Immortalized in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel 100 Years of Solitude, the 1928 massacre of the banana workers represents a key moment in Colombian history. The militant rebellion of workers and the poor confronted the juggernaut of the United Fruit Company, now known as “Chiquita”, and dealt a significant blow to the prestige of the Colombian ruling class. For that, the uprising was drowned in blood. Nevertheless, to this day the bravery of the strikers and brutality of the bosses is remembered by millions of Colombian workers who continue to struggle against the horrors of capitalism and imperialism.
Imperialism and US capitalism
The historic events of 1928 have their roots in the dramatic shifts that took place in world capitalism in the preceding decade, changes that would shape the Colombian economy and the stormy period of class struggle in the 1920s. Emerging out of the crisis and catastrophe of World War 1, the United States supplanted Britain as the world’s dominant power and as the 1920s progressed US imperialism dramatically expanded its political, economic and military influence across the globe. Latin America was of particular importance. A 1921 Comintern document explained:
“To bring the whole world under its sway: such is the aim of North American imperialism. But just as the key to British imperialism lies in its colonial system, American imperialism is based on the exploitation and domination of South America.”
The same text goes on to describe South America as “a colony of the United States, source of raw materials, cheap labour and, of course, fabulous profits.” Colombia was no exception. Whereas in 1913 US investment totalled $4 million, by 1929 it had skyrocketed to $173 million. Foreign capital poured in, initiating a frenzied period of economic growth known as ‘the Dance of the Millions.’ However, Colombia was not an equal sharer of the spoils. US corporations and banks tightened their grip on the Andean nation: massive loans for infrastructural development fueled a soaring foreign debt and big American monopolies nestled their tentacles into all corners of the country.
This was facilitated by a wholly subservient Colombian bourgeoisie, represented by successive Conservative governments since 1902 after defeating Liberal military forces in the bloody War of a Thousand Days. US capital was given free reign in special economic zones with little to no taxes. Draconian labour laws and state repression kept the workforce unorganized and cheap. On top of the booming coffee sector (mostly made up of small producers) the oil and banana enclaves flourished under the near total dominance of US firms.
United Fruit Company
Standing out amongst these gigantic US corporations was United Fruit Company:
When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America.
Pablo Neruda “The United Fruit Co.” from Canto General
With a growth in demand for bananas in the US, United Fruit Company dramatically expanded its business empire throughout the Caribbean: Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua became home to massive plantations. The US company bought and constructed railways, ports and telegram lines, all in the insatiable drive for profit, not in the interests of the local population.
Of course, they could rely on the local ruling class to enable their plunder and exploitation, who handed over large tracts of land and assisted in violent dispossession of peasants and indigenous peoples. As United Fruit president Sam Zemurray put it “in Honduras a mule costs more than a deputy’ and, as Eduardo Galleano added, “throughout Central America US ambassadors do more presiding than presidents.” (Open Veins of Latin America) Despite the formal political independence of the Central and South American countries, there was no question of who was calling the shots. Hence the emergence of the term ‘Banana Republic.’
By 1932 United Front Company owned or leased over 3,416,000 acres of land (larger than the entire land mass of Greece!) owned or operated 1,768 miles of railway, 559 miles of tramway and 3,500 miles of telephone and telegraph lines. Emblematic of the new type of monopolies that Lenin described in Imperialism, UFCO brought together various branches of industry, swallowed up smaller companies and, backed by the US state, battled it out with other monopolies for the division of the world.
UFCO in Colombia
United Fruit Company first established operations in Colombia in 1899. In 1901 it exported 250,000 bunches of bananas, a figure which rose to 10 million by 1929. It controlled 580 square kilometers of land, concentrated in the Zona Bananera in Santa Marta where there existed the ideal conditions for the production of bananas. Possessing a monopoly on railway and telegraph, they also owned a fleet of steamboats and effectively bought local government. As Colombian labor historian Miguel Urrutia put it, the UFCO enclave was ‘a state within a state.’
