starblanketriverchild:

Families Sue Chiquita for More Than 4,000 Murders in Colombia

supersoygrrrl:

Jesus fucking christ reblog this.

“In a 2009 interview with Al Jazeera, the former commander of the AUC’s “banana bloc” admitted murdering 70 union members in 1995 alone. “One of my tasks was to make people work and to avoid strikes against the bosses. There were so many murders already in the area, they wanted to bring the banana region under their control,” said Ever Veloza.

Chiquita denies the allegations, but the evidence and accusations are mounting.From Colombia Reports:

The current cases expand the scope of the alleged “genocide” perpetrated on behalf of the multinational banana company based on new evidence that has come to light, including records of payments Chiquita made to the illegal armed groups and the testimonies of demobilized AUC members to Colombia’s Commission of Justice and Peace.

In additional to the some 4,000 cases which have already been filed, Wolf said he has about 500 more than he hasn’t yet filed and he suspects other lawyers have more cases too. According to his estimations, some 10,000 people were killed in the north-Colombian banana growing region of Uruba alone.”

I wrote a paper in high school all about the covert imperialist aggression waged on the people of Guatemala in the 80s by the U.S. government and United Fruit Company. Food is political and intrinsically linked with labor, particularly the exploitation of oppressed peoples all over the global south. Even in the U.S. undocumented workers are forced into a position mirroring indentured servitude (or even slavery) in agribusiness.

Everyone should re-blog this and read up on it.  

ever wonder why bananas, a tropical fruit, are ubiquitous in the US? Chiquita and Dole are monstrous, monstrous corporations.

(Source: sustainable-sam, via skalja)