Chiquita

• 1. Introduction

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  Chiquita began with a ship's captain named Lorenzo Dow Baker and a gamble in Jamaica in 1870. Baker bought 160 bunches of bananas there. Eleven days later he resold them in Jersey City. That single cargo is where the company's long timeline begins. Today the business sells bananas and other fresh produce, and it is the leading banana distributor in the United States. Along the way it has answered to more than one name, and it has changed owners, headquarters and public image more than once. How did one load of fruit grow into a corporation of that size? And why does a company built on such an ordinary fruit keep turning up in courtrooms in Europe and the Americas?

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• 2. Rise of United Fruit

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  In 1873, a Central American railroad developer named Minor C. Keith began experimenting with banana production in Costa Rica. He later planted bananas beside a Costa Rican railroad track, so the fruit would bring in revenue for the line.

  In 1878, Baker partnered with a man named Andrew Preston to form the Boston Fruit Company. In 1899, that firm merged with several fruit exporting businesses controlled by Keith. The result was the United Fruit Company.

  In 1903, United Fruit was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It also became the first company to use refrigeration during open sea transport. That same year, a railroad funded by the United States was built in Guatemala to benefit the company. In this period, United Fruit earned a reputation for aggressive and exploitative practices across Central America. In 1913, it created the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company.

  On the 6th of December 1928, Colombian soldiers entered the town of Ciénaga, where striking plantation workers had gathered. The workers had walked out over poor pay and working conditions on the company's plantations. United Fruit had lobbied the American government to send troops. The Colombian government chose to use its own forces instead. The crackdown killed scores of plantation workers and their families. Colombians remember it as the Masacre de las Bananeras, or Banana Massacre.

  The novelist Gabriel García Márquez alludes to the massacre in One Hundred Years of Solitude. In the book, the military suppresses workers in the fictional town of Macondo, and 3,000 plantation workers die. García Márquez has said that this toll may be an overestimate. The real number has never been confirmed. Estimates drawn from oral histories and primary sources run from 47 to upwards of 1,000.

  In 1952, the government of Guatemala began taking unused United Fruit land and giving it to landless peasants. The company lobbied the American government intensively to intervene. It also ran a misinformation campaign that portrayed the Guatemalan government as communist. In 1954, the United States Central Intelligence Agency deposed that government, which had been elected in 1950. It installed a pro-business military dictatorship in its place.

  By 1955, the company was processing 2.7 billion pounds, or 1.2 billion kilograms, of fruit a year.

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• 3. Selling the Tropics

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  By 1930, United Fruit's fleet had grown to 95 ships. Part of that fleet carried a marketing campaign called the Great White Fleet, a cruise liner for American tourists. It sailed to Central and South American nations where the company had invested. Commercials presented these destinations as exotic and fun excursions, which built a warm corporate image. Yet the carefully planned trips hid the brutal and corrupt reality on the company's plantations in Latin America.

  In 1944, the company premiered the Chiquita Banana jingle. It had an infectious calypso beat and opened with the words "I'm Chiquita Banana, and I've come to say." The lyrics praised the fruit and told listeners when to eat bananas and how to store them.

  The character of Miss Chiquita was created the same year by Dik Browne, who is best known for the comic strips Hi and Lois and Hägar the Horrible. She began as an animated banana with a woman's dress and legs, in the manner of Carmen Miranda. That look reflected mid-20th-century advertising habits around tropical imagery. Patti Clayton supplied her first voice in 1944. Elsa Miranda, June Valli and Monica Lewis followed. Advertisements showed the banana wearing a fruit hat.

  The brand name Chiquita was registered as a trademark in 1947. A commercial from that year used an English-language theme song that ended with the lyrics "si, si". The words stressed that the bananas came from Latin America. Another commercial showed a man of Latin descent drawn with exaggerated stereotypical features. The company's iconography and publications shifted as the 1960s went on.

  In 1987, the animator Oscar Grillo, known for his work on the Pink Panther series, redesigned the banana as a human figure. The banana with the fruit hat became a woman that year. A new Miss Chiquita design appeared in 1998. Meanwhile, peel-off stickers with the logo began appearing on bananas in 1963. Workers still place them by hand, to avoid bruising the fruit.