This saw a complete transformation of the region, with a massive influx of workers coming to labour on the vast plantations. Some were former small banana producers themselves, driven out of business by UFCO, others indigenous people and migrants from elsewhere who came in search of better wages. A super-exploited and concentrated proletariat was born and by 1928, 32,000 people in some way worked for UFCO.
However, the company rarely hired workers directly. Instead, they went through contractors, allowing the UFCO to evade compliance with limited Colombian labour laws. On top of the enormous precarity that this meant for workers, it also added additional barriers to getting industrially organized.
Adding insult to injury, UFCO paid workers in credit notes that could only be used in the local company stores, a policy that also enraged small businesses as workers’ incomes never circulated in the local economy. UFCO’s total economic and political control of the zona bananera also led to frequent clashes of small traders and producers who were in a constant fight for survival to compete with the all-powerful monopoly.
Conditions for workers were atrocious. A 7-day working week was the norm. Living quarters and services provided by the company were extremely poor, chaotically put together to provide the bare minimum to maintain the workforce: medical attention was generally reserved for those on their deathbed and schools were virtually non-existent.
State of the Workers’ Movement
Preceding the strike were years of growth, recomposition and ideological ferment in the Colombian workers’ movement, marked by attempts to form new political and industrial organizations. Whereas waves of European immigration in the late 19th century brought socialist and anarchist ideas to Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, Colombia remained more isolated. Nevertheless, the advent of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had an electrifying impact on the consciousness of many workers and intellectuals. In Bogota working-class neighbourhoods renamed streets to Calle Lenin and Carrera Trotsky.
1928 was not the first time UFCO workers took strike action. In 1910, 1918 and 1924, rail and plantation workers had withdrawn their labour in demand of better pay and conditions only to meet the hard-nosed intransigence of the UFCO bosses. 1924 also saw the heroic struggle of the Barrancabermeja Tropical Oil Workers that ended with the sacking of 1200 of the 3000 workers. Raul Mahecha emerged as the main leader who, alongside others, helped found the Union Sindical de los Trabajadores del Magdalena (the main organization in the 1928 strike) and the National Workers’ Confederation (Confederación Obrera Nacional — CON) which in 1925 affiliated to the Comintern’s Red International of Labor Unions.
The following year the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR) was launched and sought to join the Communist International. When discussed at the 6th World Congress in 1928, it was reported that the Colombians had a membership of 10,000. Despite some reservations they were formally accepted into the ranks of the international and their members would play a key role in the banana zone uprising.
Preparation of the Strike
Alongside Mahecha, figures like Maria Cano and Tomas Giraldo of the PSR were sent to lead the strike alongside a number of international visitors from the Comintern. Preparation began on the 6 October when a delegation of workers came together to develop demands to present to the company. They were as follows:
- Abolition of contractor system and recognition as employees of UFCO.
- Compensation for occupational accidents.
- Sunday rest.
- 50% increase in wages for employees earning less than 100 pesos.
- Elimination of company stores
- Cessation of loans by means of vouchers.
- Weekly payment.
- Compulsory collective insurance
- Better hospital service.
While on the one hand these were modest (and would have been a mere implementation of Colombian labour law) they also represented an enormous headache to the company and their reliance on extremely cheap labour. UFCO bosses must have likewise considered the political consequences of conceding to these demands; what impact would it have on workers across UFCO’s empire in Central America? Unsurprisingly, the company refused to negotiate and on 11th of November the workers announced a region wide general strike.
Including wider social demands garnered the sympathies of broad sectors of the local population who stood to benefit from a victory. In particular, the elimination of the company store won the support of small merchants who loathed UFCO’s monopoly on trade. To this day, big capitalists regularly cite struggling small businesses as a reason to oppose improvement in workers’ conditions, often gaining an echo amongst certain layers. So the union’s appeal to other sectors exploited by UFCO was an important strategy that forged unity between workers and other local producers and tradespeople. In the opening days of the strike the latter provided food and other financial assistance to the workers.
