Excerpt: "Getting an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy.
In Colombia, witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally
means you keep quiet about it - it's too dangerous to speak about what
you've seen. Anabel tells us, after an extended period of negotiation, to
meet her at her place of work near the trendy El Poblado district of
downtown Medellin. We are told we cannot name her: What she saw and the
powerful people who are implicated mean her own life is still not safe."
A Colombian policeman stands guard in front of workers. (photo: Jose
Gomez/Reuters)
Chiquita Made a Killing From Colombia's Civil War. Will Their Victims
Finally See Justice?
By Matt Kennard and Nick MacWilliam, In These Times
28 January 17
A long-running case against the banana giant is moving forward in U.S.
court.
Getting an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy. In
Colombia, witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally
means you keep quiet about itits too dangerous to speak about what youve
seen. Anabel tells us, after an extended period of negotiation, to meet her
at her place of work near the trendy El Poblado district of downtown
Medellín. We are told we cannot name her: What she saw and the powerful
people who are implicated mean her own life is still not safe.
Anabel is part of a class action lawsuit brought by the Washington,
D.C.-based NGO EarthRights International against the food company Chiquita
for alleged human rights abuses in Colombia. According to EarthRights,
Anabels interview with In These Times is the first media done by any of the
suits plaintiffs.
Anabels trauma began in 1997, when she was around 10 years old, an
Afro-Colombian child living with her parents in the town of Apartadó in
Antioquia, not far from the border with Panama. Even at a young age she felt
the weight of the violence happening all around her. There were a lot of
massacres, too many deaths, she tells In These Times. You could see the
manner in which they left them as well. Often dismembered. It was a horrible
war.
Her family, she says, had long been receiving threats from local
paramilitaries who wanted the land occupied by her stepfathers banana farm.
Land-grabbing by paramilitaries in this regionand much of the countrywas
and still is rampant. Land judged to be valuable to corporations would be
bought or forcibly seized by paramilitaries and sold to rich individuals or
corporations. When someone refused to buckle under the weight of threats,
the paramilitaries resorted to violence.
Colombias right-wing paramilitary groups initially developed during the
Colombian civil war as private militias to defend landed interests. They
proliferated in the 1970s, often backed covertly by the political class,
which was intent on defeating the left-wing insurrection. And in 1997, these
paramilitaries were intimidating enough that Anabels stepfather, aware of
the dangers, eventually agreed to sell his land.
When Anabel and her family met with the buyer, he said he had to go to
another town, and they all got in a waiting taxi. But the taxi soon pulled
to an unexpected stop. The buyer exited and another man came in, pulled a
gun and started driving. Accompanied by other men on motorbikes, they
continued on until reaching the end of a dirt road, where Anabels mother
and stepfather were ordered to leave the car. The men beat and then shot her
stepfather, killing him. Her mother tried to run; she was shot and killed,
too. The men took the papers they needed for ownership of the land, then had
the taxi driver bring Anabel into town.
Anabels life never got easy. As I didnt have parents, it was very hard to
confront the world, she tells In These Times. People made fun of me, I had
to see psychologists. I couldnt go out in the street because Id see a taxi
and run off.
Anabel reported the murders to the police and they were able to identify the
taxi driver, who she believes was involved. But as far as she knows, no case
against him or the murderers was ever made, and she has still not been able
to recover her stepfathers land.
There is a lot of distrust, Anabel says. I still have nightmares. I
cannot say that the issue doesnt dominate. You cannot imagine the effort
Im making to not cry now. Its extremely hard. She then breaks down and
cries. In each of four interviews In These Times conducted with survivors of
paramilitary violence in Colombia, the survivors did the same.
On our way out of the offices, another woman stops us and asks we interview
her about her family killed by paramilitaries. Like Anabel, she claims the
policeand Colombias labyrinthine judicial systemhave done nothing to help
her. No one in the community of un-people in Colombiathe poor, the
peasants, the indigenous, the blackhas escaped the terrible toll of war.
But there may be hope on the horizon. In November 2016, after nine years of
litigation, federal judge Kenneth Marra ruled that EarthRights case against
Chiquita would continue in U.S. court. Chiquita, which has admitted to
funding the ultra right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC),
had argued the case should be heard in Colombia, where the banana company
would be unlikely to be found guilty. But Marras decision means that Anabel
and the other victims of paramilitary violence will go to trial in the
somewhat more favorable U.S. court system.
