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Exiled Colombian Union Supporter Says ‘Just Vote No’ on Free Trade Deal |
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Thanks to the United Steelworkers (USW) for alerting us to this blog by Gerardo Cajamarca, an exiled Colombian community leader and union supporter now living in Minnesota. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Colombia with a congressional delegation, called for passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Reportedly, one stop on the legislators’ tour was a polo club—where better to meet the ordinary Colombian? As Cajamarca demonstrates in this crosspost from the Huffington Post, the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will not help the workers in his native country.
When I heard that some Bush Administration dignitaries were planning to offer Congressmen junkets to Bogotá to win their votes for the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement, I began to daydream about the tours of my home country that I’d like to give lawmakers to explain why the pact is so wrong for both nations.
My expeditions must remain fantasies, though, because I can rarely return to Colombia safely now. I fled in 2004 when it was clear I would be murdered imminently by the paramilitaries, groups the U.S. government has officially designated as terrorists. The U.S. granted me sanctuary, and I live now in Minneapolis.
The version of Colombia that will be offered Congressmen by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab or U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez will be the sanitized tourist one. Gutierrez said recently, for example, that he likes to take lawmakers to the streets of Medellin, infamous as a drug capital, and show them how children may now safely walk to school. These administration-orchestrated trips for Congressmen are called CODELS, reminding me of the English word coddle. On those excursions, there would, of course, be fancy hotels, embassy parties and chauffeured limos.
I would offer less-pampered outings, the stuff of everyday life in Colombia. That is what I believe the Congressmen should experience.
It’s fine to see children walking to school, but I would also take the Congressmen to the park at the archeological site known as Cercado de los Zipas in Facatativa, which is the town from which I fled. At that site on Dec. 28, an acquaintance and fellow unionist, Sigifredo Higuera Ramirez, was shot in the head as he exercised. The union to which this 63-year-old man belonged, SINALTRAINAL, has said it was an assassination.
That, of course, sounds like an outrageous allegation in America where trade unionists are fired, not killed for their activities. But in Colombia last year, 38 trade unionists were murdered, and that is a shockingly low number. The year before it was 72, which was more than the number of trade unionists killed in every other country in the world combined. Since 1991, more than 2,200 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia, and that includes more than 400 since Alvaro Uribe became president five years ago.
I am sure that on the official CODEL trips, Mr. Gutierrez will take lawmakers on tours of the courts that are now supposedly putting the perpetrators of those murders behind bars with the $1.5 million that he brags about President Uribe devoting to prosecuting high-profile cases. Unfortunately, precious few cases are actually taken to trial, and even fewer convictions are won, so that the impunity rate for murder of trade unionists remains at 98 percent.
Instead of a fancy courtroom, I would take the Congressmen to the site of a crime that never was prosecuted, maybe my mother’s house in Facatativa. In 1999, when I was serving on the Facatativa city council and running for re-election, my opponent was a member of a paramilitary. He was losing and wanted me to drop out of the race. Members of his group went to my mother’s house, smashed the windows, broke down the door and held a gun to her head.
In Colombia, the paramilitaries—remember, these are terrorist organizations—have been used by multinational corporations to suppress unions. At least four multinationals—Drummond, Nestle, Chiquita Brands International and Coca-Cola—have been named in lawsuits claiming they paid paramilitaries to kill or intimidate union workers in Colombia. And one, Chiquita, admitted last year that it paid $1.7 million over six years to Colombia’s brutal right-wing militias, the AUC.
Although my mother was terrorized, I did not withdraw from the race. And I won. The paramilitary group targeted me because I am openly a union activist. I have been since the age of 19 when I helped organize the factory where I first worked, the firm KLEIN, in Bogota which manufactured industrial tanks. The paramilitaries began to attack me then. Over the years, I was kidnapped, tortured and beaten. That sort of thing will be ignored on the official CODEL trips to Colombia. Those will, no doubt, take American Congressmen to see the great historic fresco in the Elliptic chamber in the National Capitol Building in Bogotá. I would take the Congressmen to see each of the 85 seats in the Colombian Congress that belong to members who have ties to or who are being investigated for having ties to paramilitary groups. That is 35 percent of the legislature. Already, 44 have been stripped of their offices because of involvement with these terrorist groups.
Mr. Gutierrez will be sure to treat the Congressmen on his CODELS to the best restaurants in Bogota. I would like to show them one in Facatativa. I held a rally there during one of my re-election campaigns for city council. Three members of the paramilitary organization came in, and one punched me in the face. Another pulled a gun, but luckily, my supporters shoved them outside before gunfire erupted. Though we called the police and the military, the gunfire continued for two hours before it was broken up. And, remember, I was already a sitting councilman, and the police station was only two blocks away.
