Historically the United Fruit Company (i.e., the earlier version of Chiquita), allegedly cooperated with the U.S. government, which supported the Guatemalan military coup in securing the overthrow of Jacob Arbenz, the duly elected, left-of-center president of Guatemala in 1954. This reflected the imperialistic view of the U.S. government’s desire to use its power to avoid leftist governments in Latin America. This view was controversial amongst historians, discussed further on.
In 1977 a new era emerged when the U.S. government discouraged bribery of foreign governments by passing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Chiquita paid fines in 2001 and 2007 for FCPA violations in Colombia. The blatant and heavy-handed imperialistic phase of open collusion between an American corporation and the U.S. government had changed. Corporations were not necessarily tied to U.S. policy as their stockholders were more international.
The lawsuit discussed herein resulted from the deaths of Chiquita employees at the hands of the Colombian right-wing para military group, categorized as terrorists by the U.S. government. Chiquita had paid the terrorists protection money but it failed to shield Chiquita’s personnel from harm. Descendants later sued for damages and won.
Chiquita had been advised by outside counsel to leave Colombia (DOJ, 2007, March 19); paying protection money to a terrorist group was illegal and not paying put lives at risk. Chiquita’s executives chose to stay in Colombia and pay the extortion thereby ignoring the advice of their lawyer. Why would they ignore the lawyer’s counsel? One can’t know for certain as no executive has come forward with an explanation but one can brainstorm and build plausible scenarios.