These legal developments occurred as the Colombian government of Juan Manuel
Santos and the countrys oldest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), negotiated a historic peace deal to end
over half a century of conflict. Following the original deals shock
rejection in a national referendum, the two sides swiftly redrafted an
agreement that in November was unanimously passed in the Colombian congress
(with many anti-peace politicians boycotting the vote). Under its terms,
thousands of guerrillas will voluntarily demobilize in designated zones
before integrating into civil society. Opponents of the deal, chiefly the
conservative Democratic Center party of former president Álvaro Uribe,
complain that it allows human rights violators to go free. But while Uribe
tends to focus on the crimes of the FARC, right-wing paramilitaries leave a
violent legacy of their owna legacy inextricably tied to U.S.
multinationals.
Taking Chiquita to Court
Urabá, in the northwest part of Colombia, is the major banana-growing region
of the country. Multinational companies have long coveted its land and
resources. One of the most prominent of the companies working there is
Chiquitaa corporation with a long history in Latin America.
In Colombia, on Dec. 6, 1928, Chiquitathen the United Fruit Company
(UFC)got the police and army to massacre hundreds of banana workers
striking for better conditions. Colombians still refer to the so-called
masacre de las bananeras.
UFC is infamous throughout the region for its intense lobbying effort in
Washington, which eventually helped lead to a CIA-instigated military coup
détat in Guatemala in 1954, overthrowing the democratically elected
reformist social democratic president Jacobo Arbenz and installing military
dictator Carlos Castillo Armas. This helped unleash a civil war that ended
with a quarter of a million dead, and what the United Nations has termed
genocide against the indigenous Maya population.
By the 1990s Chiquita had significant operations in Urabá, the subregion
where Anabel was living with her mother and stepfather. They were giving
millions of dollars to mass-murdering paramilitaries, who had been
emboldened by political protection during the civil war, to help protect
their assets from dissidents and their operations from unionists. The major
paramilitary group in Colombia, the AUC, has a long history of violence
against peasants, trade unionists, Afro-Colombians and indigenous
communities. Chiquita has admitted that it made at least 100 payments to the
AUC in the period from 1997 to 2004, a total of $1.7 million.
Court depositions like that of former AUC commander Jesús Ignacio Roldán
Pérez (also known as Monoleche) in August 2015 as part of the EarthRights
case, along with Freedom of Information Act requests made by EarthRights and
others, have revealed even more evidence of the involvement of a long list
of U.S.-based individuals in the atrocities carried out by Chiquita-funded
paramilitaries.
Several of the AUC commanders in the period are now in U.S. prisons,
including Salvatore Mancuso, who, according to Monoleches deposition, has
more extensive knowledge about the funding Chiquita provided to the AUC,
which is needed if the case is to be heard in its entirety. Mancuso was
sentenced on drugs trafficking charges in June 2015.
Hebert Veloza, alias H.H., was in the mid-1990s the commander of the AUCs
Bloque Bananero, which worked in Urabá and was implicated in many grisly
murders. He was extradited to the United States in 2009 on drug trafficking
charges. Anabel now believes Veloza to be one of the paramilitary leaders
behind her parents death.
A diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Bogotá back to Washington
on May 18, 2007, titled Mancuso alleges paramilitary ties to politicians,
retired generals and businesses, gives further insight into the role
multinationals play in the paramilitary violence in Colombia. According to
the cable, Among the multinational organizations that Mancuso said made
regular payments to the paramilitaries were Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte, and
Hyundai.
John Ordman, who currently lives free in the United States, is another with
questions to answer. He was, according to a March 2016 court document filed
by EarthRights, a high-ranking executive at Chiquita responsible for much of
the companys Colombia operations. He was involved in the approval of
sensitive payments to the convivirslegal self-defense groups created
ostensibly to protect private estates from guerrilla incursion. Convivirs
deploy civilians under military command, and critics have argued they are
essentially legalized paramilitaries, and that they have committed massacres
and other human rights abuses. The document goes on: [Ordman] testified
that he had extensive conversations with Chiquita personnel in Colombia
about the different violent groups Chiquita was paying.
In March 2000, internal Chiquita communications noted the connection between
the convivirs and the AUC, revealing that Chiquita chose to continue making
the payments [because they] cant get the same level of support from the
military. At the time these paramilitaries were regularly killing and
dismembering people all over Colombia. Often the people they killed were
opponents of big resource projects. Chiquita claims it didn't know what its
money was being used for.
