CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Colombian unionists are target of terror campaign

April 2002

When they found Aury Sara Marrugo's body it had 70 stab wounds, underarms seared with a torch, gums mutilated,abdomen scarred with acid, and finally, a bullet in the face. Victor Orcasita's corpse was found without fingernails.

Marrugo and Orcasita are just two of thousands of trade unionists who have been killed in Colombia, South America by paramilitary forces aligned with the government and the wealthy elite intent on reinforcing the existing economic order. Marrugo was the president of the oil workers' union. Orcasita was vice president of the coal miners' union. He and union president Valmore Locarno were negotiators at Drummond's La Loma Mine. They asked the company to stay at the mine overnight for security reasons. Drummond refused. The company bus they left the mine on was stopped by paramilitaries; Locarno was killed on the bus, Orcasita was not as lucky.

More trade unionists are killed every year in Colombia than in all other countries combined. Some 3,800 have been assassinated since 1986. In 2001 alone, the Colombian labor federation CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores) recorded 169 assassinations of unionists, 30 attempted assassinations, 79 kidnapped and "disappeared" and over 400 death threats. A retired Oakland plumber, Fred Hirsch, who went with a labor delegation to Colombia this January to hear first-hand about the human rights abuses, explained what "disappeared" means in one region controlled by paramilitaries: "a person is taken to the Arenal area, a sparsely populated sector. The victim is stripped of all papers, tortured for names of fellow workers, killed, then cut up with chain saws. Tossed in the river, the chunks of human flesh disappear."

And if all this is not enough to turn your stomach, consider that your tax dollars are helping pay for it: $1.3 billion dollars in U.S. aid, called "Plan Colombia," has been sent to the Colombian government, allegedly in the name of the "war on drugs." In reality, it is a war on the working and poor people of the country. There is ample evidence that the military and paramilitary forces collaborate to terrorize the population. This campaign or terror, in turn, is an effort to enforce the ruling elite's globalization program: International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands for "structural adjustment that include privatization of public services, gutting labor laws and reducing wages and benefits. The unions are the country's major force fighting these austerity measures, and that had made them the targets of deadly violence. Most recently, "President" Bush has asked for another $98 million in aid to protect an oil company pipeline and has proposed lifting some of the human rights conditions on how "counter-insurgency" money can be spent.

Colombian unionists universally assess U.S. aid as aid in a one-sided brutal class war. "Most U.S. aid goes to the military, the rest into corrupt hands" one man told Hirsch. "We have 30% unemployment, 26 million people are in misery [in a country of 40 million], most of the rest are just poor, and 10 families rule the country. Plan Colombia strengthens the institutions that cause these conditions." Colombian mine union officials call Plan Colombia "a military part of making the Free Trade Areas of the Americas [FTAA] a reality." (The proposed FTAA has been called "NAFTA on steroids," a hemispheric recipe for job loss, cuts in services and wages and more; for more information, click here.)

Unionists in the U.S. are increasingly mobilizing to help their brothers and sisters in Colombia. There are two crucial demands we in the U.S. can make. The first is to stop our government's funding of the murderous repression in Colombia. The second is to hold multinational corporations accountable for the intimidation and killing of their workers at the hands of the paramilitaries. Companies like Drummond know full well that when they refuse to protect union activists they are signing their death sentences.

Coca Cola has become a major target in the effort to get multinational companies to intervene and protect workers. There have been a half dozen murders at one Coke bottling plant alone. The U.S. Steelworkers have filed a lawsuit one behalf of the Colombian union at Coke. A series of demonstrations against Coke is being planned as well; one outside Coke's April 17 shareholders' meeting in New York City (11:30am, acrosss from Penn Station, 7th Ave., and 33rd St.), and a bigger one July 22 in Atlanta, Coke's corporate headquarters. Educational events are demonstrations calling for an end to U.S. military aid are also planned for Washington, D.C. April 19-22. You can come hear first-hnad from Colombian union leaders at a breakfast forum Thursday, April 18, 8:30am to 10:30am, Cornell-ILR School Conference Center, 16 East 34th Street, 6th floor, Manhattan (between Madison and 5th Avenues).

Meanwhile, CWA District 1 (Local 1180's district) is putting together a solidarity program that would build ties between CWA members here and union members in Colombia. The purpose is to support the Colombian unionists with real, concrete solidarity. Watch for more details on the 1180 webwite and in the Communique.

More more information, visit www.colombiamobilization.org or www.cokewatch.org.

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