I don’t like bananas, but even if I did, I wouldn’t eat them. United Fruit, the reason that we have the bananas that we have today, is basically the template for ruthless, evil corporations, pursuing unimaginable profits as the cost of human rights and the environment.

Within the next few decades, short of a scientific miracle, the bananas that we’re used to will cease to exist. That’s also United Fruit’s fault, incidentally.

The rest.

There has been no simpler yet deadlier tool in the American arsenal than the trumped-up accusation of communism. The two most pronounced extensions of this Cold War paradigm can be found in the 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and the 1973 overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende Gossens. Both leaders were strong social democrats whose goals were to make their societies more just and equitable. While President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy rejected the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S.'s involvement in Guatemala and Chile was anything but neighborly and perhaps more importantly, led to the Guatemalan Civil War and the repressive rule of Augusto Pinochet.

In 1944, Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico was forced to resign in the face of dissatisfaction with his regime. The Junta that replaced Ubico was itself subsequently overthrown because it was unwilling to change the trajectory of Guatemalan politics. Young officers Francisco Arana, Jacobo Arbenz and Guillermo Toriello along with the strong civilian opposition wrestled control away from the multinational corporations and were poised to make Guatemala more than another banana republic, literally. They not only promised democracy, they made it a reality. Between 1944 and 1954, Guatemala experienced, first under intellectual Juan José Arévalo and than under Arbenz, "years of spring in the land of eternal tyranny". Both "democratic spring" leaders sought to take the chains of dependency off of the Guatemalan people. The most pronounced change came under Arbenz, who was elected in 1951 with a popular mandate of almost 65 percent. Arbenz initiated the Agrarian Reform Law of 1952, which challenged the iniquitous agrarian system first established by the Spanish in 1524. The agrarian redistribution nationalized uncultivated land and gave it to an estimated 100,000 poor Guatemalan families.

Arbenz's actions were not only seen as a political threat to the United States, but also as a challenge the feudal hegemony of United Fruit Company, than the largest land owner in the country. American foreign policy had changed dramatically with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as two Cold War warriors emerged to take prominent positions within the new administration. John Foster Dulles replaced the more moderate Dean Acheson as Secretary of State and his older brother, Allen Dulles became the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Both men were profoundly anticommunist and used the CIA as an active instrument of foreign policy, by undermining and even overthrowing leftist governments. Their first successful overthrow was against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, who was accused of being sympathetic to communists and giving too much power to the Tudeh party. In truth, Mossadegh was a strong nationalist and was no more a communist tool of the Soviets than he was a functionary of the British. The United States was unwilling to allow another Mossadegh to rise in Latin America and as historian Stephen Rabe asserts, Secretary of State Dulles sought to expand "the Monroe Doctrine to include outlawing foreign ideologies in the American Republics."

When Arbenz moved to take large segments of land from United Fruit Company, the company demanded greater compensation. Arbenz's offered $1,185,000 while United Fruit sought $15.6 million. Arbenz, however, was not just being frugal. The amount Arbenz was willing to pay was exactly how much United Fruit had claimed the land was worth on their tax documents. In short, Arbenz was asking for the exact same amount the company had argued its property was worth. The fact that Arbenz was not willing to meet United Fruit's outrageous demand was the impetus for the plan to overthrow him. Operation PBSUCCESS was carried out because his land reform initiative would hurt United Fruit Company, a company in which Secretary of State Dulles had a vested interest.

However, in order for the United States to overthrow Arbenz, it would have to orchestrate a large propaganda machine, which aimed to link Arbenz to international communism. The job was made easy when in May 1954; Swedish freighter Alfhem was caught delivering Czechoslovakian arms to Guatemala. The CIA had been tipped off in Poland and when the ship arrived at the port of Puerto Barrios, U.S. officials used the case as a pretext for their operations. As Jon Lee Anderson asserts, the Alfhem provided Washington with the "evidence of Soviet-bloc involvement in Guatemala that it so badly needed." In truth, of course, Arbenz has asked the United States for arms and not only had the U.S. rebuffed the plea; it forced its European allies to not sell weapons to Guatemala. Seen from this perspective, Arbenz was buying weapons from the only place that was willing to sell them. However, the United States government used this case to argue that Arbenz was stocking up weaponry in order to invade one of its neighbors and implement communism their.

