Massacre of the Bananeras

In 1928, in the Colombian town of Ciénaga, General Carlos Cortés Vargas ordered the execution of a thousand workers who were fighting to improve their working conditions.

Background to the events

The banana is native to Asia and was introduced in America from the occupation of the Spanish at the end of the 15th century. The territory Colombian man from Magdalena had the optimal conditions for his production.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, some foreign companies carried out important investments on agricultural production and livestock throughout the Atlantic coast. In the first decades of the 20th century the United States Fruit Company was known as "the great fleet Blanca ", as it owned more than ninety steamships that transported bananas to the United States and to the continent European.

The banana plantations of this company settled near the railroad and this circumstance favored the transportation of their products.

The United Fruit Company hired thousands of workers to prepare the ground, plant the

culture and gather the harvest. In 1928 there were 25,000 workers in the Magdalena region.

The United Fruit Company used a subcontracting system to evade the legislation Colombian. In this way, the American multinational did not directly hire workers and subcontracting companies imposed exploitative working conditions

This model generated a deep malaise among the workers and in the different banana farms union committees were created to organize acts of protest

The peasant leaders of the region presented a list of petitions to the United Fruit Company to Demand a series of social demands (including mandatory social insurance, the right to Sunday rest, a salary increase and the elimination of intermediaries or subcontractors).

The workers' demands were rejected by the company and the unions proposed several days of strikes. While this was happening, the government de Colombia did not take any initiative to mediate between the workers and United Fruit.

The day of the massacre

On December 5, thousands of workers gathered in the Plaza del Ferrocarril in the town of Ciénaga, carrying Colombian flags and portraits of Simón Bolivar.

Initially, the conflict It seemed that it was going to be solved, but General Cortés Vargas received the order for the army forces to concentrate on the railway station. He ordered the crowd to withdraw and definitively abandon the protests, but in the face of the protesters' refusal, he ordered a mass shooting against the attendees.

Some 300 armed soldiers shot women, children and adults. The exact number of deaths has never been known, but it is estimated that they could be between 800 and 3000. Before dying, the protesters shouted a loud "long live the strike and long live free Colombia."

Photo: Fotolia - Cilia

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