This is going to be a series on how the United States, and the first world in general, is viewed by the third world in general and Colombia in particular (the country I’m from, it’s spelt with an O). The idea is for each diary to feature one of the United State’s “greatest hits” abroad (in this case, The Bananeras Massacre of 1928) and a little reflexion on the relationship of the US to the rest of the world.
I guess an explanation of the title is in order…
Immediately after 911, many gringos (sorry, I can’t bring myself to call you “americans” because, say, chileans are american too- but trust me, it’s not really an offensive word nor do I mean it that way), as I was saying, after 911 many gringos seemed to be asking indignantly “why do they hate us?, why do they hate us?” referring, apparently, to the rest of the world, because fear activates tribal us vs them instincts.
Now, this would be a great question to ask, if the people asking it were, in fact, interested in an answer. But they were asking the question rethorically, under the assumption that the US had never in history done anything that would merit enmity from any sensible person anywhere in the world.
The thing is, there’s a couple of things the US has done that merit enmity from “foreigners”. Of course, one has to clarify what is meant by “The US” in the previous sentence.
By “the US” I probably don’t mean you. When “the US” does harm outside it’s borders, it is usually a corporation or the US government, not US citizens. That is one of the reasons for the “(which we don’t)” clause in the title. We don’t hate YOU, we hate what your government and large corporations do.
The second reason we don’t really hate you is because, while many people loathe the actions of your military/industrial complex, we put a lot of our hopes in you. We rooted for Kerry ardently, we sincerely hope you re-join the Kyoto treaty and lead the world against global warming. We’d rather have you as a superpower than Russia or, probably China (though we’d enjoy a stronger and principled European Union leading the world). You have the potential to do a lot of good.
But for that, you must recognize what your country actually does around the world. Today, I will give you an example of how the US fosters fascism around the world:
“Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini
In the year 1928, in the northern coastal region of Colombia, specifically what is now Magdalena, there was one major land owner and employer: The United Fruit Company, named so because it was the result of the merger between to large banana companies which, in turn, were the result of previous mergers.
By this year, the Colombian Conservative Party had been in power for many decades. As a result, labour registration and worker’s rights were very modest. Basic things like sundays off and healthcare were given to workers trough legislation, but not much more. * The United Fruit Company, however, ignored all the worker’s rights that existed in Colombian law. It did this by using a loophole in the legislation: instead of hiring banana collectors as normal employees, it paid people to hire the workers for the day as a private deal.
In this way, the UFC saved itself a lot of money. It did not give workers sundays off nor healthy working conditions and paid them miserable wages, not in pesos but in scrip, to be redeemed only at the company store. The life of a banana farmer was indeed a miserable one.
With the help of communists and socialists, the banana workers organized a strike. They demanded nothing more than that the UFC comply with Colombian law. The leaders of the strike were Erasmo Coronel, Pedro del Río and Nicanor Serrano, all local banana workers.
The very next day, the conservative government of Miguel Abadía Méndez named Carlos Cortes Vargas military chief of the Zona Bananera. Troops were dispatched to Magdalena to replace banana workers, loading bananas into boats. In subtle and not so subtle ways, the Colombian government had been bribed into protecting UFC’s interests over those of Colombian workers. The governments own regional labour inspector, Alberto Martínez, was jailed because he had proclaimed that the strike was lawful and legitimate.
The Colombian government issued a decree (decreto no 1 de diciembre 5) whereby it called the strikers “gangs of evildoers” and decreed “estado de excepción” in the Zona Bananera. “Estado de excepción” means a suspension of normal law because of extraordinary circumstances: it basically gave a blank cheque to the military, which had no qualms about using it.
A government official read the decree in the town Plaza of Ciénaga to a gathering of banana workers, while the Colombian army surrounded them with machine gun nests, “for security”. There were boos from the crowd when the part about the strikers being “gangs of evildoers” was read. At that point, a drunken general Cortes Vargas told the military to shoot upon the crowd, and to continue to do so even after the survivors cried for mercy.
What ensued was the pillaging of all of Zona Bananera by the army. Liquor stores were raided, women were forced to dance with the soldiers and were then raped. Strike leader Erasmo Coronel was murdered by a US citizen who, of course, was never charged. The death toll reached 1, 500. (By the way, there is a fictionalized account of the massacre in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book “Cien años de soledad”).
The conservative government gave medals to the military involved, and called the whole thing, more or less, a courageous defense of the fatherland against communism. However, the truth came out soon enough. The military could not hide all the bodies, some of which were later found. Due in large part to the populist liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, witnesses were found, the mess uncovered and surviving strike leaders released from prison. The conservative monopoly on power was broken and liberal Olaya Herrera became the next president.
This episode of Colombian history is viewed as an example of gringo imperialism abroad. Why? Weren’t the troops who fired on the workers colombian? Yes, but the corrupt upper class who allowed this to happen was corrupted by a US company. And that is generally how gringo imperialism works: they find some puppet abroad to do their dirty work for them. Another example is the Shah of Iran, of whom I will speak some other time.
I sometimes see the US as a rich suburban family where the parent, the only one who works, is a hitman who lies to his family about his job. The family sort of knows that he is a hit man but doesn’t WANT to know, because they realize that it’s their father and husband’s job that keeps them rich. People in Colombia and elsewhere feel that the US’s high quality of life (which, btw, people like Reagan and Bush are ruining) is the fruit of screwing over the rest of the world.
If I may ramble on for a bit more, I’d like to say something about capitalism. Capitalism is an expanding force that excludes other ways of life that may be better adapted to a given region or culture. People in places that are not traditionally capitalist may feel, and have felt, that the western world, symbolized by the US, destroys alternative ways of life and imposes capitalism. US capitalism, full of money and unstoppable, replaces native lifestyles (which normally foster less concentration of power and are more eco-friendly) with Corporatism. This is perhaps the main reason for enmity towards the United States: people abroad see their lifestyles, values and livelihoods destroyed by the advancing juggernaut of Corporatism, and blame the most capitalist country in the world.
Finally, I’d like to have a little fun with you gringos. I want to test your supposed, and famous, ignorance about the rest of the world. Only answer the poll if you are a gringo (and no research is allowed, just answer off the top of your head):