The United States moved to stop what it saw as Guatemalan belligerence and signed mutual security treaties with Juan Manuel Gálvez of Honduras and Anastasio Somoza García of Nicaragua. While the United States aimed to arm its neighbors for defensive purposes, most of the arms were destined for Castillo Armas. The United States even prevented Guatemala from pursuing diplomatic avenues. The ouster of Arbenz showed to the Latin American left, parts of the center and even segments of the right, that the United States' endorsement of democracy meant little when its economic interests were challenged by a progressive government. The United States was simply protecting its foreign corporations, or so that is how the dominant discourse is played out. While one cannot deny the certain fact that the decision to redistribute land played a prominent role in the campaign to oust Arbenz, one should take heed at the words of one of Arbenz's closest friends, who said "They would have overthrown us even if we had no bananas." In overthrowing Arbenz, the U.S. allowed far-right reaction forces to emerge. Afterwards, the U.S. began Operation PBHISTORY, a propaganda campaign that sought to link Arbenz with Communists. Although many documents were presented that allegedly showed that Arbenz was getting support from abroad, independent research by Ronold M. Schnedier, who used PBHISTORY documents for his book Communist in Guatemala, 1944-1954, "found no traces of Soviet control and substantial evidence that Guatemalan Communists acted alone, without support or guidance from outside the country". In the historical perspective, the campaign and overthrow Arbenz was not only the most important event in Guatemalan history, but quite possibly one of the most important events in Latin American history.

After Arbenz's ouster, prominent Chilean Socialist leader Oscar Waiss remarked that "It is certain that [the United States] has lost more than it gained. It gained a lot of kilometers of territory, it recovered a lot of hectares of bananas ....But it has lost forever the friendship of the peoples of Latin America and the possibility of being considered ...as a 'good neighbor. '...Latin Americans will not forget Guatemala so easily." Indeed, U.S. intervention in the internal politics of Guatemala would have terrible consequences for American-Chilean relations. As the moment of intervention was fast approaching, several members from Chile's Chamber of Deputies united in solidarity with Guatemala. Calling themselves "Friends of Guatemala", these politicians expressed their support for Arbenz. Prominent among them was Salvador Allende, the Socialist senator from the northern provinces of Antofagasta and Tarapacá. In fact, as historian Mark Hove asserts, before the 1954 coup against Arbenz, Allende had considerable power and prestige within his party but had no national appeal.

Nothing in Allende's demeanor, however, suggested that he had hostility towards the United States, and in fact, the U.S. preferred Allende to Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who was not trusted for his Peronist sympathies. However, the plot against Arbenz forced Allende to adopt a more anti-American position. In Allende's view, U.S. propaganda gave "the impression that the mountains of [our] countries are infested with communists, that our coasts are full of communist ships, that the small country of Guatemala threatens the existence of the largest of the bourgeois countries. Like David and Goliath. But Guatemala does not have a sling. Its only sling is showing the road to follow for introducing progress and liberty into the nations of America."

Most Chileans, like Allende, were against U.S. involvement in Guatemala and when Castillo Armas invaded in June, protesters congregated in the Plaza de Armas, the central square of Santiago, to condemn the action. At the rally, a group of protesters burned a U.S. flag and this incident, above all else, would lead to Allende's ouster in 1973. When the American people saw the burnt flag in the newspaper, they were convinced that Communists had taken considerable control in Chile. In coming weeks and months, Chileans from throughout the political spectrum adopted a more anti-American position because they could visibly see that "the United States had proclaimed that it promoted and defended democracy against a totalitarian Soviet Union; meanwhile, it actively undermined and overthrew a democratically elected Latin American president." In his new anti-imperial role, Allende rose to political prominence.

