[A-List] Colombia: Death Squad Warlord Fingers US Fruit Companies

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Associated Press:

Chiquita Brands International Co. has acknowledged paying paramilitaries
US$1.7 million (?1.26 million)over six years under a deal with the U.S.
Justice
Department in which it paid a US$25 million (?18.5 million) fine.

Chiquita says the payments were made to protect the safety of its
workers but Colombia's chief prosecutor has said companies that made
such payments shared the responsibility for paramilitary murders.

Mancuso didn't say why the companies paid the illegal militias.

But labor rights activists accuse companies of paying the paramilitaries
to act as union busters, killing union leaders and so making this
country the most dangerous in the world for unions.

*****

Rotten fruit
By Peter Chapman
Financial Times: May 5 2007

Early on Monday February 3 1975, a man threw himself out of his office
window, 44 floors above Park Avenue, New York. He had used his briefcase
to smash the window, and then thrown it out before he leapt, scattering
papers for blocks around. Glass fell on to the rush-hour traffic, but
amazingly no one else was hurt. The body landed away from the road, near
a postal service office. Postmen helped emergency workers clear up the
mess so the day's business could carry on.

One policeman at the scene spoke of the selfishness of "jumpers", who
didn't think of anyone "down below". This jumper was quickly identified
as Eli Black, chief executive of the United Fruit Company, which had
been making huge profits from bananas since the late 19th century.

United Fruit had dominated business and politics in Central America. It
was the first truly multinational modern corporation, spreading the
spirit of liberal capitalism. As well as harvesting the region's fruit,
however, the company wielded formidable influence over small nations,
which were often ruled by corrupt dictatorships. United Fruit gave the
world not just bananas, but also "banana republics".

It emerged that Black, a devout family man, had bribed the Honduran
president, Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, with $1.25m to encourage him to pull
out of a banana cartel which opposed United Fruit. The story was about
to come out in the US press. United Fruit's Central American plantations
were also struggling with hurricane damage and a new banana disease.
Facing disgrace and failure, Black took his own life. His death was
shocking, not least because he had the reputation of a highly moral man.
Wall Street was outraged, the company's shares crashed and regulators
seized its books to prevent "its further violation of the law". The
company subsequently disappeared from public view and was seemingly
erased from the collective mind.

United Fruit may no longer exist, but its legacy on world affairs
endures. Its activities in Cuba, where it was seen as a symbol of US
imperialism, were significant in the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban
revolution of the late 1950s. Its participation in the Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba in 1961, in a vain attempt to overthrow Castro, led to
the Cuban missile crisis. As the world stood on the brink of nuclear
holocaust, few could have imagined it had anything to do with bananas.

United Fruit began life in the 1870s when Minor Cooper Keith, a wealthy
young New Yorker, started growing bananas as a business sideline,
alongside a railway line he was building in Costa Rica. Both ventures
took off, and by 1890 he was married to the daughter of a former
president of Costa Rica and owned vast banana plantations on land given
to him by the state. The bananas were shipped to New Orleans and Boston,
where demand soon began to outstrip supply.

Keith teamed up with Andrew Preston, a Boston importer, and in 1899 they
formed United Fruit. Bananas sold well for their tropical cachet: they
were exotic, a luxury only affordable to the rich. But the rapidly
rising output of United Fruit's plantations brought down prices. The
company created a mass market in the industrial cities of the US
north-east and Midwest. The once bourgeois banana became positively
proletarian.

By the 1920s, United Fruit's empire had spread across Central America.
It also included Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In South
America the company owned chunks of Colombia and Ecuador. It came to
dominate the European as well as the US banana markets with the help of
its Great White Fleet of 100 refrigerated ships, the largest private
navy in the world.

There are more than 300 varieties of banana, but United Fruit grew only
one: the Gros Michel or "Big Mike". This variety suited most tastes; it
was not too big or too small, too yellow or too sweet - if anything, it
was a little bland. This was the forerunner of the transnational
products we have today. For Big Mike read Big Mac.

But mass production took its toll. In 1903, disease hit United Fruit's
plantations in Panama. An array of pathogens kept up the attack, and the
banana was discovered to have a genetic weakness. Its seeds are ill
equipped for reproduction, so growers take cuttings from one plant to
create another. The banana is a clone, with each inbred generation less
resilient. (In 2003, New Scientist reported that the banana was dying
and might have only a decade to live. Genetic modification scientists
have been called in to save it, so far without success.)