I was forced out of the country after a friend of mine, active in the professors union, was assassinated, and three other union activist friends were murdered. I was threatened and had to flee. I received help from the Colombian Support Network in Madison, Wis.
If I could show the Congressmen what is really going on in my country, I would ask them how they could vote for a Free Trade Agreement with a country that still allows 40 trade unionists to be killed in a year. It is fewer than it was in 2006, but is, nonetheless, an appalling number.
And I would ask them if the reason fewer are killed is that the multinationals and their paid assassins, the paramilitaries, have been so successful? The fact is that unions are smaller in Colombia now because of the years of terror tactics by the paramilitaries. So though there are fewer individuals murdered, each death is more meaningful as it represents a larger percentage of those left.
I would ask the American Congressmen, is it ethical for them to sign a treaty with a country whose legislature is infiltrated by partisans of the terrorist paramilitaries that, in turn, are supported by drug trafficking to the United States?
I would ask how they would even think about signing a free trade agreement with a government that has failed to control terrorist organizations—the leftist guerrillas and the paramilitaries. That is not my assessment but that of the U.S. government itself, which says these organizations have complete dominion over vast territories in Colombia, including plantations on which they grow coca, sent to the U.S. as cocaine.
I suppose, however, that as a tour guide, my role is to answer questions, not ask them. So my answer is no to the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Just vote no.
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Gerardo Cajamarca indeed presents a different side than that constantly put in the news by the Bush administration and Colombian officials. Cajamarca suffered at the hands of the right-wing, government linked paramilitary. Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe’s father was murdered by the left-wing FARC. Atrocities by both groups can be found and flaunted in the news as well as progress against their terrorism. But the question before us at this time is the FTA. Is Colombia in a position that it will benefit not just the corporations in America and the rich and elite of Colombia, but the workers in both countries? The answer to that question is NO. Despite a decrease in deaths of union members the country still leads the world. There has not been substantial improvement in arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators of the crimes. Ands the Colombian security forces are still being linked to some of the deaths. But more important is that all of this has left workers in many plants afraid to even mention organization and collective bargaining. It is those thousands if not millions of people the American congressional junketers failed to talk with.
Corruption is another problem that hurts the worker. The massive amount within the government and private sector has been documented in State Department reports. While China executes corrupt government officials, Colombia seems to reward them. None of the Whitehouse comments have even mentioned any reduction of or plans to reduce the corruption in the country.
The press likes to say how Secretary Rice and the congressmen visited a flower place that employs displaced people and show that as Colombia’s progress. There is no mention that the majority of the over 2 million displaced were displaced by the government linked paramilitary and that no one has received the return of their land as specified under the Justice and Peace Plan and some have been murdered asking for it? Not only that but the government passed a law stating that if the current occupant controlled the land for a certain amount of time then he gets to keep it. By taking their time in returning the land to the displaced then those who took it will get to keep it. Rather meaning if the government returned the land to the people then the people would not need the minimum wage $249 a month job at the flower place.
After presentation of the FTA to congress it must be voted on within 90 days. At this point in time whether it passes or fails, it will hurt workers in both countries. Other than satisfying Bush’s ego there is nothing to gain by voting on the FTA at this time. The Whitehouse can do both countries a favor by waiting until Colombia shows sustained results before presenting it to congress for a vote. But if it is sent to congress at this time the best course would be to vote NO. Workers in both countries have nothing to loose in waiting.
JParker’s comment on Gerardo Cajamarca’s poignant statement is right on the mark. I only want to add a note about unionization on the cut flower plantations that are supposed to demonstrate how an FTA with the USA would benefit Colombian workers. The cut flowers employers’ association in collaboration with the government has thrown every obstacle in the way of the young women workers creating independent labor unions on the plantations. The workers need unions in particular because their work is intrinsically dangerous to their health. The flowers that are exported to the USA are dosed with so many herbicides and pesticides that unsold flowers should be disposed of as toxic waste. USLEAP has an excellent program in conjunction with labor unions at national and international levels to help these workers organize. But even if successfully organized the flower sector cannot provide enough employment to balance the losses of employment in the rice growing and subsistence farming sectors that would be hurt by the free importation of agricultural products from the USA.
It is vital for the interests both of American and of Colombian workers that we do everything in our power to block the passage of the U.S.-Colombia FTA.