Unlike Guatemala before Arbenz, Chile was a model democracy. However, it too would face the same fate, as the threat of communism was apparently so pronounced that the U.S. overthrew one of the most stable governments in the world and replaced it with a repressive dictatorship. Allende and his predecessor Frei, were interested in making 'Chileans the active subjects of their own history, rather than being passive objects beneath externally generated forces.' For the United States however, such independence was a threat. In his third bid for president, Salvador Allende won the 1970 elections with 36.2 percent of the vote. However, weeks after Allende was elected, President Richard Nixon told the CIA that 'an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable' and that the U.S. would do what it could to destabilize his administration if they came to power. In point of fact, Nixon's main weapon was to 'make the economy scream."

On September 11th, 1973, Allende was overthrown in a violent campaign that included the bombing of the presidential palace. Allende was no match for the joint CIA-Pinochet plot and whereas 'Pinochet had control of the army, navy, marines and police...Allende had refused to organize his supporters into armed defense leagues." The 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende was remarkably similar to that of Arbenz. The accusation, of course, was that he was a communist. Indeed, Allende was an open Marxist, but he was also an avowed social democrat. Whereas Arbenz ouster eventually led the country into a civil war, Allende's ouster allowed for the implementation of a new economic plan that had been formulated by Milton Friedman. Chile under Pinochet became the laboratory for the new policies of neoliberalism, which was composed of what Naomi Klein calls the 'free market trinity', namely cuts in social spending, deregulation and most importantly, privatization. As would be later revealed in a U.S. Senate Committee, "CIA collaborators were involved in preparing an initial overall economic plan which has served as the basis for the Junta's most important economic decisions. Whereas United Fruit played an instrumental role in Arbenz's ouster, another U.S. multinational firm, the International Telephone and Telegraph Company played a prominent role in Allende's ouster.

Arbenz and Allende were both victims of a finely orchestrated campaign of calumny and both democratically elected governments were overthrown because their policies ran counter to the policies of the United States. Whereas Arbenz was ousted because he posed a threat to U.S. hegemony in Guatemala, Allende was overthrown in order to impose U.S. hegemony in Chile. Certainly, no American company had as much stake in Chile as United Fruit had in Guatemala, but the neoliberal policies instituted in Chile served to nevertheless impose the monetary hegemony of the World Bank, IMF and U.S. Treasury on Chile. Both coups served the same function, namely, to increase the power of the United States vis-à-vis its neighbors. Interestingly, the campaign against Arbenz served as one of the main drivers for Allende to take the anti-imperial position that ultimately led to his demise .

In today's political economy, people often lament that Latin American democracies are insufficiently democratic. The prognosis often is that Latin America has a history of personalistic rule and people generally favor clientalist systems. Perhaps the democratic deficit in Latin America can be partly explained by what happened Arbenz and Allende. Latin American leaders and populations have learned that to institute revolutionary social change is an impossible task, at least within a ‘liberal democracy'. The young Che Guevera learned this fact when he was in Guatemala in 1954 and today's revolutionary leaders are wise to not allow too much ‘democracy' into their system.

Notes

Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. Pg. 3

Saxon, Dan. To Save Her Life : Disappearance, Deliverance, and the United States in Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. pg. 14

Hove, Mark T. "The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala." Diplomatic History Vol. 31.No. 4 (2007): Pg. 630

Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara : A Revolutionary Life . New York: Grove Press, 1998 pg. 144

Jon Lee Anderson writes : "The United States was engaged in a blocking maneuver to thwart Guatemala's request for a special session of the UN Security Council to discuss the crisis. The acting council president for June was U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who went to battle with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld over the affair. Lodge finally agreed to convene a session on June 25, by which the new bombers had wreaked their havoc, allowing Castillo Armas' forces to regroup and launch new assaults." Anderson goes on "Ambassador Lodge was busily lobbying other council members to vote against Guatemala's request for a UN investigative team to be sent to Guatemala. Particular pressure was put on Britain and France, with Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles leaning on visiting British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Washington. Their message was that if London and Paris didn't go along with the Americans on Guatemala, U.S. help would not be forthcoming in dealing with their own problems in Cyprus, Indochina, and the Suez. When the Security Council vote was taken on June 25, the United States scored a narrow victory, a 5-5 vote against a UN inquiry, with Britain and France abstaining. Guatemala was on her own." Pg. 149-15

