The AUC didn’t just receive funding and weaponry from the U.S. and Chiquita. [Herzlian] settlers traveled to Colombia to train AUC gunmen. Fifty of the AUC’s most effective assassins were sent to [the Middle East] on “scholarship” to train with [a neocolonial] military. In May 2002, an [imperialist] defense contractor based in Guatemala bought 3,000 assault rifles and millions more rounds of ammunition for the AUC.

Carlos Castaño was personally trained by [a neocolonial] military. “I learned an infinite amount of things [under Zionism], and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements.” (The New Arab, May 21)

From the equipment, the funding, down to the very tactics, the footprint of U.S. imperialism can be found everywhere from Gaza to Bogotá, operating if not directly then through its proxies in the Colombian and [Zionist] militaries and privately-leased death squads.

“I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the [neocolonists],” Castaño once bragged,” in his ghostwritten autobiography, “Mi Confesion.”

Chiquita, for its part, responded to the $38 million settlement by claiming the victims’ families have “no legal basis” for demanding reparations. The corporation announced its plan to appeal the jury’s verdict.

While the Colombian military and police remain the persistent threat to worker organizing, the current government of Gustavo Petro has a progressive focus and has already succeeded in raising the average wages of banana workers to over $400 a month. Petro’s government has also launched an embargo on coal to [Zionism] and severed diplomatic relations with the genocide régime occupying Palestine.

“If Palestine dies, humanity dies, and we are not going to let it die,” the 64-year old economist and former guerrilla fighter said at a May Day rally in Bogota, Colombia. (The Guardian, May 1) “The genocide in Palestine continues because it is inconvenient for the world power to end it.”

Petro warned those at the U.N. COP28 climate summit in Dubai: “Genocide and barbaric acts unleashed against the Palestinian people is what awaits those who are fleeing the south because of the climate crisis. What we see in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future.” (aa.com.tr, Dec. 2, 2023)