Bananas Massacre in Colombia
1928 CE.
Shown on the map at 11.007°, -74.250°.
The Banana Massacre (Spanish: Matanza/Masacre de las bananeras) was a massacre of workers of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928, in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, Colombia. A strike began on November 12, 1928, when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions. After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the government of Miguel Abadía Méndez assigned Carlos Cortés Vargas as military chief in the Magdalena department and sent 700 men from the Colombian Army to quell the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47–2000 people (the range owing to the insufficiency of detailed historical records). U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State.
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