In the fanfare around the peace deal signed by the Colombian state and the
FARC guerillas, the role of multinational corporations in the violence was
largely ignored. The unstated truth in Washington, D.C., is that many people
have become incredibly rich by instrumentalizing the violence of the
Colombia civil war to fight their own wars against opponents of their
projects or company policy.
Some multinationals have directly collaborated with illegal paramilitary
groups, but many others have turned a blind eye to human rights abuses,
says Grace Livingstone, the author of Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy and
War and Americas Backyard: The United States and Latin America From the
Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror. Multinational companies have
benefited as paramilitaries have violently evicted thousands of people from
their land, clearing the way for large-scale mining, oil or agro-industrial
projects. These companies are knowingly operating in a country where death
squads suppress dissent by targeting community activists and trade
unionists.
She adds, There is almost total impunity for the security forces and their
paramilitary allies who target land activists and community leaders and
those who have protested against large-scale mining, oil and agro-industrial
projects.
In fact, according to Gimena Sánchez, an analyst at the Washington Office on
Latin America, The impunity rate is over 95 percent for [killings of] trade
unionists and for the others probably close to that. Colombian authorities,
when pressured by [Colombian civil society and international NGOs], may
begin investigations but very few of the perpetrators are brought to
justice.
In 2003, under then-President Uribe, the AUC initiated a demobilization
process, which saw tens of thousands of men reintegrate into Colombian
society, where many regrouped in armed gangs and continued to coordinate
terror networks. In 2006 and 2007, Colombias Supreme Court unearthed the
parapolitics scandal, which by 2012 had placed 139 elected politicians
under investigation for links to paramilitary organisations, including
payments. Former Senator Mario Uribe EscobarÁlvaro Uribes cousinwas among
those convicted and sent to prison.
Following the supposed AUC demobilisation, former commanders were provided
special treatment, receiving little to no punitive action for their crimes.
But then they started admitting what theyd doneand with whom. In 2008,
Uribe had thirteen senior paramilitary commanders, including Salvatore
Mancuso and others named in the Chiquita lawsuit, extradited to the U.S.
where they are now in prison on drugs charges. Many suspect Uribe did this
for his own protection, as several of the commanders claim to have directly
collaborated with the former president.
No one at Chiquita has paid for this with a prison spell, and no relatives
of victims have received compensation. But in 2007, EarthRights filed a
federal class-action lawsuit against Chiquita on behalf of Colombian
families who had lost loved ones killed by paramilitaries in the pay of the
company. Portions of the case were brought under the Alien Tort Statute
(ATS), which allows human rights claims to be brought from victims of U.S.
multinational companies within the U.S. court system, even if the crimes
were committed in another country.
But this potentially progressive piece of legislation often fails the people
it is meant to serve, especially in the case of Colombia. In recent decades,
a number of suits brought by Colombian plaintiffs against U.S. corporations
such as Dole and Coca-Cola have been dismissed from the U.S. courts due to
lack of jurisdiction.
Chiquita filed a motion to dismiss the EarthRights case in 2008, on the
grounds that the ATS claims lacked sufficient connection to the United
States to be heard in U.S. courts. After a number of back and forths, this
motion was granted in 2014. A petition to the Supreme Court filed by
EarthRights, asking to reconsider, was also dismissed.
D.C.-based lawyer Terry Collingsworth, who has been lead counsel on many
cases involving the ATS, filed some of the earlier motions on behalf of
Colombian communities in the Chiquita case. The Chiquita and Drummond [a
coal company also in a court battle over dealings in Colombia] cases both
have great facts that should have been perfect vehicles for bringing
successful claims under the Alien Tort Statute, Collingsworth tells In
These Times.
But the ATS remains difficult to implement, largely due to the conservative
U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum
(2013) held that the ATS could only apply extraterritorially if there are
allegations that touch and concern the territory of the United States.
This 2013 decision is flexible enough to make it easy for corporations with
their significant war chests to argue to dismiss every time.
The argument made by Royal Dutch (and many in the international business
community) in that case was that it had no connection to the United States
because it involved foreign plaintiffs and a foreign national business as
defendant (even though the business has operations in the U.S), and all
relevant decisions took place outside the U.S. The five right-wing justices
on the Supreme Court jumped at the chance to limit the ATS, and left a fuzzy
touch and concern test that provided more than enough discretion to lower
courts to essentially gut the ATS.
