A surprise move from long time Russian-backed Armenia, due to Russia's lack of recent support for its struggle against Turkey-backed Azerbaijan over ethnic cleansing of ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In this case, I can believe that Chiquita didn't set out to finance the AUC, but was unfortunate in that their banana plantations fell into AUC-controlled territory, and therefore were extorted for protection money.
It's like if I owned an Italian restaurant, the mafia comes in and extorts me for protection money, then the feds come and arrest me for financing the mafia. What was I supposed to do?
edit: I didn't know about Chiquita. Thanks for the replies and info!
There's no indication that this group attempting to bribe her are violent, and there was no explicit or implied violent "or else" threat, at least none mentioned in the AP and Star Tribune articles.
Not yet. More like the continued flow of refugees from the climate-related collapse of agriculture in Central America, and the resulting criminal gang takeover of the countryside there.
The US is partly responsible for advancing Central American gang culture, by inducting disorganized immigrant gangs into organized violent gang culture by putting them alongside US domestic gangs in prison, then deporting them.
The other major part is the flow of money from Mexican drug cartels to ensure drug transportation corridors, which of course, is largely funded by sheer size of the US drug market.
The author of this article, if you click on her name, for example:
Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter focused on misinformation for Guardian US. She is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Here's her LinkedIn, saying she has 10 years of reporting experience after going to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications in Arizona for 4 years. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-leingang-6a044b2a
Requires installation of weird undefined "CutoutPro" shit.
That's a nope from me, dawg.