Banana Massacre

Banana Massacre, the unprovoked killing of United Fruit Company workers and their supporters in Ciénaga, Magdalena department, Colombia, by federal troops under the command of Colombian Gen. Carlos Cortés Vargas on December 6, 1928. Estimates of the number of deaths range from fewer than 50 to more than 1,000.

The United Fruit Company, an American corporation, owned 220,000 acres (about 89,000 hectares) of Colombian farmland, and it had significant influence within the Colombian government. Since the late 1910s some 25,000 workers on the company’s banana plantations had been advocating for better working and living conditions.

Strike

Workers had gone on strike a decade before the massacre, but little had changed. In October 1928 they issued a list of demands to the United Fruit Company, including demands for wage increases, six-day work weeks, hygienic dormitories, a direct contract with the company, compensation for work accidents, improved hospital services, and the elimination of company stores and payment in credit slips instead of money. In November they decided to strike. At the beginning of the strike, the commander of the Colombian armed forces appointed Cortés Vargas as military chief in the Magdalena department, and the Colombian government sent in 700 troops.

It is unclear how much influence the United Fruit Company had on the decision to send troops; however, telegrams sent by U.S. diplomats to the U.S. State Department showed that the diplomats had been working closely with company representatives. In addition, the telegrams revealed conversations about sending American warships because the strikers were exhibiting “subversive tendencies.” An American ship was sent to the region, but the U.S. ambassador to Colombia claimed that this was not a military move.

Government officials in Colombia monitored the strike closely, fearing that it could lead to a revolution that would cause the United States to intervene. Several incidents led the government to conclude that it was facing much more than angry farmworkers attempting to improve their conditions. Sabotage against the national railway resulted in the arrest of 400 strikers. The sabotage effort was a response to the military’s banning striking workers from using the trains. As word of the strike spread, a larger movement, which included the participation of the leftist Socialist Revolutionary Party, appeared to be gaining support among local planters and townspeople.

Massacre

On December 5 the workers were summoned to Ciénaga, ostensibly to settle the strike with the governor of Magdalena. Some 1,400 workers and their families filled the town square and were faced by 300 soldiers. Shortly before midnight, Cortés Vargas received a telegram containing Decree Number 1, the government’s official declaration of a state of siege in Magdalena. At 1:30 am on December 6 the crowd was ordered to disperse. Five minutes later, following three short bugle blasts, soldiers fired machine guns into the crowd. Initial reports noted that 8 or 9 people had been killed and 20 injured. Violence continued for the next few days as the military attempted to kill the union leaders who survived the first attack. According to later reports, the total number of dead stemming from the initial massacre and its immediate aftermath amounted to more than 1,000.

Following the massacre, Cortés Vargas was demoted. In his written account of the incident, he admitted to a death toll of only 47 civilians, and he justified his actions by noting the radical ideology of the strikers. He also claimed that his actions had helped prevent intervention by U.S. forces. Colombian Pres. Miguel Abadía Méndez attempted to save face by blaming the strike on foreign agitators. Despite the Colombian government’s efforts to downplay the incident, media reports kept it in the public eye: national newspapers reported on the massacre and the stories of survivors, and many also gave their support to the labour movement.

Consequences

In the wake of the massacre, the Conservative government was removed from power after the 1930 election and replaced by the Liberal Party, which would dominate Colombian politics for the next 20 years. Among those who would benefit was Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Liberal Party congressman whose popularity skyrocketed after he attacked the government for killing farmworkers and their families and painted Conservatives as pawns of American business. During a speech before the lower house of the congress, he held up the skull of a child who had been killed during the massacre. The new government was much more sympathetic to farmworkers, supporting labour unions and enacting significant changes in Colombia’s banana-growing industry. The massacre also inspired Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, who incorporated aspects of the event into his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).