Do you remember the banana company in One Hundred Years of Solitude? Do you know the Chiquita Banana Song? The Banana Boat Song? Do you use, or have you ever exchanged bananas, including bananas in chip form or banana fronds? Do you ever use any Chiquita products? Did you realize that Chiquita was the new United Fruit?
Whether or not you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, everyone please remember to boycott Chiquita products, and to consider blogging about Chiquita! Here is some background on their admitted wrongdoings in Colombia from Immigration Orange.
“It wasn’t until I read an article in the Christian Science Monitor that I felt that I had to take action on this. It was in this article that I first read about the charge that Chiquita might have had a hand in importing 3,000 rifles for a paramilitary group, and it also contained the brutal personal testimony that truly galvanized me.
Alberto is a tall, self-assured man in his early 40s. But his voice drops to a whisper when he says he personally witnessed at least 10 murders on one of Chiquita’s 26 plantations where he worked for 11 years.
He vividly remembers the last murder he saw on the Banafinca farm in 1999. When Alberto and his coworkers arrived on the plantation they saw two men known to be paramilitary henchmen standing menacingly near the packing plant. The thugs waited until everyone took up their workstations and then went into the field where one of Alberto’s coworkers was climbing a ladder to bag a banana stem. “No one knew who they had come for that day,” Alberto says.
The thugs waited until everyone took up their workstations then went into the field where one of Alberto’s coworkers was climbing a ladder to bag a banana stem. “They cut off his head with a machete, dumped the weapon, then calmly walked to their motorcycle and drove off, without saying a word,” says Alberto, who asked that his real name not be used.
“Another comprehensive article on the issue comes from the Miami Herald. Colombians are asking for the extradition of Chiquita executives (The New York Times reports), which is not an unreasonable request at all when you think about it. Colombia extradites people involved in the drug trade to the U.S. all the time, and the U.S. has shown that it is willing to invade a country that supports terrorists. This article from the World Socialist Website, by Bill Van Auken, is the best that I have found on the subject.
“Al Jazeera and the BBC covered a new effort by families afflicted by paramilitary massacres to sue Chiquita. I’m hoping that this move along with the efforts of good people will be enough to bring this the national attention in the U.S. that it deserves. Another person that has to be commended in the struggle against paramilitaries in Colombia is the top prosecutor Mario Iguaran. The Christian Science Monitor, the only media outlet to cover this well, has done a piece on him showing that all it takes is one person committed to good to clean up years of corruption and malevolence.
“That’s the story as best as I can tell it, but I welcome contribution and criticism from others. I’ve linked to as many media outlets as I can to let the reader form his or her own opinion. I realize the sources I’ve linked to are more leftist than I even like to shoot for fear of alienating the broad range of readers I try to appeal to here. If conservatives don’t have time to scrutinize every piece than I encourage them to read the conservative Miami Herald piece. I think this is the first time that I link to the World Socialist Website, but I encourage people to read the article on its own merits. I think broader media coverage is the first step on a list of actions that we should take.
“Why do we need to take this on? I think this issue is a good one to try and tackle with a blog because one of the biggest problems with this is the lack of media coverage on the subject. This is big news. Multinational corporations are often suspected of committing crimes but rarely do they so blatantly admit to it. If we’re going to try and tackle the root of the problems associated with migration, the first thing we’re going to have to do is take a stand on the things that are forcing people to leave. Asking companies not to pay groups that butcher the local population is probably a good start.
“[As a first step] . . . I would like [many more] blogs to cover this. Individuals can also contribute artwork for this cause or at the very least digg this post. All you have to do is click digg and you’ve done your part. Once we’ve assembled a coalition we’ll look to garner the attention of larger media outlets.”
At the Immigration Orange website you can search for new information on Chiquita, the boycott, and the media campaign, and speak directly to the organizers.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
in gabriel garcia marquez’s autobio he writes about how the president of colombia did not know exactly how many people were killed during the banana murders–that noone does–but the president took the number (like more than a thousand) from one hundrend years of solitude. can you think of how powerful a fiction (or, well, magical realism) writer you have to be to have a president use your “fiction” work as an actual historical reference? wow.
but, yes, i am on my way to these sites. it is true, i have used bananas for various things.