The ATS needs to be redefined, Collingsworth says. But Congress
is very
unlikely to champion a law that will be strongly opposed by the major
business organizations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S.
Council for International Business. And with the ascension of Trump to
power, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will become more progressive.
Colombias domestic system holds little hope either. Several legal
professionals tell In These Times that the Colombian judicial setup is so
corrupt that justice cant be served through it. 57 companies, including
Chiquita, were recently charged with supporting the AUCbut the lawyers In
These Times spoke to suspect the government wont take any action to
prosecute or otherwise hold these companies accountable.
The corruption is not just normal bribery. Colombian corruption is
relationships, says Collingsworth. For example, Jaime Bernal Cuéllar, a
lawyer on retainer for Drummond in Colombia, was a law partner for years
with former Colombia Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre Lynett. They have
written books together and, Collingsworth tells In These Times, Bernal is
the godfather to at least one of Montealegres kids. It's hard to see
Montealegre launching a case against Drummond.
Despite the barriers to successful prosecution, the November 2016 decision
ensures that non-ATS claims against Chiquita (as well as claims against
certain Chiquita executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act) will
move forward in the United States. Chiquita profited from its relationship
with the AUC, says Marco Simons of EarthRights. While Chiquita paid a $25
million fine in 2007 for funding a terror group, he adds, the victims of
their conduct have received nothing. It is past time Chiquita compensates
the families in Colombia.
Chiquita has not yet replied to a request for comment.
Contemporary Struggles
The most militant struggles against corporations in Colombia right now are
around mining, and its effects on local communities and the environment. In
2014, Dutch NGO PAX published a report on the collusion of mining
multinationals Drummond and Glencore with paramilitaries in Colombias Cesar
region between 1996 and 2006. Paramilitaries killed over 2,000 people in
Cesar during those ten years, with the companies alleged to be providing
financial and logistical support.
In an office of campesino (peasant) organization The Humanitarian Action
Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioqueño (Cahucopana)
in Medellín, we meet Yoladis Cerpa, a 26-year-old from El Bagre, one of the
more violent municipalities in Colombia. My family lives in Bagre but
because of my work in social organizations I cant go there, she tells In
These Times. Two days ago they killed my brother. In fact, my mother is
calling me right now, theyre in the cemetery as we speak.
As we speak, Cerpa shows us her phone. WhatsApp messages with pictures of
her brothers coffin pop up as relatives send her pictures of the funeral
she cant attend. She tells us of the huge culture of fear that runs through
the area because of paramilitary violence. We are threatened daily by
email, by telephone, by any means. The problem now is they killed one of the
social leaders on March 7, and theres displacement in the villages. They
dismembered one of them totally, the others were forced to leave. They
threatened them. There are deaths every day.
Cerpa thinks the organizers are being targeted due to the social work they
do. They are defending the campesinos, defending human rights and making it
harder for the multinationals to enter campesino regions.
El Bagre has large deposits of gold and has been subject to intense resource
extraction. This has made the human rights situation worse. Uribe is one of
the owners of a company called Municipio de El Bagre Minero, says Cerpa.
Its working in a
very rich region for mining for gold. Uribe is fighting
to sell these lands to multinationals. And the campesinos, coordinated by
social organisations, are fighting to defend their rights.
She continues, Another multinational tried to enter the region but the
campesinos, we didnt allow it. It was amazing. So the threats are mainly
due to the organizational work were doing as social organizations.
Paramilitarism is eradicating these social organizations.
As an example, she says, They murdered Comrade William Castillo
on March
7. Castillo worked for Association of Agroecological and Mining
Fraternities of Guamocó (Aheramigua), the same group as Cerpa.
They shot him. He was meeting with the presidents of some local
communities. He was training them about their rights, that they organize
committees, for motorbike taxis, for miners, and all that. When
the
meeting finished
they killed him.
Proving that multinationals work alongside paramilitaries to achieve their
aims is impossible, she says. (Chiquita is unusual for admitting it.) But
still she feels confident that this is in fact what is happening. We are
living the conflict, she says. And the threats we receive from
paramilitaries are always for this, that theyre going to kill us because
were working with campesinos, because were training them [to defend their
land], for these kinds of things.
