A Colombian policeman stands guard in front of workers. (photo: Jose Gomez/Reuters)
Chiquita
Made a Killing From Colombia's Civil War. Will Their Victims Finally See
Justice?
By Matt Kennard and Nick
MacWilliam, In These Times
28 January 17
A long-running case against the banana giant is moving forward in
U.S. court.
Vetting
an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy. In Colombia,
witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally means you keep
quiet about it—it’s too dangerous to speak about what you’ve seen. Anabel tells
us, after an extended period of negotiation, to meet her at her place of work
near the trendy El Poblado district of downtown Medellín. We are told we cannot
name her: What she saw and the powerful people who are implicated mean her own
life is still not safe.
Anabel
is part of a class action lawsuit brought by the Washington, D.C.-based NGO
EarthRights International against the food company Chiquita for alleged human
rights abuses in Colombia. According to EarthRights, Anabel’s interview with In
These Times is the first media done by any of the suit’s plaintiffs.
Anabel’s
trauma began in 1997, when she was around 10 years old, an Afro-Colombian child
living with her parents in the town of Apartadó in Antioquia, not far from the
border with Panama. Even at a young age she felt the weight of the violence
happening all around her. “There were a lot of massacres, too many deaths,” she
tells In These Times. “You could see the manner in which they left
them as well. Often dismembered. It was a horrible war.”
Her
family, she says, had long been receiving threats from local paramilitaries who
wanted the land occupied by her stepfather’s banana farm. Land-grabbing by
paramilitaries in this region—and much of the country—was and still is rampant.
Land judged to be valuable to corporations would be bought or forcibly seized
by paramilitaries and sold to rich individuals or corporations. When
someone refused to buckle under the weight of threats, the paramilitaries
resorted to violence.
Colombia’s
right-wing paramilitary groups initially developed during the Colombian civil
war as private militias to defend landed interests. They proliferated in the
1970s, often backed covertly by the political class, which was intent on
defeating the left-wing insurrection. And in 1997, these paramilitaries were
intimidating enough that Anabel’s stepfather, aware of the dangers, eventually
agreed to sell his land.
When
Anabel and her family met with the buyer, he said he had to go to another town,
and they all got in a waiting taxi. But the taxi soon pulled to an unexpected
stop. The buyer exited and another man came in, pulled a gun and started
driving. Accompanied by other men on motorbikes, they continued on until
reaching the end of a dirt road, where Anabel’s mother and stepfather were
ordered to leave the car. The men beat and then shot her stepfather, killing
him. Her mother tried to run; she was shot and killed, too. The men took the
papers they needed for ownership of the land, then had the taxi driver bring
Anabel into town.
Anabel’s
life never got easy. “As I didn’t have parents, it was very hard to confront
the world,” she tells In These Times. “People made fun of me, I had
to see psychologists. I couldn’t go out in the street because I’d see a taxi
and run off.”
Anabel
reported the murders to the police and they were able to identify the taxi driver,
who she believes was involved. But as far as she knows, no case against him or
the murderers was ever made, and she has still not been able to recover her
stepfather’s land.
“There
is a lot of distrust,” Anabel says. “I still have nightmares. I cannot say that
the issue doesn’t dominate. You cannot imagine the effort I’m making to not cry
now. It’s extremely hard.” She then breaks down and cries. In each of four
interviews In These Times conducted with survivors of
paramilitary violence in Colombia, the survivors did the same.
On our
way out of the offices, another woman stops us and asks we interview her about
her family killed by paramilitaries. Like Anabel, she claims the police—and
Colombia’s labyrinthine judicial system—have done nothing to help her. No one
in the community of un-people in Colombia—the poor, the peasants, the
indigenous, the black—has escaped the terrible toll of war.
But
there may be hope on the horizon. In November 2016, after nine years of
litigation, federal judge Kenneth Marra ruled that EarthRights’ case against
Chiquita would continue in U.S. court. Chiquita, which has admitted to funding
the ultra right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), had argued
the case should be heard in Colombia, where the banana company would be
unlikely to be found guilty. But Marra’s decision means that Anabel and the
other victims of paramilitary violence will go to trial in the somewhat more
favorable U.S. court system.
