- EFE News Service - The National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, or Fedecafe, said it plans to sue U.S. cartoonist Mike Peters for denigrating the
- EFE News Service -
The National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, or Fedecafe, said it plans to sue U.S. cartoonist Mike Peters for denigrating the Andean nation\'s coffee industry in a recent installment of his "Mother Goose & Grimm" comic strip.The National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, or Fedecafe, said it plans to sue U.S. cartoonist Mike Peters for denigrating the Andean nation's coffee industry in a recent installment of his "Mother Goose & Grimm" comic strip. The suit will be filed by Fedecafe's legal advisor in the United States, New York law firm
Holland & Knight, which estimates that some $20 million in damages will be sought. Gabriel Silva, the general manager of Fedecafe, an umbrella organization for Colombian coffee growers, said in Bogota Tuesday that the suit - to be accompanied by diplomatic actions - will be filed "for damages and harm, detriment to intellectual property and defamation." He said that also targeted in the suit is the "commercial operation responsible for the distribution and publication of that piece." "We want the coffee growers to be adequately and sufficiently compensated for the damage caused," Silva said in a statement he read to reporters in Bogota. Peters' comic strips are published in "more than 600 newspapers in the United States," which lends special significance to the offensive and insulting content of his cartoon, since it is likely it was read by millions of consumers of Colombian coffee," the Fedecafe general manager added. In the installment of "Mother Goose & Grimm" in question, published on Jan. 2, Peters associates Colombian coffee and its icon, Juan Valdez, with organized crime in the Andean country. In the cartoon, one character says: "Y'know, there's a big crime syndicate in Colombia. So when they say there's a little bit of Juan Valdez in every can, maybe they're not kidding." The cartoonist "insults national dignity and Colombian coffee's reputation," Silva said, adding that "in that piece organized crime and the atrocities of violent groups are associated with the hard, dedicated and honest work of the country's more than 500,000 coffee-growing families." "Likewise, the icon and symbol of Colombian coffee growing, Juan Valdez, is affected when a connection is suggested between the coffee cans and the victims of violence in Colombia," Silva said. The cartoon is a piece of black humor that "is frankly denigrating and disrespectful in nature" and that "causes direct economic harm to the activity, diminishes the value of their intellectual property assets and objectively harms the reputation of our country's coffee," Silva said. "We denounce (the cartoon) in the firmest and most categorical manner," said Silva, who added that "it is a cruel joke on a country that has suffered so much from drug trafficking and violence, fueled by the appetite for drugs in the United States and the developed countries." Colombia, one of the most violent countries in the world, has been racked by decades of armed conflict involving army soldiers, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries. Tens of thousands have been killed and millions have been forced from their homes.