State Repression Steps Up
In November the military was sent to the region to suppress the strike. They arrested 400 strikers and even the local labour inspector who had ruled the strike completely legal and the workers’ demands fair. General Cortés Vargas then took control of mediation between the strikers and the company. Tied by a thousand threads to the capitalists and their political servants, the army top brass lined up behind the company.
Under the protection of the army, strikebreakers were brought into resume production. Soldiers even assisted in the work, helping load fruits onto trains. Workers responded by blocking railway lines and cutting telegraph lines, paralyzing the company’s operations. To put forward their ideas and expose the actions of the company, they distributed leaflets and the Obrera Vanguardia newspaper. On November 25 the government and the company offered some concessions on the condition that the strike ends but, falling short of the workers’ demands, the deal was rejected.
Head of United Fruit Colombia, Thomas Bradshaw refused to accept the legitimacy of the dispute, referring to the strike as “a clear and absolutely subversive movement, a riot or uprising, an insinuation of the uprising of the masses in the banana zone.” Minister of War, Ignacio Rengifo, likewise stated “in Magdalena, it isn’t a strike, it’s a revolution.” Mass arrests of workers continued and as tensions rose the army called in more troops, replacing the local soldiers who the generals rightly feared would likely have sympathy for the strike. Under the aegis of protecting the US citizens employed by UFCO, the US Navy sent a gunboat to the port of Santa Marta.
Heading for a Confrontation
On the 4th of December, confident they had the military firmly on their side, UFCO attempted to resume operations. Workers escalated their actions even confronting and disarming an army patrol. Women and children laid down on train lines to bring transport to a halt. They dealt General Cortés Vargas an embarrassing blow when he was forced to abandon a train of striker prisoners, which the strikers promptly liberated. The following day, thousands of workers and their families filled the square in Ciénaga in a demonstration organized by the union to demand that the government intervene and push the company to meet their demands.
At this point an estimated one million dollars had been lost due to strike actions with no end in sight. The vicious methods of repression failed to deter the workers, a source of embarrassment for the servile Colombian ruling class in the face of their foreign investors and US imperialism. With no sign of the strike ending they prepared for a more decisive confrontation. On the 5th of December, the government declared a state of emergency, one that banned any meeting of over three people and ordered the military to “give strict compliance to this Decree, firing on the crowd if necessary.”
In the early hours of the 6th of December, that’s precisely what happened. Soldiers entered the square and read out the decree, giving the crowd of over 4,000 a mere five minutes to disperse. General Vargas then gave the order. Chaos reigned as the troops opened fire on men, women and children. A campaign of terror ensued as the military hunted down fleeing strikers. As some stories go, bodies were transported via train to be dumped in the ocean. The drivers were then executed.
The near extermination of all witnesses means the total death toll remains disputed to this day. Vargas’ initial account shamelessly underreported a mere 13 dead whereas in 100 Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez puts the number at 3,000. Jefferson Caffery, the US ambassador to Colombia sent a telegram to the Secretary of State on January 19th callously boasting: “I have the honor to report that the Bogota representative of the United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.”
Aftermath
One thing is clear however: the brutal response of the state gives an insight into the threat the banana strikers posed to United Fruit Company and their venal accomplices in the Colombian bourgeoisie. The workers’ were undoubtedly defeated, but as the massacre became more widely reported in the months following it evoked enormous sympathy from workers and the poor who faced similar conditions.
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, then a young lawyer and senator standing on the left wing of the Liberal Party, went to the banana zone to investigate the actions of the army, where he declared: “If I remain here, I’ll go straight to the mental hospital facing so many horrors.” In his subsequent speeches and work he tapped into the enormous rage of the working class, channelling their support into the Liberal Party who came to power in 1930 on a populist programme, bringing to an end 30 years of Conservative Party rule. It would also be the real launchpad for Gaitán’s political career whose mass populist movement represented a real threat to the Colombian oligarchy. His assassination in 1948 triggered the Bogotazo uprising before descending into a ten-year Civil War known as La Violencia.