But while the problem continues, the Chiquita case offers a chance for
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of loved ones of those killed in the Urabá
regionpeople like Anabelto attain justice.
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A Colombian policeman stands guard in front of workers. (photo: Jose
Gomez/Reuters)
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tinationals-killing-colombias-civil-war-paramilitary
Chiquita Made a Killing From Colombia's Civil War. Will Their Victims
Finally See Justice?
By Matt Kennard and Nick MacWilliam, In These Times
28 January 17
A long-running case against the banana giant is moving forward in U.S.
court.
etting an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy. In
Colombia, witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally
means you keep quiet about itits too dangerous to speak about what youve
seen. Anabel tells us, after an extended period of negotiation, to meet her
at her place of work near the trendy El Poblado district of downtown
Medellín. We are told we cannot name her: What she saw and the powerful
people who are implicated mean her own life is still not safe.
Anabel is part of a class action lawsuit brought by the Washington,
D.C.-based NGO EarthRights International against the food company Chiquita
for alleged human rights abuses in Colombia. According to EarthRights,
Anabels interview with In These Times is the first media done by any of the
suits plaintiffs.
Anabels trauma began in 1997, when she was around 10 years old, an
Afro-Colombian child living with her parents in the town of Apartadó in
Antioquia, not far from the border with Panama. Even at a young age she felt
the weight of the violence happening all around her. There were a lot of
massacres, too many deaths, she tells In These Times. You could see the
manner in which they left them as well. Often dismembered. It was a horrible
war.
Her family, she says, had long been receiving threats from local
paramilitaries who wanted the land occupied by her stepfathers banana farm.
Land-grabbing by paramilitaries in this regionand much of the countrywas
and still is rampant. Land judged to be valuable to corporations would be
bought or forcibly seized by paramilitaries and sold to rich individuals or
corporations. When someone refused to buckle under the weight of threats,
the paramilitaries resorted to violence.
Colombias right-wing paramilitary groups initially developed during the
Colombian civil war as private militias to defend landed interests. They
proliferated in the 1970s, often backed covertly by the political class,
which was intent on defeating the left-wing insurrection. And in 1997, these
paramilitaries were intimidating enough that Anabels stepfather, aware of
the dangers, eventually agreed to sell his land.
When Anabel and her family met with the buyer, he said he had to go to
another town, and they all got in a waiting taxi. But the taxi soon pulled
to an unexpected stop. The buyer exited and another man came in, pulled a
gun and started driving. Accompanied by other men on motorbikes, they
continued on until reaching the end of a dirt road, where Anabels mother
and stepfather were ordered to leave the car. The men beat and then shot her
stepfather, killing him. Her mother tried to run; she was shot and killed,
too. The men took the papers they needed for ownership of the land, then had
the taxi driver bring Anabel into town.
Anabels life never got easy. As I didnt have parents, it was very hard to
confront the world, she tells In These Times. People made fun of me, I had
to see psychologists. I couldnt go out in the street because Id see a taxi
and run off.
Anabel reported the murders to the police and they were able to identify the
taxi driver, who she believes was involved. But as far as she knows, no case
against him or the murderers was ever made, and she has still not been able
to recover her stepfathers land.
There is a lot of distrust, Anabel says. I still have nightmares. I
cannot say that the issue doesnt dominate. You cannot imagine the effort
Im making to not cry now. Its extremely hard. She then breaks down and
cries. In each of four interviews In These Times conducted with survivors of
paramilitary violence in Colombia, the survivors did the same.
On our way out of the offices, another woman stops us and asks we interview
her about her family killed by paramilitaries. Like Anabel, she claims the
policeand Colombias labyrinthine judicial systemhave done nothing to help
her. No one in the community of un-people in Colombiathe poor, the
peasants, the indigenous, the blackhas escaped the terrible toll of war.
But there may be hope on the horizon. In November 2016, after nine years of
litigation, federal judge Kenneth Marra ruled that EarthRights case against
Chiquita would continue in U.S. court. Chiquita, which has admitted to
funding the ultra right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC),
had argued the case should be heard in Colombia, where the banana company
would be unlikely to be found guilty. But Marras decision means that Anabel
and the other victims of paramilitary violence will go to trial in the
somewhat more favorable U.S. court system.