These
legal developments occurred as the Colombian government of Juan Manuel Santos
and the country’s oldest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), negotiated a historic peace deal to end over half a century
of conflict. Following the original deal’s shock rejection in a national
referendum, the two sides swiftly redrafted an agreement that in November was
unanimously passed in the Colombian congress (with many anti-peace politicians
boycotting the vote). Under its terms, thousands of guerrillas will voluntarily
demobilize in designated zones before integrating into civil society. Opponents
of the deal, chiefly the conservative Democratic Center party of former
president Álvaro Uribe, complain that it allows human rights violators to go
free. But while Uribe tends to focus on the crimes of the FARC, right-wing
paramilitaries leave a violent legacy of their own—a legacy inextricably tied to
U.S. multinationals.
Taking
Chiquita to Court
Urabá,
in the northwest part of Colombia, is the major banana-growing region of the
country. Multinational companies have long coveted its land and resources. One
of the most prominent of the companies working there is Chiquita—a corporation
with a long history in Latin America.
In
Colombia, on Dec. 6, 1928, Chiquita—then the United Fruit Company (UFC)—got the
police and army to massacre hundreds of banana workers striking for better
conditions. Colombians still refer to the so-called “masacre de las bananeras.”
UFC is
infamous throughout the region for its intense lobbying effort in Washington,
which eventually helped lead to a CIA-instigated military coup d’état in
Guatemala in 1954, overthrowing the democratically elected reformist social
democratic president Jacobo Arbenz and installing military dictator Carlos
Castillo Armas. This helped unleash a civil war that ended with a quarter of a
million dead, and what the United Nations has termed “genocide” against the
indigenous Maya population.
By the
1990s Chiquita had significant operations in Urabá, the subregion where Anabel
was living with her mother and stepfather. They were giving millions of dollars
to mass-murdering paramilitaries, who had been emboldened by political
protection during the civil war, to help protect their assets from dissidents
and their operations from unionists. The major paramilitary group in Colombia,
the AUC, has a long history of violence against peasants, trade unionists,
Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities. Chiquita has admitted that it made
at least 100 payments to the AUC in the period from 1997 to 2004, a total of
$1.7 million.
Court
depositions like that of former AUC commander Jesús Ignacio Roldán Pérez (also
known as “Monoleche”) in August 2015 as part of the EarthRights case, along
with Freedom of Information Act requests made by EarthRights and others, have
revealed even more evidence of the involvement of a long list of U.S.-based
individuals in the atrocities carried out by Chiquita-funded paramilitaries.
Several
of the AUC commanders in the period are now in U.S. prisons, including
Salvatore Mancuso, who, according to Monoleche’s deposition, has more extensive
knowledge about the funding Chiquita provided to the AUC, which is needed if
the case is to be heard in its entirety. Mancuso was sentenced on drugs
trafficking charges in June 2015.
Hebert
Veloza, alias “H.H.,” was in the mid-1990s the commander of the AUC’s Bloque
Bananero, which worked in Urabá and was implicated in many grisly murders. He
was extradited to the United States in 2009 on drug trafficking charges. Anabel
now believes Veloza to be one of the paramilitary leaders behind her parents’
death.
A diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. embassy
in Bogotá back to Washington on May 18, 2007, titled “Mancuso alleges
paramilitary ties to politicians, retired generals and businesses,” gives
further insight into the role multinationals play in the paramilitary violence
in Colombia. According to the cable, “Among the multinational organizations
that Mancuso said made regular payments to the paramilitaries were Chiquita,
Dole, Del Monte, and Hyundai.”
John
Ordman, who currently lives free in the United States, is another with
questions to answer. He was, according to a March 2016 court document filed by
EarthRights, a high-ranking executive at Chiquita responsible for much of the
company’s Colombia operations. He “was involved in the approval of ‘sensitive’
payments to the convivirs”—legal “self-defense” groups
created ostensibly to protect private estates from guerrilla incursion.
Convivirs deploy civilians under military command, and critics have argued they
are essentially legalized paramilitaries, and that they have committed
massacres and other human rights abuses. The document goes on: “[Ordman]
testified that he had extensive conversations with Chiquita personnel in
Colombia about the different violent groups Chiquita was paying.”
In
March 2000, internal Chiquita communications noted the connection between the
convivirs and the AUC, revealing that Chiquita chose to “continue making the
payments [because they] can’t get the same level of support from the military.”
At the time these paramilitaries were regularly killing and dismembering people
all over Colombia. Often the people they killed were opponents of big resource
projects. Chiquita claims it didn't know what its money was being used for.
