Eyewitness Colombia: unions develop strategy against death squads

Special to Workers World News Service
New York

July 29, 2004

Four participants in the June International Caravan to Save the Lives of Colombian Workers gave first-hand accounts of their trip at a Workers World meeting here on July 16. They spoke about the repression and resistance in Colombia, urging solidarity from the U.S anti-war movement and labor unions.

The International Caravan to Colombia was hosted by SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian Coca-Cola workers' union, which has been heroically challenging the Coca-Cola Corporation's collusion with Colombian paramilitaries. July 22 is the one-year anniversary of an international boycott of Coca-Cola products.

The delegates reported on their meetings with labor leaders, hospital workers, political prisoners, and groups representing women, Indigenous people, African-Colombians and youth. Throughout their trip, they said, they heard moving testimony by victims of government and paramilitary repression and were inspired by the tremendous level of resistance in the face of such danger.

"Plan Colombia is really the military arm of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), scheduled to start in 2005," said caravan participant Betsey Piette, from the Philadelphia branch of Workers World Party. "The U.S. used the 'War on Drugs' as a cover to train paramilitary forces to use against a growing resistance movement. Thousands of U.S. military advisors are spread out over 19 bases in Colombia, the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel. Libraries, healthcare centers, recreation centers and fire stations are being closed in Philadelphia and other U.S. cities for lack of funds, while the U.S. government has poured $3 billion into Colombia to repress the workers' movement."

A smaller delegation met with U.S. Ambassador William Wood at the well-fortified U.S. Embassy in Bogota. The group challenged Wood's advocacy of aerial spraying of highly toxic defoliants, used to drive Indigenous people off their land, particularly in oil-rich areas like Arauca, near Venezuela. Oil companies like Harken Energy, with Bush family connections, and Occidental Petroleum, with Gore connections, are reportedly using paramilitaries to repress oil company workers.

Jorge Zamora, a Colombian living in New York, told the meeting here, "Over 3.5 million peasants have been displaced to make way for development by the U.S. and other multinationals." Colombia is the seventh-largest supplier of oil to the U.S. and much of its oil reserves are untapped. In addition, Zamora explained, Colombia has one of the world's largest fresh water supplies, and is one of the richest areas in the world for biodiversity.

Dominican activist Taina Lara of the International Action Center had set up a meeting between caravan members and women political prisoners, including Indigenous political activist Luz Perly Cordoba.

Lara described conditions at the prison's maximum security wing, where 94 women crowded into a facility with only 36 beds take turns sleeping on cold, concrete floors. "Colombia's new repressive criminal codes allow for imprisonment for four months without charges," Lara explained, "but women have been held 10 months or more with no hearings. Often the same few 'witnesses' allege the charges against all the prisoners. Family members who visit the prison are subjected to systematic harassment, intimidation and outright threats. Some of this we experienced firsthand in our visit. We must do something for these women. These are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters!"

Gavrielle Gemma, organizer with the Monmouth County Committee in Solidarity with Immigrant Workers in New Jersey, concluded, "The level of resistance by the Colombian unions is truly inspiring. Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for unionists, yet they are carrying out heroic struggles against privatization, union busting and death-squad terror. What happens to the struggle against globalization in Colombia will have an impact on workers in the rest of the world, including the United States. That's why the resistance in Colombia is so important and why international solidarity is so essential."

In the discussion period, a SINALTRAINAL member living in exile in the U.S. urged solidarity between unionists, anti-war activists and Colombian activists in the U.S. in order to build a broader movement in solidarity with the Colombian resistance.

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