Xelbair 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... I'll add this to the list
- riehwvfbk 2y agoIf you're going to add to the list, the annexation of Hawaii by Dole certainly belongs there.
- nathancahill 2y agoAlways relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cCLJieV9IY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cCLJieV9IY
- tomcam 2y agoOffhand, I agree with the judgment. But I am also gratified that the term "Banana giant" led off a Hacker News title. Surprisingly it wasn't on my 2024 HN bingo card.
- iwontberude 2y ago"Giant banana" almost hit, I won't lose hope now.
- tomcam 2y agoWe’ve all got to pull together on this one
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sofixa 2y agoI'm curious about why nobody from Chiquita went to prison for financing a terrorist group. Random Afghans and Iraqis were kidnapped for Guantanamo or outright murdered for less.
- zrn900 2y ago[flagged]
- Log_out_ 2y agoPower assymetries and parasites leaching of off that. And the anti colonial is a horrific part of that, preventing societal adaption and chanfe to be able to compete. Its so bad, colonial history goto repeat itself in africa with chinese recolonialization. Thus proofing racism a effect, not a cause.
- NicoJuicy 2y agoThe biggest and longest time slave traders were in the middle east. The best documented and most mentioned ones were the ones that were white.
- NicoJuicy 2y agoDown voting doesn't make it untrue. Slavery exists till today and I don't see much "white" in it: https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/ https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/ The whole white supremacy is mostly because you're free to talk about anything in the west. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-e... Note: I'm not saying it didn't happen through history. I'm saying it's time to stop blaming "white" for everything that happens.
- dingnuts 2y agoThe Chiquita corporation is a White person?
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- mediumsmart 2y agoWar is a racket and governments are the shadows of corporations. we, the people, are liable
- rgovostes 2y agoSee also the Banana Massacre instigated by the United Fruit Company against plantation workers making outrageous demands like limiting the work week to 6 days. 100 years later, that company operates under the name Chiquita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre
- greenhearth 2y agoDocumented in the famous Neruda poem
- dpig_ 2y agoAnd alluded to by Marquez.
- sitkack 2y agoWhen I was in Nepal, they were getting USD to "fight the communists" and when I read their manifesto, it was all about removing corruption from the system. Nothing "communist" about it. Same as this shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre#Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre#Strike
- rflrob 2y agoAlso the Guatemalan coup that was heavily lobbied for by the United Fruit Company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%C3%A9tat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%...
- slantedview 2y ago"The United Fruit Company (UFC), whose highly profitable business had been affected by the softening of exploitative labor practices in Guatemala, engaged in an influential lobbying campaign to persuade the U.S. to overthrow the Guatemalan government." It's amazing how decades later, they heirs of United Fruit Company are still using violence as a tool for increasing profit. This is what happens when individuals are not criminally prosecuted for bad conduct. I'm sure it will happen again.
- debo_ 2y agoThe banana republic jokes just write themselves!
- frontalier 2y agocheck out where they're headquartered
- stonogo 2y agoDoes it count as a joke when the term was originated to describe governments who enabled this exact behavior from this exact company?
- lbsnake7 2y agoGreat documentary that Frontline made about something similar called Firestone and the Warlord. Firestone paid warlord Charles Taylor money to ‘protect’ their rubber plantations (essentially extortion), this money ended up providing him almost all of his funding during the Liberian civil war and made him a major player. He is now in prison for war crimes for what he did during this period.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- njovin 2y agoThey have been fined $38m for killing 8 people, which amounts to a tad over 1% of their 2023 revenue. I'm very happy that an example is being made of them to warn other corporations that committing murder to protect your profits may cause a slight dip in your next earnings report.
- evulhotdog 2y agoOf course it’s not nearly as much as it should be, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
- anigbrowl 2y agoIncrementalism normalizes dystopia, in my view; this becomes just another contingency that can be budgeted for. Imagine, by contrast, the impact that executing one Chiquita executive would have.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- evulhotdog 2y agoI don’t know if I necessarily agree with eye for an eye mentality, but risk of prison or enough money that it makes you actually consider your decisions, seems like a better path. The goal being that it is enough so that it cannot and should not be planned for and can’t be covered by insurance or similar.
- Tao3300 2y ago> risk of prison Ship a couple of them to La Modelo
- germandiago 2y agoBukele did not think the same and he was right.
