Eat This Fruit, And The Terrorists Win

Am I the only one who thinks that this story is more than a little ridiculous?

As you read the article from this link, it becomes almost laughably obvious that the U.S. (Chiquita, Dole and Coca Cola) and Switzerland (Nestle) have known the influence the drug cartels exert (Medellin in particular) in Colombia, where paramilitary organizations intimidate the workforce to the point where workers are scarce and wages are suppressed (I thought that was supposed to work the other way around, but I never was an economics whiz). Given that, why wouldn’t Chiquita “engage in transactions with a terrorist organization” to protect its workforce?

I think this excerpt is particularly noteworthy…

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, who are frequent paramilitary targets. Although private armed groups have long existed in Colombia, today's paramilitary groups emerged in the early 1980s, financed by landowners to fight the leftist guerrillas, who were kidnapping and extorting wealthy ranchers. The collaboration between paramilitaries and the armed forces has been well documented by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and Colombian government investigators, who hold the paramilitaries responsible for the lion's share of the atrocities committed in Colombia's four-decade civil war. The two main leftist rebel groups, the powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), both emerged in 1964. The government of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, negotiated a controversial demobilisation of many of the groups making up the paramilitary umbrella organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), many of whose top leaders are drug traffickers.

And as noted in the CNN story…

In 2003, Chiquita admitted that it had paid the AUC paramilitary network for what it called "protection" for its employees.

So why is what Chiquita did a big deal now?

Besides, if U.S. Attorney for the District of Colombia Jeffrey Taylor wants to go after an American company on this, he should go after Coca-Cola, which has been accused of using paramilitary death squads to murder, torture, kidnap and threaten union leaders at its bottling plants in Colombia, as noted in the article.

Also noted is the subsequent increase in non-unionized contract labor for the Coca-Cola, which has played no small part in its eight-fold increase in profitability in Colombia, though other companies have profited also – the accusations noted in the preceding paragraph were part of a lawsuit filed against the company by United Steelworkers of America and the International Labour Rights Fund on behalf of SINALTRAINAL (the Colombian Food Service Workers union).

(Hmm, I haven’t seen Jeffrey Taylor mentioned in any of the stories related to Buscho’s attempted purge of the U.S. attorneys by Harriet Miers. Is it too much of a stretch to think, then, that Taylor is one of Bushco’s favorites and is just doing their bidding here?)

Another thing – I’m singling out Coca-Cola here a bit, but this story points out that a whole host of multinationals have a stake in Colombia also (and, subsequently, any effort to diminish Hugo Chavez of neighboring Venezuela in some fashion).

Something else to note from the CNN story about Chiquita is that they are cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation, so don’t use this as a reason to avoid their produce when you see it at a grocery store. Besides, if we were truly socially conscious about every company that did unsavory business somewhere in the world, we’d probably have to wear a barrel instead of clothes and never leave the house for work in the morning (sad to say).