[2] After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the government of Miguel Abadía Méndez assigned Cortés Vargas as military chief in the Magdalena department and sent 700 men from the Colombian Army to quell the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47–2000 people (the range owing to the insufficiency of detailed historical records).

[4] Gabriel García Márquez depicted a fictional version of the massacre in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, as did Álvaro Cepeda Samudio in his La Casa Grande.

The strike turned into the largest labor movement ever witnessed in the country until then, as 25,000 workers, at the minimum, from the United Fruit Company participated.

There were no soldiers from Magdalena involved because General Cortés Vargas, the army-appointed military chief of the banana zone in charge of controlling the situation, did not believe they would be able to take effective actions, as they might be related to the plantation workers.

While this was happening, the troops set up their machine guns on the roofs of the low buildings at the corners of the main square, closed off the access streets,[7] and, after issuing a five-minute warning that people should leave,[1] opened fire into a dense Sunday crowd of workers and their families, including children.

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.

[2] Telegram from Bogotá Embassy to the U.S. Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, dated December 5, 1928, stated: I have been following Santa Marta fruit strike through United Fruit Company representative here; also through Minister of Foreign Affairs who on Saturday told me government would send additional troops and would arrest all strike leaders and transport them to a prison in Cartagena; that government would give adequate protection to American interests involved.

[3]Dispatch from Bogotá Embassy to the U.S. Secretary of State, dated December 11, 1928, stated: The opposition press, that is, the press of the Liberal Party, is conducting a violent campaign against the Government for the methods used in breaking up the strike, and is bandying ugly words about, especially referring to the Minister of War and the military forces, words such as murderer and assassin being used.

[3]Gabriel García Márquez depicted a fictional version of the massacre in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, as did Álvaro Cepeda Samudio in his La Casa Grande.

The event also inspired Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori's song "Ninetto e la colonia", released with his 1976 album Bufalo Bill.

Before the soldiers start shooting on the frightened and praying crowd, only Ninetto scemo, a silly little child, due to his innocence, is able to ask the relevant question, though in vain: "Who are those who sent you?"