- 2y ago
- msarrel 2y agoBetter call out the Marines to enforce the US interests in bananas.
- sitkack 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtv_LjleEgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtv_LjleEgM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
- Gualdrapo 2y agoAllegedly also Coca-Cola, Drummond and even some local companies like Postobón have been involved with paramilitary groups and sponsored crimes against civilians - and haven't faced any consequences. But this is a good precedent.
- digging 2y agoCertain there are others. Naomi Klein wrote about Ford paying to have its own Argentine employees murdered during the junta in the 70s, apparently to prevent unionization.
- stavros 2y agoWhat the hell kind of corporate exec goes "well, I guess I have to get them murdered, there's shareholder value to protect"?
- wmf 2y agoThe kind that rises to the top. Time to watch Michael Clayton again.
- krapp 2y agoThe typical kind. Killing strikers and unionists used to be a standard mode of American capitalism. Luckily no American corporation would ever murder someone who threatened their financial interests, nowadays.
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoAre you aware of the history of labor organizing in the states...? Not meant as an attack, I'm genuinely wondering. Strike breakers routinely killed people, destroyed property, cars would have sticks of dynamite chucked into them, and famously the coal miners blew up a fucking bridge. I think people tend to think that modern politics is how all politics was done and... nah. Before we had more robust judicial, communication, and surveillance systems, if someone threatened your business and you were wealthy enough, having them killed and dumped in a bog was 100% on the fuckin table.
- password_ 2y agoThe US government would never do such a thing.
- banku_brougham 2y agoIve been learning about colonialsm and this shows up on HN edit: I just learned about Ken Saro-Wiwa
- mensetmanusman 2y ago[flagged]
- buildsjets 2y agoMy family home is built on the former estate of Minor Cooper Keith, a founder and former VP of United Fruit, who did many similar horrible things to people in Central and South America. I learned this while researching the name of the waterway behind our house, called "Keith Canal". You can see the history of the development in historic maps from 1829 thru 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Cooper_Keith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Cooper_Keith https://westisliphistoricalsociety.org/index.php/archives/map-collection https://westisliphistoricalsociety.org/index.php/archives/ma...
- mistrial9 2y agonone of that Wikipedia article reflect the comments here.. maybe take a minute to organize some references and edit? a new section on "controversy" might fit
- buildsjets 2y agoEditing Wikipedia is way too much of a pain in the butt. What will and will not they accept as a primary source? What if even the United Fruit Company website provides a citation that 4000 enslaved people died under his supervision at the age of 23 while overseeing construction of just 25 miles of his railroad? It would probably just get deleted. (That's a death every 33 feet of construction, for 25 miles...) https://www.unitedfruitcompany.com/biographies/the-seldom-recorded-life-of-minor-cooper-keith https://www.unitedfruitcompany.com/biographies/the-seldom-re...
- lazide 2y ago[flagged]
- selimthegrim 2y agoI will see that and raise you the president’s house at Tulane University
- advisedwang 2y agoThe Alien Tort Statue [1], the reason this case [2] is in the US at all has sometimes been used for significant environmental and social justice global legal activism. Because of this, it is in the sights of the conservative legal movement. Sadly I suspect this case may end up at the supreme court and end up another victim of the removal of redress for the evil of the powerful. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/alien_tort_statute https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/alien_tort_statute [2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4232180/in-re-chiquita-brands-international-inc-alien-tort-statute-and/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4232180/in-re-chiquita-...
- o11c 2y agoNotable claim from part of that link: corporations are persons, but cannot be sued like a person can.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> corporations are persons, but cannot be sued like a person can Yes. Just like Californians, non-Americans and children are all natural persons with varying rights, Delaware C corporations, New York non-profits and unions are all legal persons with different rights.
- darby_nine 2y agoThis seems like a blatant abuse of the term person.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> seems like a blatant abuse of the term person Fictitious personhood is older than childhood personhood (or universal natural personhood, for that matter). To the degree we need a better term, it’s for natural persons. It’s a logical consequence of assembly, tracing back thousands of years to trade guilds and municipalities needing the ability to stand in court as a collective. Anyone who thinks we should end it should consider the consequences of requiring a find-and-replace exercise across our entire body of law, specifying which persons each statute and case applies to, and then prepare for an endless game of whack-a-mole as new categories of person are created. (Murder is legal if you’re a DAO!)
