In 1928, workers went on strike in protest against poor pay and working conditions in the company plantations Ciénaga (Colombia). The company lobbied U.S. government forces to assist with repressing the outbreak; however, the Colombian government opted to quell the strike on its own, sending military forces into the town of Ciénaga, where the strikers had gathered, on 6 December. The repression resulted in the deaths of scores of plantation workers and their families. This episode is known in the history of Colombia as the Masacre de las Bananeras (Banana massacre). Gabriel García Márquez alludes to the event in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by describing a military suppression that resulted in the death of 3,000 plantation workers in the fictional town of Macondo. While García Márquez has stated that the deaths in his novel are potential overestimations, the actual number of deaths has never been confirmed. Estimates gathered from oral histories to primary sources vary widely, from 47 to upwards of 1,000 casualties.