Progressive Wednesday

Let the banana boycott begin, baby!

Let’s say you or I gave 1.7 million bucks to, I don’t know, say a major terrorist organization or two in Columbia. I’m taking any and all bets that we’d find ourselves getting the waterboard treatment in Guantanamo. And likely we wouldn’t be heard from again any time soon.

Now let’s say you’re a major corporation cultivating and selling bananas, and you dole out dinero to known terrorist groups. In our Patriot Act times, you’d think your company would get more than a tiny slap-on-the-wrist fine. But according to the Associated Press, the not-so news-ilicious news goes like this:

Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming region.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

So, what’s the United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia all about? Massacres of Colombians. Cocaine exportation. As you might suspect, I write with a sigh of resignation, there’s more:

The company also made similar payments to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, according to prosecutors.

And what’s the deal with FARC? Well, let’s see:

FARC is Colombia's largest and best-equipped rebel group, with around 12,000-18,000 members — it is also one of the world's richest and most powerful guerrilla armies. FARC is responsible for most of the ransom kidnappings in Colombia.

And where does FARC get the cha-ching necessary for, you know, amping up the terror? Half from hocking drugs, and the rest from kidnappings, extortion, ransom, and, of course, now from the only sorta, kinda good folks at Chiquita bananas.

So, since it’s pretty unlikely that we’re going to convince the feds to put some of the head honchos at Chiquita in the slammer, we’re going to have to do what we can: boycott these bananas. Boycott, baby. In the United States, the way we choose to spend our hard-earned cash is our most powerful voice.

Chiquita doesn’t sell the only bananas in the U.S. (Dole and Del Monte are two others), and more and more there are options to snag fair trade fruit. Besides, as it turns out, an apple a day keeps the terrorists away.