Don’t worry, the Colombian right wing has done its absolute best to victim blame the farmers, or to diminish the atrocity or to claim it was a necessary sacrifice.

Meanwhile the Colombian guerrillas did their absolute best to shit on the popular movements that fueled them initially by allying themselves with drug traffickers and committing atrocities themselves against rural civilian populations.

So basically the Colombian civilians of the 20th century were sandwiched between an overzealous fascist right wing and a violent and reckless left wing.

Nowadays both sides are politically mostly rhetorical and the left wing is far less violent while the right wing is more careful about their image after losing elections and Congress seats to the left.

This is exactly how the banana massacre in Colombia took place 100 years ago. Workers were being paid in United Fruit Company bonds, which caused revolts and protests, the US government threatened to invade to protect the company’s interests, so the Colombian government deployed the army to suppress the protests and murdered thousands of farmers.

This still shapes Colombian politics to this day, has appeared in A Hundred Years of Solitude, and has absolutely helped power the leftist movements in the country since. The parliament and president have constantly referenced this instance in recent years too as examples of American neocolonialism.

It’s a tale as old as time.