What lies beneath

The first demand was for $10,000.

It was delivered in the late 1980s to the manager of a Colombian banana farm at Chiquita Brands International Inc. It came from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Marxist rebels who implied Chiquita employees would be kidnapped if the money wasn’t paid.

“Everyone understood this was clearly extortion money,” said Robert Kistinger, then in charge of Latin American operations for Chiquita. “We had an ongoing situation where people were being killed.”
 
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