- 04 Mar 2003 21:06
#511
Hi,
Today I had a Colombian history class and learned some curious things.
Well, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a conservative hegemony in the Colombian government, and US imperialism started to set foot in Colombia.
The United Fruit Company helped build a very important railway, and the government payed them with lands. But all the lands were occcupied by peasants. So the lands had to be bought. If the peasants agreed to sell their lands, they'd be forced to either work for the United Fruit Company or else get the hell out of there. The ones who did not want to sell them were shot and their lands were taken forcefully by the army.
When the United Fruit Company was established in Colombia they started oppressing wrokers. They hired people to hire workers. These workers were paid almost nothing, had no medical care, no pension, no nothing. The whole towns were ruled by the company, the workers could not quit, because then the army (controlled by the company with the consent of the conservative government) would kill them. They were not paid with money, but with papers which could only be used to buy at stores of the United Fruit Company, which imported merchandise fro the USA to sell at those stores.
In 1928, the workers decided to go on strike at the central square of one of those towns and waited for the mayor to come by and hear them. They waited for days and nobody showed up. Then the army showed up, and gavethem 5 minutes to get out of the square. Nobody moved, and after 5 minutes, the army blocked all the ways out of the square and then they started firing at them. There was a high number of casualties, including women and children, but the government only reported 7 deaths. The rest of the bodies was moved by train to other regions of the country, and buried in common holes.
In the '40s, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a liberal congressman investigated and sent commissions to find out about it. They found the holes in which the bodies were buried, and in his presidential campaign, exposed the proof. He was against US imperialism and was about to win the elections. Gaitan was shot before the elections, and died. It is known that conservative factions conspired to kill him, and some share the theory that the CIA helped them in achieving that task.
What are your thoughts about this?
Today I had a Colombian history class and learned some curious things.
Well, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a conservative hegemony in the Colombian government, and US imperialism started to set foot in Colombia.
The United Fruit Company helped build a very important railway, and the government payed them with lands. But all the lands were occcupied by peasants. So the lands had to be bought. If the peasants agreed to sell their lands, they'd be forced to either work for the United Fruit Company or else get the hell out of there. The ones who did not want to sell them were shot and their lands were taken forcefully by the army.
When the United Fruit Company was established in Colombia they started oppressing wrokers. They hired people to hire workers. These workers were paid almost nothing, had no medical care, no pension, no nothing. The whole towns were ruled by the company, the workers could not quit, because then the army (controlled by the company with the consent of the conservative government) would kill them. They were not paid with money, but with papers which could only be used to buy at stores of the United Fruit Company, which imported merchandise fro the USA to sell at those stores.
In 1928, the workers decided to go on strike at the central square of one of those towns and waited for the mayor to come by and hear them. They waited for days and nobody showed up. Then the army showed up, and gavethem 5 minutes to get out of the square. Nobody moved, and after 5 minutes, the army blocked all the ways out of the square and then they started firing at them. There was a high number of casualties, including women and children, but the government only reported 7 deaths. The rest of the bodies was moved by train to other regions of the country, and buried in common holes.
In the '40s, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a liberal congressman investigated and sent commissions to find out about it. They found the holes in which the bodies were buried, and in his presidential campaign, exposed the proof. He was against US imperialism and was about to win the elections. Gaitan was shot before the elections, and died. It is known that conservative factions conspired to kill him, and some share the theory that the CIA helped them in achieving that task.
What are your thoughts about this?
Last edited by Wilhelm on 05 Mar 2003 02:33, edited 1 time in total.
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