Role of the PSR and the Comintern
Was the massacre of 1928 inevitable? While the strikers lacked no shortage of heroism and were impressively organized, the fact the movement remained contained in one region made it easier for the Colombian military to put down the rebellion. A more coordinated effort to strengthen and develop solidarity campaigns and spread the strike to other enclaves and cities would have posed a significant challenge to the Colombian state.
The recently formed PSR lacked the experience and cohesion to develop the strike in this direction. Politically heterogeneous and organizationally loose with a mostly middle class social composition, some sections sought an alliance with the Liberal Party while others pushed for the immediate seizure of state power. Mahecha fell in the latter camp and criticized the PSR central leadership for lack of action at the Latin American Communist Conference in 1929 where the strike was the source of much discussion and debate:
In Cartagena we could strike at any moment. In Barranquilla there was no need to fight, because the police were on our side. In short, we were ready to go into action. We were only waiting for the order from Bogotá, which never came. We were disciplined and did not strike there because we believed that insurrection was necessary throughout the country. We notified Bogotá again so that the revolution could be ordered, and ten comrades of the conspiratorial committee signed the note. The workers were impatient for the insurrection but we were waiting for the note to be answered… And so the days passed, comrades.
While Mahecha is correct that more potential existed for the movement to go further he may have overstated the situation. Important to remember is that the PSR joined the international at the 6th World Congress — an advance in the consolidation of Stalinism following the expulsion of Trotsky’s Left Opposition — which inaugurated the ultra-left ‘Third Period.’ Capitalism was theorized as entering its final crisis with the prospect of immediate revolution on a world scale. Preparing for power, including initiating armed insurrections, was therefore the principal task of the Communist Parties alongside a completely sectarian approach to other forces.
Nevertheless, even representatives of the Comintern felt the Colombian comrades suffered from putchist tendencies and despite having many brave fighters, lacked real Marxist cadre. The Colombian delegation accepted much of the criticism but pushed back and blamed the Comintern for not providing enough political and material support. The possibility to launch such open criticisms of the international leadership would soon close as the process of Stalinization deepend in the Latin American communist parties in the months and years ahead. Criticisms of adventurism from the Comintern and within the PSR were not heeded and in 1929 the party launched a number of poorly planned uprisings across the country. Some were canceled at the final hour and those that went ahead — like in Libano, Tolima — were violently suppressed.
Conclusion
While the banana strike had many examples of working-class ingenuity and initiative, and was well organized by some talented socialist fighters, the young, inexperienced and weak forces of Marxism in Colombia meant workers lacked the necessary leadership and organisation to deepen and extend the strike movement and confront the butchery of the bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, December 6 will continue to carry an enormous significance for the working class in Colombia: as a day to mourn those brutally massacred in their struggle for a dignified life, and as a day to take pride in the past struggles of our class. We study this not just as a source of inspiration, but also to draw out the necessary lessons to apply to today’s struggles.
It highlights, precisely, the importance of building a revolutionary organization based on a class program and armed with a strategy that can seize the moment to channel and coordinate the energy of the working class in a battle to defeat the bosses and their system. The inability of the PSR, and later Gaitán, to take the demands of the working class to a successful conclusion demonstrates the need for a strategy based on a historical and dialectical analysis of the material conditions and their inevitable connection with the rest of the globalized capitalist system.
Thus, internationalism, a cornerstone of the modern socialist movement since the time of Marx, is fundamental to fully consider the global dynamics of the capitalist system through joint theoretical and revolutionary work with comrades in other sections. Tragically, the Stalinized Comintern betrayed these principles and subordinated world revolution to the narrow interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, strangling internal democracy and denying Colombian workers the possibility of adequately drawing the lessons of the strike. But the theoretical conclusions of such discussions and debates are an essential ingredient in the success of our movement.