Gleijeses writes "In the early summer of 1954, several American newspapers had demanded that Arbenz not be replaced by a regime of the far right. The New York Times had intoned, "We have a right to expect...that revolts against tyranny of the Left shall not bring in a tyranny of the Right." Many U.S. officials had also expressed the hope that the new regime would not be embarrassingly reactionary." However, "There was no way, however, that the United States could have replaced Arbenz with a centrist, moderate government-even if it had truly wanted to-for the center and the moderates had supported Arbenz. The only Guatemalans who had been easier to overthrow him, and the only Guatemalans who were not tainted by collaboration with his regime, were those who bitterly opposed social reform. To oust Arbenz was to return them to power." Pg. 381

Cullather, Nick. Secret History : the CIA. 2nd ed. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Feinberg, Richard E.. "Dependency and the Defeat of Allende." Latin American Perspectives 1. No. 2 (1974): pg. 30

Schmitz, David F.. The United States and Right-wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. pg. 96

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. pg. 75

The company began almost by accident in Costa Rica, with a railway constructor called Minor Keith growing bananas to sell to his workers. Once the railway line was in place and bananas could be shipped to the coast for export to the States, Keith realised he'd stumbled upon a remarkable business model. Over the next few years, railway lines were offered to many Central American governments in return for land, and exemption from taxes. The end result was huge plantations in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the 'Great White Fleet' delivering to New Orleans and Boston, and a highly profitable emerging market for the banana.

As time went on, and the fortunes being made by the banana magnates failed to trickle down to the countries growing the fruit, there was unrest, and this is where United Fruit developed an unusual speciality - regime change. If the usual bribery and blackmail wasn't enough to keep the land grants and tax breaks, the company would pay local rebels, or hire in mercenaries. The governments of Honduras and Guatemala were overthrown. The attempt to overthrow Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion was a memorable failure.

The company gets its comeuppance, which is always satisfying for such a story. United Fruit overstretched itself and collapsed in scandal and the suicide of its CEO in the 1970s. It was sold off in pieces, and lives on in a much smaller size as Chiquita.

What's interesting about United Fruit is the way it pioneered a number of business practices in poorer countries that are followed by plenty of others today. Having read a lot on oil recently, I was struck at the similarities - government troops in Colombia intervened to violently quash a worker protest on a United Fruit plantation in 1929, and a massacre ensued. Today, local and US troops patrol Colombia's pipelines, massacres have been carried out in the name of oil companies in Nigeria. In 2003 there was a failed coup in the tiny West African island of Sao Tome, an attempt to seize control of its extensive off-shore oil deposits. Were ExxonMobil involved, hoping a corrupt military government would be easier to work with than the democratically elected president? Perhaps we'll know in a few years time, if the secrets of the oil companies are ever told.

Another aspect to the story is the United States' casual disregard for the sovereignty of other countries when their business interests are a stake. The CIA feature regularly in the United Fruit story, and the company wielded considerable political clout, not least in the 1950. John Foster Dulles, a former lawyer for United Fruit, was Secretary of State. His Brother, Allen Dulles, was head of the CIA. It was during that era that the government of Guatemala was overthrown, ostensibly to prevent a communist uprising of course, but also because United Fruit had just lost some of their land concessions. Again, I can't help thinking of oil, and the fact that Condoleeza Rice, a woman with a Chevron oil tanker named after her, has the power to overthrow countries and start wars in her role as National Security Advisor.

Finally, United Fruit are notable for pioneering PR. They were clients of Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and not coincidentally the godfather of public relations. Applying the principles of Freudian psychology to advertising, Bernays developed the ideas of product placement, celebrity endorsement, and selling things with sex. For United Fruit, he publicized their (occasional) philanthropic endeavours in Central America, made educational films and radio programmes, and set up a MiddleAmerica Information Bureau to inform journalists about the realities of life in the growing regions. He encouraged United Fruit to donate to the exploration of the archaeological ruins that had been uncovered in the course of their jungle-clearing. Around this time United Fruit also developed the cartoon pin-up of Senorita Chiquita Banana, the singing, dancing banana, pre-empting characters from Ronald McDonald to Coco the monkey. Of course, these are all tricks we're very familiar with today. You can't spend long in a Starbucks without finding some assertion of their good works in developing countries, despite the fact that you have to specifically ask for Fairtrade at the counter. And of course the educational film. I collect short films, and the one below is one of my favourite bits of corporate propaganda.