In the
fanfare around the peace deal signed by the Colombian state and the FARC
guerillas, the role of multinational corporations in the violence was largely
ignored. The unstated truth in Washington, D.C., is that many people have
become incredibly rich by instrumentalizing the violence of the Colombia civil
war to fight their own wars against opponents of their projects or company
policy.
“Some
multinationals have directly collaborated with illegal paramilitary groups, but
many others have turned a blind eye to human rights abuses,” says Grace
Livingstone, the author of Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy and
War and America’s Backyard: The United States and Latin
America From the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror.
“Multinational
companies have benefited as paramilitaries have violently evicted thousands of
people from their land, clearing the way for large-scale mining, oil or
agro-industrial projects. These companies are knowingly operating in a country
where death squads suppress dissent by targeting community activists and trade
unionists.”
She
adds, “There is almost total impunity for the security forces and their
paramilitary allies who target land activists and community leaders and those
who have protested against large-scale mining, oil and agro-industrial
projects.”
In
fact, according to Gimena Sánchez, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin
America, “The impunity rate is over 95 percent for [killings of] trade
unionists and for the others probably close to that. Colombian authorities,
when pressured by [Colombian civil society and international NGOs], may begin
investigations but very few of the perpetrators are brought to justice.”
In
2003, under then-President Uribe, the AUC initiated a demobilization process,
which saw tens of thousands of men reintegrate into Colombian society, where
many regrouped in armed gangs and continued to coordinate terror networks. In
2006 and 2007, Colombia’s Supreme Court unearthed the “parapolitics” scandal, which
by 2012 had placed 139 elected politicians under investigation for links to
paramilitary organisations, including payments. Former Senator Mario Uribe
Escobar—Álvaro Uribe’s cousin—was among those convicted and sent to prison.
Following
the supposed AUC demobilisation, former commanders were provided special
treatment, receiving little to no punitive action for their crimes. But then
they started admitting what they’d done—and with whom. In 2008, Uribe had
thirteen senior paramilitary commanders, including Salvatore Mancuso and others
named in the Chiquita lawsuit, extradited to the U.S. where they are now in
prison on drugs charges. Many suspect Uribe did this for his own protection, as
several of the commanders claim to have directly collaborated with the former
president.
No one
at Chiquita has paid for this with a prison spell, and no relatives of victims
have received compensation. But in 2007, EarthRights filed a federal
class-action lawsuit against Chiquita on behalf of Colombian families who had
lost loved ones killed by paramilitaries in the pay of the company. Portions of
the case were brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows human
rights claims to be brought from victims of U.S. multinational companies within
the U.S. court system, even if the crimes were committed in another country.
But
this potentially progressive piece of legislation often fails the people it is
meant to serve, especially in the case of Colombia. In recent decades, a number
of suits brought by Colombian plaintiffs against U.S. corporations such as Dole
and Coca-Cola have been dismissed from the U.S. courts due to lack of
jurisdiction.
Chiquita
filed a motion to dismiss the EarthRights case in 2008, on the grounds that the
ATS claims lacked sufficient connection to the United States to be heard in
U.S. courts. After a number of back and forths, this motion was granted in
2014. A petition to the Supreme Court filed by EarthRights, asking to
reconsider, was also dismissed.
D.C.-based
lawyer Terry Collingsworth, who has been lead counsel on many cases involving
the ATS, filed some of the earlier motions on behalf of Colombian communities
in the Chiquita case. “The Chiquita and Drummond [a coal company also in a
court battle over dealings in Colombia] cases both have great facts that should
have been perfect vehicles for bringing successful claims under the Alien Tort
Statute,” Collingsworth tells In These Times.
But
the ATS remains difficult to implement, largely due to the conservative U.S.
Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (2013)
held that the ATS could only apply extraterritorially if there are allegations
that “touch and concern the territory of the United States.” This 2013 decision
is flexible enough to make it easy for corporations with their significant war
chests to argue to dismiss every time.
The
argument made by Royal Dutch (and many in the international business community)
in that case was that it had no connection to the United States because it
involved foreign plaintiffs and a foreign national business as defendant (even
though the business has operations in the U.S), and all relevant decisions took
place outside the U.S. The five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court jumped
at the chance to limit the ATS, and left a fuzzy “touch and concern” test that
provided more than enough discretion to lower courts to essentially gut the
ATS.
“The
ATS needs to be redefined,” Collingsworth says. But “Congress … is very
unlikely to champion a law that will be strongly opposed by the major business
organizations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Council for
International Business.” And with the ascension of Trump to power, it is
unlikely that the Supreme Court will become more progressive.