Although the banana was diseased, United Fruit marketed it as a product
that exemplified good health. Banana diseases did not affect humans, and
the fruit was said to be the cure for many ills: obesity, blood
pressure, constipation - even depression. In 1929, United Fruit set up
its own "education department", which supplied US schools with teaching
kits extolling the benefits of the banana and the good works of the
company. Meanwhile, United Fruit's "home economics" department showered
housewives with banana recipes.

One of United Fruit's most successful advertising campaigns began in
1944, designed to boost the banana's profile after its scarcity during
the war. It featured Senorita Chiquita Banana, a cartoon banana who
danced and sang in an exuberant Latin style. Senorita Chiquita bore a
close resemblance to Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer who, in
her "tutti-frutti" hat, wowed Hollywood at the time. Sales soon regained
prewar levels.

By the 1960s, the banana had become an inseparable accompaniment to the
morning cereal of most American children. And today, in countries such
as the US and Britain, it has ousted the apple as the most popular
fruit. In the UK, figures indicate that more than 95 per cent of
households buy bananas each week, and that more money is spent on them
than on any other supermarket item, apart from petrol and lottery
tickets.

Over the years, United Fruit fought hard for low taxes and light
regulation. By the beginning of the 20th century, troublesome anti-
trust laws had been passed in the US to crack down on business behaviour
such as price-fixing and other monopolistic practices. Taxes on large
corporations were increased to fund welfare benefits in the US and fully
fledged welfare states in Europe. But, with a centre of operations far
from the lawmakers of Washington DC, United Fruit largely avoided all
this.

The company also gained a reputation as being ruthless when crossed, and
acted to remove governments that did not comply with its wishes. United
Fruit had first shown its tough nature in the invasion of Honduras in
1911, which was planned by Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray, a business
partner of United Fruit who later headed the company. Efforts by
Zemurray and United Fruit to set up production in Honduras had been
blocked by the Honduran government, which was fearful of the power it
might wield. United Fruit was not so easily deterred. Zemurray financed
an invasion, led by such enterprising types as "General"
(self-appointed) Lee Christmas and freelance trouble-shooter Guy
"Machine Gun" Molony. Thanks to United Fruit, many more exercises in
"regime change" were carried out in the name of the banana.

In 1941, the company hired a new consultant, Sigmund Freud's nephew,
Edward Bernays, who had adapted the early disciplines of psychoanalysis
to the marketplace. Bernays is known as the "father of public relations"
following his seminal 1928 book, Propaganda, in which he argued that it
was the duty of the "intelligent minority" of society to manipulate the
unthinking "group mind". This, Bernays asserted, was for the sake of
freedom and democracy.

United Fruit had become concerned about its image. In Central America,
it was commonly known as el pulpo (the octopus) - its tentacles
everywhere. In the US, United Fruit's territories were seen as troubled
and forbidding. Under Bernays' guidance, the company began issuing a
steady flow of information to the media about its work, rebranding the
region as "Middle America".

In 1954, Bernays exercised his manipulative powers to get rid of the
Guatemalan government. Democratically elected, it had taken some of
United Fruit's large areas of unused land to give to peasant farmers.
Bernays' response was to call newspaper contacts who might be amenable
to the company view. Journalists were sent on "fact finding" missions to
Central America and, in particular, Guatemala, where they chased false
stories of gunfire and bombs. In dispatches home, Guatemala became a
place gripped by "communist terror".

The company looked, too, to friends in high places, both in the
corridors of power and in the offices where the big decisions were made.
During the Guatemalan crisis, John Foster Dulles, one of the world's
most esteemed statesmen, was secretary of state. His brother, Allen
Dulles, was head of the CIA. Both were former legal advisers to United
Fruit. Together, the Dulles brothers orchestrated the coup that
overthrew Guatemala's government in 1954.

Despite its ugly reputation, United Fruit often made philanthropic
gestures. The hapless Eli Black played a part in coining the term
"corporate social responsibility" when, in reference to earthquake
relief sent to Nicaragua in 1972, he extolled the company's deeds as
"our social responsibility". And in the 1930s, Sam Zemurray donated part
of his fortune to a children's clinic in New Orleans. He later gave $1m
to the city's Tulane University to finance "Middle American" research;
he also funded a Harvard professorship for women. Philanthropy, however,
did not prevent United Fruit's abuses, and, in the 1950s, the US
government decided it had to act. The company's activities had caused
such anti-US feeling in Latin America that leftwing revolutionaries such
as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had prospered. And so Washington began
to take away some of United Fruit's land.

Ironically, Castro had benefited from the presence of United Fruit in
Cuba. His father, a sugar planter, leased land from the company, and had
made enough money to afford a good upbringing for his children. Guevara
had fought both United Fruit and the CIA during the Guatemalan coup; he
maintained thereafter that Latin America had no choice but "armed
struggle". At New Year 1959, Castro and Guevara seized power in Cuba and
kicked out the US-supported regime of Fulgencio Batista.