Anyway, I recommend Jungle Capitalists. Peter Chapman tells the tale like a spy thriller, and it's an easy and engaging read. There are some asides about the crisis in banana genetics (see this earlier post), and the consumer discovery of the banana is particularly fascinating, with bananas on display in exhibitions, served as delicacies, and celebrated in song. The book could have done with a bit of an update on the state of the world fruit business today and the whole Fairtrade issue, but I guess you can't cover everything.

Credit Suisse, which today fired a bunch of their traders who misplayed some aspect of the mortgage crisis or other, leading to a modest, single-digit billion problem that will have to be managed this quarter. That's sort of good news for UBS, which looked really deficient recently when it took a nearly $15-billion writedown. Perhaps they're high-fiving each other over there.

Wal-Mart beat the Street's expectations. Of course, at the same time they cautioned that '08 might not be the engine for growth that people might want it to be. Earnings came in at $1.04 per share for the fourth quarter and their stock lost four cents. Yeah, yeah, it's rational.

The head of MBIA is out, replaced with a guy who thought he had retired. That's always a good sign, except for the fact that people who come out of retirement are generally not as adept at bailout out the rowboat as they used to be. Still, a change will do them good, right? Or the illusion of change, which in our world is almost the same thing.

Let's see... we're getting down to some pretty slim pickins for those looking for a lift. Most people are not prepared for retirement, according to one study. That's not good, especially for Gen-Xers looking to take over anytime soon. Even that new head of MBIA is 59. Where's the new blood? Oh, I remember. In charge of risk management at the banks. Perhaps the world news offers more hope for the terminally optimistic?

Heidi Klum has offered to let Britney live in her house for a while, to help the ailing victim of celebrity back on her feet. That's nice.

Bono was seen holding hands with Penelope Cruz in San Tropez. That's like finding out that Al Gore drives a Cadillac Escalade.

And Castro resigned. That's got to be good for somebody.

As we used to say, without irony: Have a nice day, everybody.

I recently stumbled over the news of Álvaro Colom taking office as the sixth civilian president of Guatemala since 1986, which marked the end of 30 years of military rule. After winning the November elections with 52% of the votes, he has been branded by some of the media as Guatemala's first left-wing or center-leftist president in the last decades, which is as vague as it may be overly enthusiastic, as we have yet to see how the president arranges himself with the right-leaning latifundist upperclass. But the reference to Jacobo Arbenz's election in 1951 does bring back memories of events past (see further down). So far, we only have words to judge President Colom by:

He said he felt on his shoulders the 50 years of aiming for a change, including leaving behind a perverted war whose wounds are still bleeding. Intolerance, inequality, discrimination and the absence of solidarity is what we set out to correct, he affirmed.

God knows the country could need someone who gets shit done for the wretched of this piece of earth. But in a country where both the guerrilla factions and the army (mostly the latter) have committed some of the most atrocious crimes one could (not) imagine and where even today, it's nearly impossible to bring the truth to light and justice to the victims, it takes more than a few speeches and budget allocations to drain this puddle of nepotism, violence and poverty. To give you an idea, between 2000 and 2005, more than 23,000 people were killed. To think that the guerrilla movement laid down its arms in 1996, the progress expected from the "peace" era is somewhat disappointing. Aside from the usual poverty and lack of future prospects for the majority of the population, it's the impunity that is silently granted to members of the army and the police that encourages these organisations to use gratuitous violence to maintain "order".

