Justice Served: Chiquita Brands found guilty of financing Colombian death squads

Tertulia, vol. 60

Hola. This is Barbara, your guide to the latest cultural news from the Spanish-speaking world. Have you ever heard this corporate slogan: «Nobody has ever eaten a banana angry.» It’s one of Chiquita’s marketing slogans created to calm down doubts about Chiquita’s moral and legal behaviour in the countries where bananas grow. Well, the slogan may sound cynical to those familiar with the dark side of the company’s history. Their bananas can make me very angry and upset.

Chiquita knowingly financed the Colombian AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), a designated terrorist organisation. By doing so, Chiquita contributed to suffering and loss in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena, including the brutal murders of innocent civilians. Last week, a federal jury in Florida found Chiquita guilty. The verdict means that the victims’ families will finally be compensated. Let’s unwrap the story.

What happened?

For decades, the banana producer Chiquita Brands International paid millions of dollars to actors in the armed conflict in Colombia. Published documents show that the company paid protection money regularly from the 1980s until the early 2000s. The money went both to left-wing guerrilla groups as well as right-wing paramilitaries, civilian militias and brigades of the Colombian army in the banana-growing regions of the country. Kidnappings increased during this period. Violent groups did not shy away from murder. The company justified the payments by claiming they were necessary to secure its employees and their jobs.

The corporate divided self

The extended and systematic dealings with these groups were antithetical to the process of corporate responsibility to which the firm had committed since the late 90ies. Even though Chiquita intended to safeguard its staff and assets, the payments intensified the violent conflict in the region. Made with full knowledge of senior management in the US, the AUC committed war crimes, including torture, kidnapping, and murder - particularly of union members and activists. As Emily Hart writes in her weekly update on Colombian news, the company also allowed the group to use its ports to import weapons and export cocaine. The payments to AUC as a designated foreign terrorist organisation have been in breach of US law since 2001. The company nevertheless continued to make the payments. In 2003, Chiquita turned itself in and agreed to pay a fine of 25 million dollars to settle the case out of court.

Focus on the AUC

The focus on the AUC rather than other guerrilla groups is because the AUC`s designation made the legal case more straightforward in terms of US jurisdiction and applicable law. Since the payments did not include compensation for the victims and their families EarthRights International co-representing the plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Chiquita of financing torture, war crimes, and other human rights abuses in 2007. The plaintiffs were family members of trade unionists, banana workers, political organizers, social activists, and others from Colombia’s banana-growing region, who were targeted and killed by paramilitaries during the 1990s through 2004. It took 17 years of legal proceedings for the first set of victims and their families to obtain justice.

How important is this court ruling?

The press rightly claims the ruling to be a landmark decision since it was the first time, a US court has held a US corporation accountable for human rights abuses abroad. It was also the first time a company was ordered to pay for the sufferings of the victims. As EarthRights quotes one of the victims:

«It’s a triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years. There’s a debate about justice and reparation; we’ve been fighting since 2007. We’re not in this process because we want to be; it was Chiquita, with its actions, that dragged us into it. We have a responsibility to our families, and we must fight for them.» (https://earthrights.org/media_release/colombian-victims-win-historic-verdict-over-chiquita-jury-finds-banana-company-liable-for-financing-death-squads/) 

Therefore, this case is crucial for anyone seriously interested in corporate social responsibility and for identifying instances of greenwashing. Marco Simon Marco Simons, EarthRights International General Counsel, puts it in a nutshell:

“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process.”

The Chiquita case as classroom material

I worked with the case in my Ethics and Sustainability class in 2020 when the legal case was still ongoing. I used Virginia A. Maurer’s case study «Corporate Social Responsibility and the “Divided Corporate Self”: The case of Chiquita in Colombia» (2009) and Romina Mathew’s case study «Chiquita: Really green or just greenwashing?» (2017) as a basis for debate. However, I tried to go beyond questions of corporate social responsibility and let the students look at the case from various angles of moral philosophy. I am convinced students need to develop a sense of ethical understanding for difficult, seemingly ambiguous situations. Didn’t Chiquita’s managers have good intentions by paying the AUC to increase security for their staff?
The students initially considered the case to be of little relevance to them as Swiss students of business engineering. What do we have to do with a US food company, they asked me. They were surprised to learn that Chiquita Brands is a Swiss-domiciled company with (dual) headquarters in Etoy/Vaud. Besides, even though bananas come from very far away, they are one of the cheapest fruits in Switzerland, cheaper than local apples or pears. How can this be possible?

Furthermore, Chiquita Brands is a good exercise to investigate the public relations of a global brand and the reality behind it. Chiquita Brands, a successor to the infamous United Fruit Company, has invested a lot in its public image because of its long bloody history in Latin America (e.g. the banana massacre in 1928).

«Times have changed. And so has our company. Our understadning of what it means to be a responsible corporate citizen is quite different than it was not long ago.» (Steve Warshaw, President and CEO, Chiquita Brands International, from the introductory letter to the first CSR report 2002)

However, when tempted to secure its short-lived security interests, it again failed to meet its commitments to corporate social responsibility. When Warshaw made this statement, Chiquita Brands continued to send money to the AUC.

When will managers learn to base their decisions on factors beyond just profit? Those already in charge will probably only listen to court rulings, but students may find cases like this helpful to broaden their minds before they become managers themselves.

This is all for now. Let me know what this court decision means to you.