These legal developments occurred as the Colombian government of Juan Manuel
Santos and the countrys oldest guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), negotiated a historic peace deal to end
over half a century of conflict. Following the original deals shock
rejection in a national referendum, the two sides swiftly redrafted an
agreement that in November was unanimously passed in the Colombian congress
(with many anti-peace politicians boycotting the vote). Under its terms,
thousands of guerrillas will voluntarily demobilize in designated zones
before integrating into civil society. Opponents of the deal, chiefly the
conservative Democratic Center party of former president Álvaro Uribe,
complain that it allows human rights violators to go free. But while Uribe
tends to focus on the crimes of the FARC, right-wing paramilitaries leave a
violent legacy of their owna legacy inextricably tied to U.S.
multinationals.
Taking Chiquita to Court
Urabá, in the northwest part of Colombia, is the major banana-growing region
of the country. Multinational companies have long coveted its land and
resources. One of the most prominent of the companies working there is
Chiquitaa corporation with a long history in Latin America.
In Colombia, on Dec. 6, 1928, Chiquitathen the United Fruit Company
(UFC)got the police and army to massacre hundreds of banana workers
striking for better conditions. Colombians still refer to the so-called
masacre de las bananeras.
UFC is infamous throughout the region for its intense lobbying effort in
Washington, which eventually helped lead to a CIA-instigated military coup
détat in Guatemala in 1954, overthrowing the democratically elected
reformist social democratic president Jacobo Arbenz and installing military
dictator Carlos Castillo Armas. This helped unleash a civil war that ended
with a quarter of a million dead, and what the United Nations has termed
genocide against the indigenous Maya population.
By the 1990s Chiquita had significant operations in Urabá, the subregion
where Anabel was living with her mother and stepfather. They were giving
millions of dollars to mass-murdering paramilitaries, who had been
emboldened by political protection during the civil war, to help protect
their assets from dissidents and their operations from unionists. The major
paramilitary group in Colombia, the AUC, has a long history of violence
against peasants, trade unionists, Afro-Colombians and indigenous
communities. Chiquita has admitted that it made at least 100 payments to the
AUC in the period from 1997 to 2004, a total of $1.7 million.
Court depositions like that of former AUC commander Jesús Ignacio Roldán
Pérez (also known as Monoleche) in August 2015 as part of the EarthRights
case, along with Freedom of Information Act requests made by EarthRights and
others, have revealed even more evidence of the involvement of a long list
of U.S.-based individuals in the atrocities carried out by Chiquita-funded
paramilitaries.
Several of the AUC commanders in the period are now in U.S. prisons,
including Salvatore Mancuso, who, according to Monoleches deposition, has
more extensive knowledge about the funding Chiquita provided to the AUC,
which is needed if the case is to be heard in its entirety. Mancuso was
sentenced on drugs trafficking charges in June 2015.
Hebert Veloza, alias H.H., was in the mid-1990s the commander of the AUCs
Bloque Bananero, which worked in Urabá and was implicated in many grisly
murders. He was extradited to the United States in 2009 on drug trafficking
charges. Anabel now believes Veloza to be one of the paramilitary leaders
behind her parents death.
A diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Bogotá back to Washington
on May 18, 2007, titled Mancuso alleges paramilitary ties to politicians,
retired generals and businesses, gives further insight into the role
multinationals play in the paramilitary violence in Colombia. According to
the cable, Among the multinational organizations that Mancuso said made
regular payments to the paramilitaries were Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte, and
Hyundai.
John Ordman, who currently lives free in the United States, is another with
questions to answer. He was, according to a March 2016 court document filed
by EarthRights, a high-ranking executive at Chiquita responsible for much of
the companys Colombia operations. He was involved in the approval of
sensitive payments to the convivirslegal self-defense groups created
ostensibly to protect private estates from guerrilla incursion. Convivirs
deploy civilians under military command, and critics have argued they are
essentially legalized paramilitaries, and that they have committed massacres
and other human rights abuses. The document goes on: [Ordman] testified
that he had extensive conversations with Chiquita personnel in Colombia
about the different violent groups Chiquita was paying.
In March 2000, internal Chiquita communications noted the connection between
the convivirs and the AUC, revealing that Chiquita chose to continue making
the payments [because they] cant get the same level of support from the
military. At the time these paramilitaries were regularly killing and
dismembering people all over Colombia. Often the people they killed were
opponents of big resource projects. Chiquita claims it didn't know what its
money was being used for.