- dventimi 2y agoThrough at least two administrations, Republican and Democrat, Bush and Obama, the U.S. has funded anti-leftist militarism in Colombia, to the military and to paramilitary groups like AUC. It's not just a fruit company and it's not just a relic from the past. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/co...
- xray2 2y ago[flagged]
- Obeehhh 2y agoAlso calling it anti-leftist is just poor framing, paramilitar organizations have very close ties with the right-wing politicians here.
- dventimi 2y ago> "Paramilitary organizations have very close ties with the far-right politicians here." Does that make it more likely those paramilitary organizations are on the left, or on the right?
- 9cb14c1ec0 2y agoThe term banana republic comes from Chiquita history in various countries, in case you didn't know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
- danlugo92 2y agoTheyve done bad things but in this case thry actually de-bananified Colombia (not !00% though).
- oblio 2y agoIt's so sad that it's used to disparage these smaller countries that were just bullied by the US. Victim blaming.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoTo add insult to injury, these countries are then lectured at by rich Western governments. Easy to lecture when you don't get couped every time you elect a social-democrat politician.
- dmix 2y ago> During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004. > The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming Not saying this is the case here but imagine if Mexico allowed families harmed by cartels to sue every businesses that paid off cartel mobsters threatening to ruin their business, because they happen to operate in areas where the police/army consistently fail to control them and the gov/police often colludes with the cartel. AUC is pretty notorious for penetrating the Colombian gov and law enforcement at varying levels.
- xvector 2y agoAgreed, punishing someone because they were extorted under threat to life and property makes no sense. If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them. The government of Columbia should be held to account for allowing this evil to run rampant, not the victims of these cartels.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them No, you withdraw from the country. Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. But paying the bribe and then continuing to do business with a foreign terrorist organisation is not grey area stuff.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xvector 2y ago> No, you withdraw from the country. And you watch your employees die? Great, you've saved your business and yourself from legal ramifications, and the people you worked for are dead, and your business is in ashes. Chiquita did actually end up withdrawing from Columbia shortly after this. > Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. This is not how the real world works. If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia, they will torture and kill your people for fun, and post it on LiveLeak laughing about it.
- caf 2y agoWhen I saw the headline I assumed this was going to be about practices from the "banana republic" era in the 60s.. almost unbelievable that they were still doing this in the 21st century.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoWhy would they stop when the punishment is a paltry fine, and all their bananas remain in every grocery store in the country?
- notatoad 2y ago>in the six years from 1997 to 2004. so not like, historical atrocities from the era most people think of when they say "banana republics". current-era atrocities, perpetrated by people who probably still work at the company today.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xvector 2y agoIt is clear that most HNers aren't reading the article. This has nothing to do with the UFC's "banana republic" atrocities, and seems to be a rather unjust situation: - Chiquita was forced to pay "protection money" to the AUC. Read: "pay us or we kill your employees and burn your plantations to the ground." - Chiquita makes the payment and alerts the Department of Justice that they were forced to pay under duress. - The AUC kills 8 people, as cartels tend to do. - Chiquita is held accountable. This does not seem reasonable: First you get extorted at threat to life/property, then you get punished for getting extorted. Furthermore, it's tenuous at best to say "8 people died because you paid the AUC." The AUC kills/maims/tortures children every day for fun. This is not an exaggeration, most people will never comprehend the sheer evil of these organizations. Calling for the execution[1] of Chiquita execs as some HNers are doing is absurd. Should Chiquita just let their employees get tortured to death and watch their properties burn to the ground? Perhaps the government of Columbia itself should be responsible for not exterminating its cartels, and instead allowing them to infiltrate the deepest ranks of its military and government. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40663586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40663586
- lentil_soup 2y agoit's Colombia, not Columbia
- AngryData 2y agoI read the article, and the fact that they continued sending payments even after that group was designated a terrorist organization by the US government seems pretty egregious to me, and gives me very little faith into their claim that they were forced into payment, rather than wanting to pay and fund them to combat Chiquita's political opposition. With their company's history they should be hyper-aware about what they are doing when they give money to paramilitary groups that run large drug trafficking operations.
