Chiquita Brands, the famous banana company, was ordered by a federal jury on Wednesday to pay $38.3 million to the family members of people killed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia , a paramilitary group it funded during the 1990s and early 2000s.“These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” Simons said.
The long struggle is often described as a “low-intensity” conflict, although it felt pretty intense to the roughly 220,000 people killed over the span of a half-century. Other left-wing militant groups allied with FARC during the conflict, while right-wing militias lined up against them. The AUC was originally opposed to drug cartels as well, but later began doing business with them. As its manpower swelled to some 30,000 fighters at its peak, the AUC began looking less like a volunteer counterinsurgency vigilante operation, and more like a violent gangster organization.
The Department of Justice noted at the time that Chiquita’s hundred-plus payments, passed along to the paramilitary group through intermediaries, were entered in its ledgers as “security services.”