In the fanfare around the peace deal signed by the Colombian state and the
FARC guerillas, the role of multinational corporations in the violence was
largely ignored. The unstated truth in Washington, D.C., is that many people
have become incredibly rich by instrumentalizing the violence of the
Colombia civil war to fight their own wars against opponents of their
projects or company policy.
Some multinationals have directly collaborated with illegal paramilitary
groups, but many others have turned a blind eye to human rights abuses,
says Grace Livingstone, the author of Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy and
War and Americas Backyard: The United States and Latin America From the
Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror. Multinational companies have
benefited as paramilitaries have violently evicted thousands of people from
their land, clearing the way for large-scale mining, oil or agro-industrial
projects. These companies are knowingly operating in a country where death
squads suppress dissent by targeting community activists and trade
unionists.
She adds, There is almost total impunity for the security forces and their
paramilitary allies who target land activists and community leaders and
those who have protested against large-scale mining, oil and agro-industrial
projects.
In fact, according to Gimena Sánchez, an analyst at the Washington Office on
Latin America, The impunity rate is over 95 percent for [killings of] trade
unionists and for the others probably close to that. Colombian authorities,
when pressured by [Colombian civil society and international NGOs], may
begin investigations but very few of the perpetrators are brought to
justice.
In 2003, under then-President Uribe, the AUC initiated a demobilization
process, which saw tens of thousands of men reintegrate into Colombian
society, where many regrouped in armed gangs and continued to coordinate
terror networks. In 2006 and 2007, Colombias Supreme Court unearthed the
parapolitics scandal, which by 2012 had placed 139 elected politicians
under investigation for links to paramilitary organisations, including
payments. Former Senator Mario Uribe EscobarÁlvaro Uribes cousinwas among
those convicted and sent to prison.
Following the supposed AUC demobilisation, former commanders were provided
special treatment, receiving little to no punitive action for their crimes.
But then they started admitting what theyd doneand with whom. In 2008,
Uribe had thirteen senior paramilitary commanders, including Salvatore
Mancuso and others named in the Chiquita lawsuit, extradited to the U.S.
where they are now in prison on drugs charges. Many suspect Uribe did this
for his own protection, as several of the commanders claim to have directly
collaborated with the former president.
No one at Chiquita has paid for this with a prison spell, and no relatives
of victims have received compensation. But in 2007, EarthRights filed a
federal class-action lawsuit against Chiquita on behalf of Colombian
families who had lost loved ones killed by paramilitaries in the pay of the
company. Portions of the case were brought under the Alien Tort Statute
(ATS), which allows human rights claims to be brought from victims of U.S.
multinational companies within the U.S. court system, even if the crimes
were committed in another country.
But this potentially progressive piece of legislation often fails the people
it is meant to serve, especially in the case of Colombia. In recent decades,
a number of suits brought by Colombian plaintiffs against U.S. corporations
such as Dole and Coca-Cola have been dismissed from the U.S. courts due to
lack of jurisdiction.
Chiquita filed a motion to dismiss the EarthRights case in 2008, on the
grounds that the ATS claims lacked sufficient connection to the United
States to be heard in U.S. courts. After a number of back and forths, this
motion was granted in 2014. A petition to the Supreme Court filed by
EarthRights, asking to reconsider, was also dismissed.
D.C.-based lawyer Terry Collingsworth, who has been lead counsel on many
cases involving the ATS, filed some of the earlier motions on behalf of
Colombian communities in the Chiquita case. The Chiquita and Drummond [a
coal company also in a court battle over dealings in Colombia] cases both
have great facts that should have been perfect vehicles for bringing
successful claims under the Alien Tort Statute, Collingsworth tells In
These Times.
But the ATS remains difficult to implement, largely due to the conservative
U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum
(2013) held that the ATS could only apply extraterritorially if there are
allegations that touch and concern the territory of the United States.
This 2013 decision is flexible enough to make it easy for corporations with
their significant war chests to argue to dismiss every time.
The argument made by Royal Dutch (and many in the international business
community) in that case was that it had no connection to the United States
because it involved foreign plaintiffs and a foreign national business as
defendant (even though the business has operations in the U.S), and all
relevant decisions took place outside the U.S. The five right-wing justices
on the Supreme Court jumped at the chance to limit the ATS, and left a fuzzy
touch and concern test that provided more than enough discretion to lower
courts to essentially gut the ATS.