  The logo has since traveled far from the grocery aisle. The mission patch for the sixth flight test of SpaceX's Starship rocket was based on the Chiquita logo, and the payload for that mission was a Chiquita banana. The company has teased a future collaboration with SpaceX.

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• 4. Many Names

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  In 1966, United Fruit expanded into Europe and bought J. Hungerford Smith Company, the owner of A&W Root Beer. Eli Black joined in 1968 and became chairman, president and chief executive.

  In 1970, the company merged with AMK Corporation, which owned the meatpacker John Morrell & Co. The combined firm took the name United Brands Company. Black won control by outbidding two other conglomerates, Zapata Corporation and Textron. In 1971, a wholly owned subsidiary named A&W Distributing Co. was formed to retail the root beer. Black took his own life in 1975, and Seymour Milstein and Paul Milstein then acquired the company.

  In 1976, the European Commission ruled that United Brands had abused a dominant market position, in breach of Article 86 of the EEC Treaty. It had imposed unfair conditions on customers, refused to supply certain customers and charged different prices for equivalent transactions. The European Court of Justice upheld the decision in 1978.

  In 1980, Chiquita was an official sponsor of the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York. United Brands sold the A&W Restaurants to A. Alfred Taubman in 1982. It sold the A&W Root Beer business to a group of investors in 1983. In 1984, Cincinnati investor Carl Lindner Jr. became the controlling investor. In 1985, the company sold TRT, formerly Tropical Radio Telegraph, to UNC Resources.

  In 1990, the company renamed itself Chiquita Brands International and made major investments in Costa Rica. During the first half of that year, its Honduran operations began to decline. Chiquita responded by starting what became known as the Banana Wars with its rival Fyffes, over a limited supply of fruit. Chiquita illegally seized and destroyed Fyffes shipments and bribed judges to validate detention orders on Fyffes ships. The campaign ended with ten million dollars' worth of produce destroyed. Fyffes manager Ernst Otto Stalinski alleged that Chiquita used a falsified arrest warrant in a kidnapping attempt, and he filed suit several times.

  In 1993, European tariffs on Latin American bananas hit the company. In 1995, it sold the John Morrell meat business that had come with AMK Corporation. In 1998, the world's largest banana processing facility opened in Costa Rica. In 2001, the European Union dismantled its banana import policy that had favored European companies, which ended the ongoing banana disputes.

  In November 2001, Chiquita filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to restructure. It emerged on the 19th of March 2002, which ended Carl Lindner Jr.'s control. In 2003, it acquired the German produce distributor Atlanta AG and sold its processed foods division to Seneca Foods. In 2005, it bought the Fresh Express salad business from Performance Food Group. Fresh Express would grow into a brand with about $1 billion in annual sales and a 40% share of the American market.

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• 5. Secrets Revealed

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  On the 3rd of May 1998, The Cincinnati Enquirer published an eighteen-page section titled "Chiquita Secrets Revealed." The investigative reporters Michael Gallagher and Cameron McWhirter wrote it. The section accused Chiquita of mistreating workers on its Central American plantations and of polluting the environment. It also alleged that cocaine was brought to Borneo on the company's ships, that foreign officials were bribed, and that foreign land ownership laws were evaded. The reporters added that the company forcibly prevented its workers from unionizing.

  Chiquita denied every allegation. It sued after it emerged that Gallagher had repeatedly hacked into the company's voicemail system. A special prosecutor was appointed, because the elected prosecutor at the time had ties to Carl Lindner Jr.

  Gallagher had claimed to hold over 2,000 voicemails from a Chiquita executive. In truth, he had gathered them by breaking into the voicemail system as often as 35 times a day. He kept doing so even after editors and lawyers explicitly told him to stop. According to McWhirter, Gallagher also refused to give straight answers about his source to editors and outside lawyers. That evasiveness aroused the suspicions of McWhirter and other reporters.

