FARC and ELN hired by Chiquita (rebranded United Fruit Company)

[Aspiring Humanist]

(This wasn't recent but I found it today and thought it was interesting)
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/15200739657.htm

Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.

Chiquita was formerly the United Fruit Company until 1985 when it was bought out and changed name. Yes, thats the same United Fruit Company that mercilessly raped the economies and culture of the Latin American countries and islands for decades. Why then would marxist groups accept payment and act as thugs for this company? Especially when you think about the Banana Massacre in Colombia in 1928 when the UFC called the Colombian army in to end a strike and killed hundreds if not thousands of workers.
I may be wrong I just think it's really inconsistent for a so-called workers army to collaborate with the former face of capitalist imperialism

[Sasha]

Extortion money is extortion money, groups that use this finance tactic be them the mob or the eta in general don't care who they extort. I rather have them squeezing money from chiqita than from small shop owners like they most of the time do.

[CesareBorgia]

(This wasn't recent but I found it today and thought it was interesting)
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/15200739657.htm


Chiquita was formerly the United Fruit Company until 1985 when it was bought out and changed name. Yes, thats the same United Fruit Company that mercilessly raped the economies and culture of the Latin American countries and islands for decades. Why then would marxist groups accept payment and act as thugs for this company? Especially when you think about the Banana Massacre in Colombia in 1928 when the UFC called the Colombian army in to end a strike and killed hundreds if not thousands of workers.
I may be wrong I just think it's really inconsistent for a so-called workers army to collaborate with the former face of capitalist imperialism

FARC and ELN are not Marxist. They are remnants of a failed policy of 'guerrilla-ism' by petty-bourgeois radicals.

A peasant "army" in a country that is 80% urban.

[Aspiring Humanist]

Extortion money is extortion money, groups that use this finance tactic be them the mob or the eta in general don't care who they extort. I rather have them squeezing money from chiqita than from small shop owners like they most of the time do.

It wasn't extortion money, read the article, it says Chiquita hired them as well as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (right wing paramilitary group) to protect their fields from the drug cartels

[Revmind84]

Interesting post.

[Sword and Shield]

I don't see what's wrong with protecting workers and getting paid for it. You're helping the workers in multiple ways.

[Nolan]

This says nothing about drug cartels. The AUC is a rightist paramilitary.

The article makes no indication that FARC and ELN were payed to do the same thing as AUC. More than likely we're talking extortion money, because if not the guerrillas, then protection from whom?

But from context I think we can tell the payments to the AUC were of a different nature:


The payments were approved by senior executives at Chiquita, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Prosecutors said Chiquita began paying the right-wing AUC after a meeting in 1997 and disguised the payments in company books.'No later than in or about September 2000, defendant Chiquita's senior executives knew that the corporation was paying AUC and that the AUC was a violent paramilitary organization,' prosecutors wrote in Wednesday's court filing.