Banana Land

By Bob Perillo

In Colombia, Dole does business with people associated with paramilitary activity, drug trafficking and money laundering.

According to Dole’s own website, it does business with “the Daabon Group of the Dávila family,” one of the most powerful families in Magdalena.[1] “Daabon” stands for Dávila Abondano. The Dávila Abondano family has been in the news lately in Colombia, as part of a mushrooming scandal surrounding the Colombian government’s channeling of huge agricultural subsidies to supporters of President Alvaro Uribe’s second re-election. The Daabon Group produces bananas and African palm oil.

The stated purpose of the Colombian government’s agricultural subsidy program, “Agro Ingreso Seguro” (“Secure Agricultural Income”) is to “promote productivity and competitiveness, reduce rural inequality and to prepare the farming sector to confront the challenge of economic globalization.”[2] Nevertheless, the bulk of the program’s subsidies have gone to a handful of powerful families in Magdalena province close to Uribe. These include the Dávila Abondano family, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government handouts.[3] Another wing of the Dávila clan, the Dávila Jimeno family, also received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of subsidies.[4] All told, the Dávilas received over $1 million for irrigation and drainage projects from Colombian taxpayers, despite the fact that this family is among the richest on the Caribbean coast, where Dole produces its Colombian bananas.

A member of this family, Raúl Dávila Jimeno, has long been known by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as a drug trafficker:

“In 1979, a joint DEA/FBI task force in Miami immobilized the Black Tuna Gang, a major marijuana smuggling ring responsible for bringing 500 tons of marijuana into the United States over a 16-month period. The Black Tuna gang derived its name from the radio code name for a mysterious Colombian sugar grower and drug dealer, Raul Davila-Jimeno, who was the major supplier of the organization. Many of the gang members wore solid-gold medallions bearing a black tuna emblem. The medallions served as a talisman and symbol of their membership in this smuggling group. With the assistance of this small private army, Davila, who called himself a sugar, coffee, and petroleum exporter, virtually ruled Santa Marta [Magdalena], Colombia, where the majority of Colombian marijuana was grown. It was a highly organized ring, with gang members maintaining security and eavesdropping on radio frequencies used by police and U.S. Customs officials.”[5]

A person named Juan Manuel Dávila Jimeno, presumably a close relative, is listed as the legal representative of a banana plantation in Magdalena, “Lucía,” that we believe has produced bananas for Dole.[6]

On December 1, 2008, José Domingo Dávila Armenta, ex-Governor of Magdalena, was arrested and charged with his role in the “Chivolo Pact,” an illegal agreement signed by over 400 political leaders of Magdalena with the AUC Northern Block paramilitaries, in September 2000, which allowed Dávila Armenta to become Governor of Magdalena in 2001.[7] The ex-Governor’s brother, Eduardo Enrique Dávila Armenta, was arrested on April 16, 1994 after the authorities found approximately two tons of marijuana on one of his properties in Santa Marta. As a result, in 1996 he was sentenced to 10 years in jail; he was given an early release in 2001.[8] But the Prosecutor’s office issued a warrant for Eduardo Enrique Dávila Armenta in February 2009, for his involvement with Northern Block paramilitaries.[9] Dávila Armenta turned himself in on March 9, 2009.[10] After his arrest, Eduardo Enrique Dávila Armenta was also charged with homicide on April 1, 2009 in the murder of socialite Carmen Josefa Vergara Díazgranados, who was murdered on January 18, 2007.[11]

Eduardo Enrique Dávila Armenta appealed his drug-trafficking conviction to the Colombian Supreme Court, but the court refused to overturn his conviction in 2001.[12] In his appeal, one of Dávila Armenta’s arguments was that the property where the marijuana was found, Villa Concha, did not belong to him personally, but was held by a corporation, of which Rose Marie Dávila Armenta (presumably the sister of Eduardo Enrique and ex-Governor José Domingo) was the manager.[13] Rose Marie Dávila Armenta appears in public documents as the legal representative of two banana plantations in Magdalena, “Lola” and “Mangos,” that, we believe, have produced bananas for Dole.[14]

In 2004, a judge ruled that 6 Billion Pesos (approximately $2.4 Million) worth of Eduardo Enrique Dávila Armenta’s assets, as well as his 25% stake in the Unión Magdalena soccer team, should be seized under drug-trafficking-related asset-forfeiture laws.[15] But Dávila Armenta apparently had a protector high up in the Colombian government, in the person of Jorge Noguera, then the Director of the DAS, Colombia’s principal intelligence agency. Noguera resigned in 2005 and was later prosecuted for his role in “DAS-Gate,” the scandal involving the DAS’s links to the AUC paramilitaries.[16] Among other crimes, Noguera obstructed government efforts to seize Dávila Armenta’s drug-related assets, as reported in Semana.com:

“According to the Procurator’s Office, Noguera anomalously removed highly qualified investigators from the DAS’s financial investigations unit, when he found out that they had discovered that relatives [of Noguera] were being investigated for drug-money laundering. Part of the investigation involved moving forward with a process to seize 600 assets held in the name of the Dávila Armenta family, among which four appeared in the name of Maruja Cotes de Noguera, Noguera’s mother. … ‘It’s remarkable that members of the Dávila Armenta family were sentenced for drug trafficking, … which is what gave rise to the asset seizure applied against them, all of which could not be unknown to Doctor Noguera, given his business relationship with that family.’”[17]

The Dávila family has long-documented ties to drug trafficking, and has been firmly linked to the Northern Block paramilitaries and the principal intelligence agency, DAS, itself tainted with paramilitary ties.