  Six weeks after the stories ran, the paper's parent company, Gannett, reached a settlement with Chiquita that averted a lawsuit. On the 28th of June 1998, the Enquirer retracted the entire series and printed a front-page apology. It said it had "become convinced that the published accusations and conclusions are untrue and created a false and misleading impression of Chiquita's business practices". The paper also agreed to a multi-million-dollar payment. The exact figure was not disclosed, but Chiquita's annual report mentions "a cash settlement in excess of $10 million". Gallagher was fired and prosecuted. The editor, Lawrence K. Beaupre, was transferred to Gannett's headquarters amid allegations that he ignored the paper's usual fact-checking procedures.

  The retraction did not end the argument over the reporting itself. Salon.com later examined the series and said it "presents a damning, carefully documented array of charges, most of them 'untainted' by those purloined executive voice mails."

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• 6. Headquarters and Bids

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  On the 29th of November 2011, the North Carolina Economic Investment Committee approved $22 million in incentives for Chiquita to move its headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. The company announced the move the same day, naming the NASCAR Plaza tower as its new home. Research and development also moved to the Charlotte area. Chiquita cited the city's growing airport as one reason. Its 2012 annual report said it aimed to "transform itself into a high-volume, low-cost operator" and to "minimize investments outside of its core product offerings".

  In March 2014, the boards of Chiquita and Fyffes announced that they had unanimously approved a merger agreement. The stock-for-stock deal would have given former Chiquita shareholders about 50.7% of a new company called ChiquitaFyffes, and Fyffes shareholders 49.3%. The all-stock purchase was valued at US$526 million. It would have created the largest banana company in the world, with projected annual revenues of US$4.6 billion. The new firm would have been domiciled in Ireland but listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

  Chiquita chief executive Ed Lonergan would have served as chairman, and Fyffes executive chairman David McCann would have become chief executive. Lonergan called the deal a "milestone transaction". The arrangement was a corporate inversion, because the American takeover company would relocate its domicile to that of the Irish company it bought.

  In August 2014, Cutrale of Brazil and the Safra Group made a $611 million takeover offer. Chiquita rejected it outright and refused to meet the bidders. It said it was pressing on with the Fyffes merger. Soon afterward, however, Chiquita shareholders rejected the Fyffes deal, and the Cutrale-Safra offer of $14.50 per share was accepted.

  That sale raised a question in North Carolina. John Lassiter, a former Charlotte City Council member who heads the state's economic development board, said new owners would inherit Chiquita's duties under the 2011 agreement. That agreement had brought more than $23 million in incentives from Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, in return for moving the headquarters and hundreds of high-paying jobs from Cincinnati. A clawback provision required repayment if the company moved again within 10 years. Lassiter said: "It's not a question of opinion. It's 'What does the agreement say?'"

  As of 2018, Chiquita operated in 70 countries and employed approximately 20,000 people. By 2019, its main offices had left the United States and relocated to Switzerland.

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• 7. Payments in Colombia

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  In the 1990s and early 2000s, Colombia's unstable political situation led several corporations to pay paramilitary organizations. Chiquita, the Dole Food Company, Fresh Del Monte Produce and Hyundai Motor Corporation were among them. The most notable recipient was the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC.

  Chiquita paid the AUC $1.7 million over a ten-year period. The company's official account says the AUC was extorting it to guarantee security. That claim is disputed, because Chiquita also let the AUC use its loading facilities to move AK-47 rifles. Chiquita's American counsel had warned against the extortion defense where the company benefited from the payments. The company's lawyer reportedly told it to stop. The dealings continued even after the United States designated the AUC a terrorist organization. Chiquita eventually disclosed its involvement to the Department of Justice voluntarily. Even so, it sent over $300,000 more after the department told it to halt all payments.

  On the 14th of March 2007, Chiquita was fined $25 million in a settlement with the Justice Department. According to court documents, officers of a Chiquita subsidiary paid about $1.7 million to the AUC between 1997 and 2004. The payments bought protection for local employees in the volatile banana harvesting zone. Similar payments went to the left-wing groups FARC and ELN from 1989 to 1997. All three groups appear on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Chiquita also sued to stop the American government from releasing files about the payments.

