Blood Bananas

The sordid case of Chiquita Banana’s payments to terrorists in Columbia illustrates how a pattern of violating the strictures of corporate responsibility can swing a corporation into the mire of complicity with the worst kind of human rights violations, the murderous kind.

Chiquita Brands International said today it has agreed to pay $25 million to resolve a criminal investigation by the US Justice Department, after admitting that it paid off a terrorist group in Columbia for protection. The company was not only playing with fire, it was helping to finance a militia with a track record of civilian massacres and cocaine trafficking, not to mention an insurgency campaign bent on toppling Columbia’s democratically elected government.

The $1.7 million in payoffs to the United Self Defense Forces of Columbia (AUC) occurred from 1997 to 2004, around the time Chiquita was under fire from critics accusing the company of labor violations and other illegal acts in Columbia and other parts of Latin America.

In 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published the results of a major investigation into Chiquita’s business practices in Columbia, reporting allegations that the company had bribed government officials, routinely conducted aerial spraying of hazardous pesticides while workers were in the fields, engaged in union busting and other labor abuses.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2002 that Chiquita and other banana growers allegedly used child labor on their plantations in Ecuador. All this on top of a long history of political skullduggery and violent labor union suppression by American banana barons in Latin America.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that ethically-challenged Chiquita got itself into bigger trouble in Columbia warranting a criminal investigation. The technicality here is that the AUC is on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations, inviting scrutiny by US officials. But little or nothing was done by authorities or regulators to curb Chiquita’s human rights violations of the corporate variety. Only an unsuccessful shareholder lawsuit in 1998 claiming violations of the company’s fiduciary responsibilities.

Just like pot-smokers graduating to snorting cocaine, Chiquita shows how a company with a moral void can find itself in moving from committing labor, environmental and occupation health abuses in developing countries to condoning and supporting greater evils. The company's pact with terrorists in Columbia is not that much differnt from the cozy relations other corporations have negotiated with brutal military regimes, such as Unocal in Burma, Shell in Nigeria and Freeport-MacMoran in Indonesia's Irian Jaya under Suharto. What's different is that Chiquita got caught dealing with the wrong gang of thugs.

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