Author: Michael Evans

Para mediados de 1997, ejecutivos de Chiquita Brands International se habían puesto nerviosos por la larga lista de sus llamados “pagos sensibles” en Colombia. Durante años Chiquita pagaba en silencio a los grupos rebeldes que dominaban la costa norte del país productora de bananas. Los contadores de la compañía habían creado un sistema de clasificación de códigos de colores para los varios grupos guerrilleros que mantenían en sus libros. Chiquita inclusive había empleado a insurgentes anti-gubernamentales como guardias de seguridad en algunas de sus plantaciones.

By the middle of 1997 officials from Chiquita Brands International had grown nervous about the company’s increasingly long list of so-called “sensitive payments” in Colombia. For years Chiquita had been quietly paying off the leftist rebel groups that dominated the country’s banana-producing northern coast. But the balance of power was shifting away from the guerrillas and toward increasingly powerful paramilitary groups, and Chiquita’s security payments reflected this new reality. Thousands of dollars that previously had gone to guerrillas were being redirected to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a confederation of drug traffickers and right-wing death squads that promised to drive guerrilla influence from the region and seize control of the illegal narcotics trade.