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But, being part of the violent US regime, that is exactly what it did. Therefore, it is outrageous that the Justice Department would target Chiquita Banana for funding terrorist organizations. One might say that these paramilitary groups were running a privatized version of the tax system we all know too well. It forked money over only when faced with the prospect of violence. What was the company supposed to do? Stand by and let its business be destroyed, its lands bombed, and its employees killed? It is too obvious to even have to point this out (except that this point seems to be entirely lost on the company's critics): of course the company would rather not pay a penny to anyone. It's true that the paramilitary groups did many bad things with the money they were getting, but these decisions involve balancing acts. This might sound awful, but the truth is that such payments are often less than the companies would be paying to the tax man in the US, which runs a similar kind of extortion scam but with legal cover. Paying bribes and being subject to this kind of extortion is just part of what it takes to do business in many countries.
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We are talking about millions of dollars being paid so that the company could do business in peace.Įvery international business executive understands what was going on. When the payments started, both groups started calibrating their use of violence depending on the cash flow, which was not small. Chiquita shelled out protection money to get the paramilitary groups to stop killing and bombing. It was not to fund terrorists or promote violence, but rather the opposite. This sounds terrible, until you realize the motivation. It turned out that Chiquita was funding both groups. Both are pro-dictatorship, and both resent the role that private corporations have in limiting their political ambitions. The right-wing used similarly violent methods to bring about political instability. FARC was famous for abducting Chiquita workers and killing them, as well as aerial bombings of Chiquita lands. Two of the groups so named were the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist group, and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right wing group. As a means of balancing out the many "Islamic fundamentalists" on the list, the US included known para-military groups in Latin America.
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Following 9/11, the US government made a list of groups around the world that it considered purveyors of terrorism (a list that conspicuously excludes any cells within the world's largest military-industrial complex). More recently, the company has been in the news because of an unjust attack by the US Justice and State Departments. It has also been a victim of mass theft during revolutions, as happened after Castro's. It helped eradicate malaria, has dramatically raised living standards, and its interest in protecting its lands and trade relationships has actually served as a brake on socialistic tendencies toward the looting of private enterprise in the region. On the other hand, what these critics don't often point out are the fantastic blessings that the company has brought to the region. This is why these wars are called the Banana Wars, and why these countries have been variously dubbed Banana Republics (though the main purpose was always to raise taxes for the NY investment banks that held government bonds). For decades after the turn of the 20th century, US military interventions in Latin America were inspired by the goal of protecting its investments in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. The company does have a spotty history, especially when it was United Fruit. Lefties have protested against Chiquita Banana for so long that most activists probably forget why they are supposed to hate the company.