by Tula Connell, Sep 26, 2007

Another horrific reminder that in many places in the world supporting a union can cost you your life.

On Sept. 23, as Marco Tulio Portela Ramirez prepared to go to work at a banana plantation in Izabal, Guatemala, he was gunned down at his house by armed masked men. Ramirez was the secretary of culture and sport at SITRABI, the union for banana workers in Izabal. His brother, Noé Ramirez, is the general secretary. He leaves behind a wife and young children.

According to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center:

The assassination of Ramirez came just three days after SITRABI learned that military officers had been disciplined by the Ministry of Defense in response to SITRABI complaints about the unlawful entry.

Ramirez’s murder is the most recent in a series of threats and attacks against SITRABI and its leaders. According to STITCH, a nationwide group of women organizing for social justice:

The union firmly believes this killing is directly related to the work they have been doing to end the intimidation and harassment of their union. Most recently, the union intervened with the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Defense in Guatemala in response to military personnel who forcibly visited their office.

(Take action to protest Ramirez’s murder at the STITCH website or at the IUF site here. The IUF is the global federation of Food, Farm and Hotel Workers. STITCH notes the Guatemalan Embassy website is down, and e-mails should be sent to: ambassador@guatemala-embassy.org.)

SITRABI is the oldest union in Guatemala and the largest private-sector union in Guatemala. According to STITCH, violence against trade unionists in Guatemala has increased significantly since the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in July 2005. Four trade unionists have been murdered so far this year, including the January killing of Pedro Zamora, head of an important port worker’s union. The government has yet to charge anyone in Zamora’s murder.

• In 1999, in a case that brought international attention to violence against unionists in Guatemala, seven members of SITRABI were violently attacked and forced to flee to the United States.  Their case became the key test on impunity for worker rights advocates and the U.S. government who put Guatemala’s trade benefits on probation until Guatemalan courts convicted the criminals.
• In November 2006, union officer Cesar Guerra was shot at while driving in a union vehicle, and others were threatened to cease and desist their activities or pay the price.

SITRABI has been working with local and international forces to pressure the Public Ministry and Ministry of Defense in Guatemala to investigate these crimes.  Now they need our help and international solidarity to let the government know this type of harassment and murder of unionists will not stand!

Solidarity Center Executive Director Ellie Larson says the

systematic attacks on SITRABI constitute backsliding on worker rights enforcement in Guatemala. No worker should lose his life for exercising a fundamental right to participate in a union. Together we must break down the wall of impunity and rebuild respect for worker and human rights.

Following the U.S.-led coup of the democratically elected president in Guatemala in 1954, the military plunged the nation into 30 years of murderous rampage against union leaders and others.

By the 1970s, Deborah Levenson-Estrada, author of the book Trade Unionists Against Terror, says the horror had reached the point where the new military president declared if it was necessary to turn the entire country into a “cemetery in order to pacify it,” he would not hesitate to do so.

Some trade unionists fought on, but by then, the banners they carried in the rare demonstration had only one demand: “For the Right to Live.”

Backsliding on human rights in Guatemala has horrific implications.

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