U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State.[3] The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe.[4]
General Carlos Cortés Vargas, who commanded the troops during the massacre, took responsibility for 47 casualties. In reality, the exact number of casualties has never been confirmed. Herrera Soto, co-author of a comprehensive and detailed study of the 1928 strike, has put together various estimates given by contemporaries and historians, ranging from 47 to as high as 2,000. According to Congressman Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the killed strikers were thrown into the sea.[1] Other sources claim that the bodies were buried in mass graves.[2]
Two thousand was the extreme high estimate for the dead by the Colombian government but do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment's threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?