The ATS needs to be redefined, Collingsworth says. But Congress
is very
unlikely to champion a law that will be strongly opposed by the major
business organizations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S.
Council for International Business. And with the ascension of Trump to
power, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will become more progressive.
Colombias domestic system holds little hope either. Several legal
professionals tell In These Times that the Colombian judicial setup is so
corrupt that justice cant be served through it. 57 companies, including
Chiquita, were recently charged with supporting the AUCbut the lawyers In
These Times spoke to suspect the government wont take any action to
prosecute or otherwise hold these companies accountable.
The corruption is not just normal bribery. Colombian corruption is
relationships, says Collingsworth. For example, Jaime Bernal Cuéllar, a
lawyer on retainer for Drummond in Colombia, was a law partner for years
with former Colombia Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre Lynett. They have
written books together and, Collingsworth tells In These Times, Bernal is
the godfather to at least one of Montealegres kids. It's hard to see
Montealegre launching a case against Drummond.
Despite the barriers to successful prosecution, the November 2016 decision
ensures that non-ATS claims against Chiquita (as well as claims against
certain Chiquita executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act) will
move forward in the United States. Chiquita profited from its relationship
with the AUC, says Marco Simons of EarthRights. While Chiquita paid a $25
million fine in 2007 for funding a terror group, he adds, the victims of
their conduct have received nothing. It is past time Chiquita compensates
the families in Colombia.
Chiquita has not yet replied to a request for comment.
Contemporary Struggles
The most militant struggles against corporations in Colombia right now are
around mining, and its effects on local communities and the environment. In
2014, Dutch NGO PAX published a report on the collusion of mining
multinationals Drummond and Glencore with paramilitaries in Colombias Cesar
region between 1996 and 2006. Paramilitaries killed over 2,000 people in
Cesar during those ten years, with the companies alleged to be providing
financial and logistical support.
In an office of campesino (peasant) organization The Humanitarian Action
Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioqueño (Cahucopana)
in Medellín, we meet Yoladis Cerpa, a 26-year-old from El Bagre, one of the
more violent municipalities in Colombia. My family lives in Bagre but
because of my work in social organizations I cant go there, she tells In
These Times. Two days ago they killed my brother. In fact, my mother is
calling me right now, theyre in the cemetery as we speak.
As we speak, Cerpa shows us her phone. WhatsApp messages with pictures of
her brothers coffin pop up as relatives send her pictures of the funeral
she cant attend. She tells us of the huge culture of fear that runs through
the area because of paramilitary violence. We are threatened daily by
email, by telephone, by any means. The problem now is they killed one of the
social leaders on March 7, and theres displacement in the villages. They
dismembered one of them totally, the others were forced to leave. They
threatened them. There are deaths every day.
Cerpa thinks the organizers are being targeted due to the social work they
do. They are defending the campesinos, defending human rights and making it
harder for the multinationals to enter campesino regions.
El Bagre has large deposits of gold and has been subject to intense resource
extraction. This has made the human rights situation worse. Uribe is one of
the owners of a company called Municipio de El Bagre Minero, says Cerpa.
Its working in a
very rich region for mining for gold. Uribe is fighting
to sell these lands to multinationals. And the campesinos, coordinated by
social organisations, are fighting to defend their rights.
She continues, Another multinational tried to enter the region but the
campesinos, we didnt allow it. It was amazing. So the threats are mainly
due to the organizational work were doing as social organizations.
Paramilitarism is eradicating these social organizations.
As an example, she says, They murdered Comrade William Castillo
on March
7. Castillo worked for Association of Agroecological and Mining
Fraternities of Guamocó (Aheramigua), the same group as Cerpa.
They shot him. He was meeting with the presidents of some local
communities. He was training them about their rights, that they organize
committees, for motorbike taxis, for miners, and all that. When
the
meeting finished
they killed him.
Proving that multinationals work alongside paramilitaries to achieve their
aims is impossible, she says. (Chiquita is unusual for admitting it.) But
still she feels confident that this is in fact what is happening. We are
living the conflict, she says. And the threats we receive from
paramilitaries are always for this, that theyre going to kill us because
were working with campesinos, because were training them [to defend their
land], for these kinds of things.
But while the problem continues, the Chiquita case offers a chance for
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of loved ones of those killed in the Urabá
regionpeople like Anabelto attain justice.
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