  On the 7th of December 2007, the 29th Specialized District Attorney's Office in Medellín subpoenaed Chiquita's board. It sought answers about charges of conspiracy to commit an aggravated crime and financing illegal armed groups. Nine named board members allegedly knew of the operations personally. One executive wrote a note calling the payments the "cost of doing business in Colombia". The note also stressed the "need to keep this very confidential - people can get killed."

  In 2013 and 2014, Chiquita spent $780,000 lobbying against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. It hired lobbyists from the law firm Covington and Burling. On the 24th of July 2014, a United States appeals court threw out a lawsuit brought by 4,000 Colombians. They alleged that the company aided a paramilitary group responsible for the deaths of their family members. The court ruled 2-1 that American federal courts had no jurisdiction over Colombian claims.

  In 2016, Judge Kenneth Marra of the Southern District of Florida allowed Colombians to sue former Chiquita executives. He wrote that "profits took priority over basic human welfare" in the decision to finance the death squads. In February 2018, Chiquita and the families of the victims reached an agreement. That year, Colombia's Office of the Attorney General charged 13 Chiquita executives and administrators. Investigators had traced payments from a local affiliate to the AUC, and some of that money bought machine guns. Documents released by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research organization, helped reveal who was behind the payments.

  In June 2024, a federal jury in the Southern District of Florida found Chiquita liable for the killing of eight Colombians by the AUC. It ordered the company to pay $38.3 million to the victims' relatives. Judge Marra presided over the case. On the 23rd of July 2025, the 6th Criminal Court of the Specialized Circuit of Antioquia sentenced 7 former Chiquita executives to 135 months in prison. It also imposed a fine of COP$13.876 billion for financing paramilitaries in the Urabá region.

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• 8. Fields Under Scrutiny

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  In 1994, the Rainforest Alliance's Better Banana Project certified some Chiquita farms as environmentally friendly. Pressure grew in 1998, when a coalition of activist groups led by the European Banana Action Network, known as EUROBAN, targeted the banana industry in general and Chiquita in particular. Their aim was a new climate of corporate social responsibility. They urged small farming in place of large-scale monoculture, and pushed for subsidies and government relief to level the field for small producers. The fair trade movement, which encouraged shoppers to buy from smallholders, joined the effort.

  According to J. Gary Taylor and Patricia Scharlin, Chiquita answered with changes in management and in how it competed worldwide. It partnered with the Rainforest Alliance and reformed how it plants and protects its bananas. The reforms centered on pesticide use but also touched corporate culture. In 2000, Chiquita adopted a new code of conduct that included the SA8000 labor standard of Social Accountability International. That year, 100% of its farms won Rainforest Alliance certification. In 2001, Wal-Mart named it "Environmental Supplier of the Year".

  In 2002, Chiquita joined the Ethical Trading Initiative and was named a top "green stock" by The Progressive Investor. In 2004, 100% of its farms were certified compliant with SA8000, and a Honduran charity gave it the "Corporate Citizen of the Americas Award".

  In May 2007, the French organization Peuples Solidaires publicly accused Compañia Bananera Atlántica Limitada, a Chiquita subsidiary known as COBAL, of knowingly violating its workers' basic rights. The charge said laborers at the Coyol plantation in Costa Rica were exposed to highly toxic pesticides on several occasions. It also said COBAL used a private militia to intimidate workers and that Chiquita ignored some union complaints for more than a year.

  In April 2019, the Swiss magazine Beobachter publicized severe labor problems on banana plantations in Ecuador, some of which supply Chiquita. Workers faced 12-hour days, poverty wages and employment without contracts. The Danish research centre Danwatch also reported on pesticide use on Ecuadorian plantations that supply Chiquita. It found aerial spraying without warnings to workers and pesticide handling without proper protection. One chemical sprayed was Paraquat, which is forbidden in Switzerland and the European Union. Chiquita would neither confirm nor deny the allegations, and it reportedly began an internal investigation whose results have not been made public.

  In May 2025, banana workers in Panama went on strike over several issues, including changes to pensions. In June 2025, Chiquita fired all of its employees in the country.

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