- xvector 2y agoThe DoJ actually acknowledges the payments were made under duress, but it is still technically a violation. The AUC absolutely threatened to kill their employees.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago$38 million fine for funding paramilitaries for a company that commands a little under $2 billion in revenue a year is a total joke of course. Then again if these US courts were actually worth their salt and not total kangaroo courts, they'd hold the US liable for funding paramilitaries in Latin America as well.
- bimguy 2y agoJust more hypocracy from the US. US have been funding and training paramilitaries in just about every continent for decades now. Don't your government have anything better to do then throw their weight around the global arena?
- bluSCALE4 2y agoLol? What about avocados?
- bluSCALE4 2y agoYou guys do realize cartels are selling avocados, growing them in protected forrest, killing grounds keepers, all the while murdering majors, governors, judges, police, basically terrorizing the nation and we're worried about 99 cent for a bunch of bananas while avocados are running up to 3 dollars each?
- ETH_start 2y agoSocial justice campaigns like this lead to capital flight from less politically stable and economically developed regions of the world.
- sensanaty 2y agoThe punishment being fines is criminal in and of itself. Everyone involved needs to be locked away for a long, long time, not have to pay pennies as "punishment"
- barbarr 2y agoAlso if you take a step back, it's more like the US is getting a cut of the $, almost like profit sharing.
- mavili 2y agoUS is the same country that kills Iraqi civilians and requests money for the bullets from the Iraqi government that they control indirectly. US is an evil empire.
- wil421 2y agoArticle III of The Hague convention: “ (III): Convention relative to the Opening of Hostilities[26][27] This convention sets out the accepted procedure for a state making a declaration of war. It provides the basis on which, in international law, war reparations may be demanded.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907#Hague_Convention_of_1907 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_an...
- immibis 2y ago[flagged]
- WJW 2y agoYou don't have to rely on (faulty) memory, the very Wikipedia article mentions that the USA was a signatory of the Hague treaty. As an aside it is pretty hilarious in hindsight that at the time all the countries who are now permanent UN Security Council member (which its associated veto powers) were in favor of a binding international arbitration court, but it was vetoed by the powers of that time like Germany.
- sharpshadow 2y agoThat might be the reason why we find some much cocaine in banana shipments in Europe.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoMerely a sliver of the total suffering through coups, wars, and corporate exploitation imposed on Central and South American countries in the spirit of America's Monroe Doctrine colonialism project spanning 200 years.
- whearyou 2y ago[flagged]
- simiones 2y agoThere are clear, well documented, notorious cases, some of them even ruled on by international tribunals, of the USA causing direct harm in several South American countries (support and training of anti-government CONTRA torture squads, assassinations of El Salvador priests, mining Nicaragua's harbors, and there are many others). That others also caused harm, both in South America and in many other places, in no way whatsoever excuses the clear harms caused by the USA.
- whearyou 2y agoAgreed. Other external actors (in particular the Soviets) and internal actors played mayor roles as well. Castigating only the US paints an inaccurate picture of the realities, leading the public and future policy makers to learn partial lessons which when applied will perform less than optimally for preventing the next incident of large scale sufferings
- snapcaster 2y agoCan you actually point to a specific harm you envision from acknowledging the US atrocities in LatAm or elsewhere? What do you actually think is the problem? It's so weird how people seem to come out of the woodwork with random concern trolling anytime the empire gets called out
- jerojero 2y agoThere's no accountability that can be had by the Soviets because the Soviet union doesn't exist anymore. The American empire on the other hand is very much alive and well. So it makes sense to point fingers at them. This also goes to internal actors, and a lot of Latin American countries (for example Chile) have failed at properly keeping their own players accountable. But it doesn't in any way make the call for retribution for the USA any less valid.
- daedlanth 2y ago[dead]
- forinti 2y agoI guess it's a sign that the CIA and the US military don't do their dirty jobs for them anymore. In another 100 years they might actually get a real sentence.
- lupire 2y agoThis is essentially paying taxes to the local government for national security. It's the same thing US residents do, with the same abusses by the government.
- barbazoo 2y ago> Lawyers for Chiquita argued that the company had no choice but to pay the AUC to protect its Colombian employees from violence. They had the choice between not doing business there and paying the criminals. They chose paying the criminals.
- silexia 2y agoI see the lies of Communists have now expanded from our public schools and infected the population as a whole. These US companies did massive amounts of good in terrible environments they worked in and now that has been twisted around.