[Marxism] Banana Republic #2

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, August 2, 2007
Chertoff, Chiquita and Death Squads
Banana Republic

By CHRIS FLOYD

As Jonathan Schwarz recently noted, there is a deeply discouraging 
sameness about the outrages that dissenting writers must address -- and 
a new front-page story in the Washington Post is a perfect example. In 
fact, it's a piece that could have been written at any time in the last 
100 years or more: "Feds Look the Other Way While United Fruit Company 
Peddles Death and Corruption in Latin America"

Today of course, the infamous United Fruit of yore (whose machinations 
in Guatemala led to a CIA coup that set off decades of mass-murdering 
chaos) is known by the more perky name of Chiquita, and conjures up 
cheery pictures of childhood banana-munching around the family table. 
But while corporations may change their spots (or their peels) and their 
personnel over the years, the nature of the beast remains much the same, 
because its raison d'etre remains the same: maximizing profit. And 
United Fruit/Chiquita has traditionally been willing to push the banana 
boat way out when it comes to ensuring that its exploitation of cheap 
labor remains undisturbed.

In the case of Colombia, this meant paying an officially designated 
terrorist gang -- the vicious killers of the rightwing United 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- to keep Chiquita's operations 
running smoothly in the war-torn nation. A whole sordid history could be 
written about the extensive intertwining of American government and 
corporate interests with AUC and the other rightwing Colombian militias, 
but for our purposes here it is enough to note that Chiquita not only 
paid AUC for protection from leftwing militias, it also took an active 
and direct role in "in smuggling thousands of arms for paramilitaries 
into the Northern Uraba region, using docks operated by the company to 
unload thousands of Central American assault rifles and ammunition," as 
the Post reports. In turn, the paramilitaries used these weapons "to 
fund operations against peasants, union workers and rivals."

"I regarded this as a murder investigation," says Roscoe Howard Jr., the 
former U.S. Attorney who spearheaded a prosecution of Chiquita for its 
death-squad collaboration, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Even though 
Chiquita didn't murder anyone, that's what the money was used for -- to 
buy weapons."

Earlier this year, Chiquita the corporate entity paid a piddling $25 
million to wash the blood from its gleaming office walls. But now the 
company's human entities are facing personal criminal charges for 
facilitating the murder, kidnapping, rape and robbery of innocent human 
beings. To counter this, they are offering a modified version of the 
Nuremberg Defense; it's not exactly that they were "just following 
orders" from Der Leader, but they say they did receive implicit 
permission from the Bush Regime to carry on funding the Colombian death 
squads after corporate officials notified the Justice Department in 2003 
of their involvement with AUC. As the Post notes:

     "... last week, lawyers for the former Chiquita executives sent 
letters to the Justice Department, asserting that their clients did not 
intentionally break the law but believed they were waiting for an answer 
from the highest levels of the Bush administration."

The man they sought out at the Justice Department the Assistant Attorney 
General, one Michael Chertoff, now the gut-checking head of Homeland 
Security. As the Post reports:

     "Chiquita, [company officials told Chertoff], would have to pull 
out of the country if it could not continue to pay the violent 
right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana plantations. 
Chertoff...affirmed that the payments were illegal but said to wait for 
more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the 
meeting...Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back 
to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy 
attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left 
his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making 
payments for nearly another year."

But as we all know, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. And there 
were many in the Bush Regime who did not regard AUC as real terrorists; 
after all, they weren't Muslims, and they were only killing a bunch of 
piss-poor Latinos -- along with political opponents of Washington's 
much-favored Uribe administration in Bogata. What's not to like. As the 
Post reports:

     "But legal sources on both sides say there was a genuine debate 
within the Justice Department about the seriousness of the crime of 
paying AUC. For some high-level administration officials, Chiquita's 
payments were not aiding an obvious terrorism threat such as al-Qaeda; 
instead, the cash was going to a violent South American group helping a 
major U.S. company maintain a stabilizing presence in Colombia."

As long as a "violent group" supports American policy or corporate 
interests, they can let rip. We see this dynamic in operation all over 
the world at the moment. It is part of a long-standing -- and open -- 
policy of the Bush Administration to arm and fund violent militias to do 
its dirty work. As I wrote here in Counterpunch back in 2004:

     "Last month, in little-noticed testimony before Congress, the Bush 
Regime unveiled its plans to raise a host of warlord armies in the most 
volatile areas in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. Bush wants 
$500 million in seed money to arm and train non-governmental "local 
militias" – i.e., bands of lawless freebooters – to serve as 
Washington's proxy killers in the so-called "arc of crisis" that just 
happens to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline 
routes of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.

     "Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho Paul 
Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush 
wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorist" 
operations in "ungoverned areas" of the world – and in the hinterlands 
of nations providing "sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious 
citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked 
aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf proposed 
expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that 
allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal 
encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.

     "Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within 
its borders will become a prime target for "the path of action," said 
Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase from the 2002 
manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the "action" will 
be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns: religious and ethnic 
militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists, insurrectionists, 
druglords, pirates – basically anyone willing to slit throats and 
terrorize populations at the order of the Oval One."

Of course, it is very good indeed that, against all odds, there remain 
some honest prosecutors in the federal justice system willing to do what 
should have been done a century ago: hold corporate chieftains 
responsible for the crimes they beget in their slavering pursuit of 
profit. But it also clear that the Chiquita executives were given the 
same kind of nod-and-wink for murky dealings that their illustrious 
predecessors have always received from Washington. That they may now be 
hoist on their own petar is their own tough luck; but they are certainly 
not the only ones who should be in the dock.

Chris Floyd is an American journalist based in the UK and a frequent 
contributor to CounterPunch. He is the writer of the political blog, 
Empire Burlesque , and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes 
and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.

Sources:

Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed, Counterpunch, Sept. 7, 2004

Guatemala 1953-1954: While the world watched, from "Killing Hope," by 
William Blum

Fear Up Harsh: The Iraq Civil War in Context, Empire Burlesque, March 
28, 2006

A Tiny Revolution, Jonathan Schwarz, July 21, 2007

In Terrorism-Law Case, Chiquita Points to U.S., Washington Post, Aug. 2, 
2007

Chiquita Under the Gun, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 2, 2007

The New Turn, Antiwar.com, Aug. 2, 2007