The last time Guatemala had a president who actually was inspired by socialist ideology was in the 1950s. Jacobo Arbenz was democratically elected in 1951 and got to work on giving the poor peasant population land to grow food on. He made the mistake of laying hands on property that belonged to the United Fruit Company (UFCO, now Chiquita), among others. Being Guatemala's largest land owner with 85% of its property uncultivated, it was only natural they would be subject to Arbenz's land reform. But even though only uncultivated plots of land were seized, and despite the fact that the owners were indemnified for the land, United Fruit, which practically owned and ran Guatemala, cried help by hiring a PR agency to manipulate the American media against Arbenz, and the US government smelled communism in their backyard. On top of that, the fact that the CIA had strong ties to UFCO probably helped, too (CIA director had been president of UFCO!). What followed was a series of operations aimed ultimately to destabilize and overthrow Arbenz as well as to portray him as an ally of Sovjet communists. The operations were orchestrated by the CIA as well as by local CIA-trained and financed paramilitary groups. When Arbenz and his family did eventually flee the destabilized country, his successor was quick to undo all the legislation in the latifundists' interests.

Now, what's rather interesting is the new internet platform where the CIA, under the Freedom of Information Act, publishes those previously secret documents that haven't mysteriously been dumped into a concrete foundation or got recycled into toilet paper... And to read how meticulously and cold-heartedly the Central Intelligence Agency planned the ousting of the Arbenz government to regain control of the country, it just makes you wonder what other kind of stuff they've come up with in the meantime...

Since I can't link to the docs directly, I put them right here, but you can look them up at CIA FOIA by searching for...

CIA's role in the overthrow of Arbenz:

Also very insightful is this long article about the US intervention in Guatemala on helium.com.

Then, there's a history of US Interventions (incomplete, naturally).

And another timeline of the history of the CIA from its foundation till the early 1990s.

So, to come back to Álvaro Colom, we have yet to see how he manages to democratize the country without stepping on the puppeteers' toes, both of those within and north of the country. My personal prediction is either he won't get much more done than apply some cosmetics on the festering face of poor people's daily lives, or he attempts to make some real reforms, such as drag army officials and police to court, to start with, which will most likely make him the victim of an unforeseeable traffic accident...

So let's not hold our breaths.

But should this blog survive the four years of Colom's term, we'll talk again.

.

 www.blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/11/blood-bananas-by-ryan-rodrick.html

A recent USA Today article summarized the scandal well. This was my quote of the week for SojoMail today:

Chiquita's money helped buy weapons and ammunition used to kill innocent victims of terrorism. Simply put, defendant Chiquita funded terrorism.

That's the U.S. Justice Department, in court filings last month against Chiquita for paying off right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia. Here's the rest of the story, Harpers Index-style:

• $1.7 million - amount Chiquita paid the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC), a right-wing paramilitary organziation responsible for the majority of human rights abuses in Colombia's armed conflict
• $25 million - amount Chiquita was fined after pleading guilty of paying money to a terrorist organization
• $49.4 million - profits reaped by Chiquita from its Colombian operations between Sept. 10, 2001, when the AUC was designated a terrorist group, and January 2004, when its payments stopped. That's a number to keep in mind when Chiquita protests that it was merely trying to protect its workers.
• 173 - Colombians allegedly murdered and in some cases tortured by right-wing militias that received payments from Chiquita, whose families are now suing the company.
• 4,000 - number of people killed in the Uraba banana-growing region during the period when Chiquita admits to paying the AUC.
• 1989 until 1997 - years during which Chiquita paid left-wing guerillas before the region in which they operated was taken over by the AUC

And if this makes you not want to eat Chiquita bananas, here's some more bad news:

A spreading investigation in Colombia into what is being called the "para-politics" scandal may ensnare other corporate targets. Former AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso in May told the newspaper El Tiempo in Bogota that all banana producers had paid for protection, including Dole and Del Monte. Mancuso, who was jailed after turning himself in as part of an ongoing government-backed demobilization, said his group received 1 cent for every dollar of bananas exported. "All of the banana companies paid us. Every one of them," Mancuso told the newspaper.

And one more closing thought:

"It may be true (that) you could not operate in these areas without paying the AUC. If it were al-Qaeda, that wouldn't be a defense," says Terry Collingsworth, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund, which has filed lawsuits against several corporations, including Chiquita, over their activities in Colombia.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners. He traveled to Colombia in 2003.