Colombia’s
domestic system holds little hope either. Several legal professionals
tell In These Times that the Colombian judicial setup is so
corrupt that justice can’t be served through it. 57 companies, including
Chiquita, were recently charged with
supporting the AUC—but the lawyers In These Times spoke to
suspect the government won’t take any action to prosecute or otherwise hold
these companies accountable.
“The
corruption is not just normal bribery. Colombian corruption is relationships,”
says Collingsworth. For example, Jaime Bernal Cuéllar, a lawyer on retainer for
Drummond in Colombia, was a law partner for years with former Colombia Attorney
General Eduardo Montealegre Lynett. They have written books together and,
Collingsworth tells In These Times, Bernal is the godfather to at
least one of Montealegre’s kids. It's hard to see Montealegre launching a case
against Drummond.
Despite
the barriers to successful prosecution, the November 2016 decision ensures that
non-ATS claims against Chiquita (as well as claims against certain Chiquita
executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act) will move forward in the
United States. “Chiquita profited from its relationship with the AUC,” says
Marco Simons of EarthRights. While Chiquita paid a $25 million fine in 2007 for
funding a terror group, he adds, “the victims of their conduct have received
nothing. It is past time Chiquita compensates the families in Colombia.”
Chiquita
has not yet replied to a request for comment.
Contemporary Struggles
The
most militant struggles against corporations in Colombia right now are around
mining, and its effects on local communities and the environment. In 2014,
Dutch NGO PAX published a report on the collusion of mining multinationals
Drummond and Glencore with paramilitaries in Colombia’s Cesar region between
1996 and 2006. Paramilitaries killed over 2,000 people in Cesar during those
ten years, with the companies alleged to be providing financial and logistical
support.
In an
office of campesino (peasant) organization The Humanitarian
Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioqueño
(Cahucopana) in Medellín, we meet Yoladis Cerpa, a 26-year-old from El Bagre,
one of the more violent municipalities in Colombia. “My family lives in
Bagre but because of my work in social organizations I can’t go there,” she
tells In These Times. “Two days ago they killed my brother. In
fact, my mother is calling me right now, they’re in the cemetery as we
speak.”
As we
speak, Cerpa shows us her phone. WhatsApp messages with pictures of her
brother’s coffin pop up as relatives send her pictures of the funeral she can’t
attend. She tells us of the huge culture of fear that runs through the area
because of paramilitary violence. “We are threatened daily by email, by
telephone, by any means. The problem now is they killed one of the social
leaders on March 7, and there’s displacement in the villages. They dismembered
one of them totally, the others were forced to leave. They threatened them.
There are deaths every day.”
Cerpa
thinks the organizers are being targeted due to the social work they do. “They
are defending the campesinos, defending human rights and making it harder for
the multinationals to enter campesino regions.”
El
Bagre has large deposits of gold and has been subject to intense resource
extraction. This has made the human rights situation worse. “Uribe is one of
the owners of a company called Municipio de El Bagre Minero,” says Cerpa.
“It’s working in a … very rich region for mining for gold. Uribe is fighting to
sell these lands to multinationals. And the campesinos, coordinated by social
organisations, are fighting to defend their rights.”
She
continues, “Another multinational tried to enter the region but the campesinos,
we didn’t allow it. It was amazing. So the threats are mainly due to the
organizational work we’re doing as social organizations. Paramilitarism is
eradicating these social organizations.”
As an
example, she says, “They murdered Comrade
William Castillo … on March 7.” Castillo worked for Association of
Agroecological and Mining Fraternities of Guamocó (Aheramigua), the same
group as Cerpa.
“They
shot him. He was meeting with the presidents of some local communities. He was
training them about their rights, that they organize committees, for motorbike
taxis, for miners, and all that. When … the meeting finished … they killed
him.”
Proving
that multinationals work alongside paramilitaries to achieve their aims “is
impossible,” she says. (Chiquita is unusual for admitting it.) But still she
feels confident that this is in fact what is happening. “We are living the
conflict,” she says. “And the threats we receive from paramilitaries are always
for this, that they’re going to kill us because we’re working with campesinos,
because we’re training them [to defend their land], for these kinds of things.”
But
while the problem continues, the Chiquita case offers a chance for hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of loved ones of those killed in the Urabá region—people
like Anabel—to attain justice.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Maryland
lawmakers and Jewish advocacy groups are in the process of putting the final
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