Like an ailing dictator, United Fruit lashed out - and nearly took the
world with it. In 1961, it lent part of its Great White Fleet to the CIA
and Cuban exiles in the US who were plotting to overthrow Castro. When
the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, Castro, fearing another attack, ushered
in armaments from the Soviet Union, prompting the missile crisis of
1962.

United Fruit battled on through the 1960s, its product ever more the
victim of disease. Big Mike flagged, died and gave way to the dessert
banana most of the developed world eats today, the Cavendish. It was
said to be "disease resistant". Now that's dying, too.

Black took over the company in 1970, imagining he could turn it back
into the colossus it once was. The early 1970s, however, were a terrible
period for the image of multinational corporations. Chief among them,
oil companies made huge profits from the crisis after the 1973 Middle
East war, to the inflationary ruin of rich and poor countries alike.
United Fruit became an embarrassment. It was weak where others, such as
the oil moguls, remained strong. When its stock market value crashed and
regulators moved in, it looked like natural selection.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, in a born-again spirit of
globalisation, the world's main banana companies picked up the
free-market banner once carried by United Fruit. The companies -
Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole from the US, and Noboa from Ecuador - did
not have anything like the force of United Fruit individually, but they
were still a formidable presence. Together they were known to their
critics, if not to themselves, as the "Wild Bunch".

In the 1990s, the US took its case to the World Trade Organisation, the
new high court of globalisation. The companies protested that west
European countries unfairly protected the producers of so- called
"Fairtrade" bananas in former European colonies through a complex system
of quotas and licences. The Wild Bunch characterised this as revamped
colonialism and outmoded welfare state-ism and, instead, promoted their
own "Free Trade" bananas.

In the new millennium, after what had become a general trade war, the
Europeans backed down and agreed to concessions. They did so with some
rancour, protesting that Washington had again allowed itself to be
manipulated by narrow interests. Some spoke of a return of the "old and
dark forces". They were thinking of United Fruit.

As for the banana, the diseases affecting today's varieties may mean
they are unable to survive in their mass-produced form. It may be that
bananas will have to be grown in more varieties and on smaller areas of
land. Bananas could, more than a century after United Fruit turned them
into food for the masses, return to being a luxury.

Peter Chapman is the author of "Jungle Capitalists: A Story of
Globalisation, Greed and Revolution" (Canongate).

*****

Chiquita has set a high bar for the banana industry
By Gary Taylor
Financial Times: May 12 2007

>From Dr Gary Taylor.

Sir, In his article "Rotten fruit" (FT Magazine, May 5) Peter Chapman
does a pretty good job of summarising 70 or so years of the rich and
tainted history of United Fruit. The layers of myth and reality make it
difficult to tell that company's story clearly and accurately.

But by ending the story of United Fruit in 1970, Mr Chapman misses an
opportunity to portray a multinational corporation that succeeded in
radical changes - both at headquarters and on the ground - that go a
long way to overcoming its chequered past.

Under the chairmanship of Carl Lindner, the company's name was changed
from United Brands to Chiquita Brands International, and the company
undertook a rapid expansion of its farms in Central America to meet new
projected demand in Europe. This exacerbated deforestation, which was
already a problem in the area due to cattle ranching, itself the result
of demand for beef in North America.

This caused major protests from environmental and labour activists on
both sides of the Atlantic. Much of United Fruit's tarnished history
about which Mr Chapman writes started appearing on websites overnight.
In response, Chiquita made a pioneering agreement with Rainforest
Alliance,a young, innovative conservation organisation, that involved
close scrutiny and certification of environmental, health and safety
practices on its farms. Rivals Dole and Del Monte were stunned and kept
their defensive posture.

After years of expense and gradual improvement, pesticide use has gone
way down, workers consistently wear protective clothes, trees have been
replanted, wildlife corridors re-established, and the angry voices of
opposition are largely muted. In 2002, Chiquita stunned rivals and
critics by signing a pioneering labour pact with the very militant
Central American banana unions and the international labour union, IUF.

While this major change in corporate responsibility did not change the
dominance of the Cavendish variety of banana being planted, Chiquita has
set a high bar for the whole banana industry. It has also improved the
lives of workers and the surrounding environment. These changes were
hard to achieve and there is no guarantee that they will prevail, but
even critics agree that Chiquita is a far cry from the United Fruit
Company that Mr Chapman has described.

Gary Taylor,

Principal,

Environment Group LLC,

New York, NY 10022, US


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