----- Original Message ----- From: Pakito Arriaran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 4:19 PM Subject: [MLL] Colombia: Economic Crisis Fuels Resistance ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- Colombia ECONOMIC CRISIS FUELS RESISTANCE By Andy McInerney The government of Colombian President Andres Pastrana unveiled its new economic package on July 28. The proposed budget is a virtual declaration of war against the working class. Colombia's powerful labor-union movement is fighting back. The country's three biggest union federations have scheduled a 24-hour national strike for Aug. 3. For Pastrana's economic team, cutbacks are key. Spending on state services is to be cut by as much as 20 percent. Thousands of workers are expected to be laid off as whole public-sector entities are shut down. Those who manage to keep their jobs will take pay cuts. One segment of the budget is not being cut. The single biggest item in the proposed budget is for payments servicing Colombia's $34 billion foreign debt. That spending alone accounts for $9 billion of the $24 billion budget. In other words, nearly 40 percent of Colombia's national budget is destined for the coffers of international banks-- the vast majority in the United States. That's more than three times what the government plans to invest in the country's economy. This austerity budget combines with plans for increased privatizations and for reorganizing labor laws to undercut workers' rights. These factors--with Pastrana's support for the Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion plan centered on a huge military buildup--are what provoked calls for a national strike. Julio Roberto G�mez, general secretary of the General Confederation of Democratic Workers (CGTD) told the Colombian Communist Party weekly newspaper Voz that the strike is a response to "the miserable neoliberal policies carried out by President Pastrana that result in increasing impoverishment of the Colombian population." G�mez is also a leader of the National Union Headquarters that is organizing the strike. The Headquarters includes the CGTD, the United Workers Federation (CUT) and the Colombian Workers Federation (CTC). "Escalating privatizations are continuing," G�mez explained. "The phenomenon of paying wages late is growing, not only in the state and hospital sectors, but also in the private sector like the textile workers." "The Aug. 3 strike is just the beginning of several strikes," representatives of the CUT told Voz. GENERAL ECONOMIC CRISIS In 1999, the three union federations staged two major strikes, including a general strike in October that involved millions of workers. This year's strike is set to occur amid a prolonged economic crisis. Recent figures released by the Colombian government show the official unemployment rate at over 20 percent and growing. One-third of industrial jobs are part-time positions. In 1999, overall production measured by the gross domestic product dropped by 4.3 percent. While some Colombian economists are pointing to an upturn, such signs of hope have not translated into better conditions for workers. "In 1999, factories were operating at half capacity," Vice Minister of Development Juan Alfredo Pinto told the Bogot� daily newspaper El Espectador. "Now they are operating at higher levels, but without employing more workers." The skyrocketing unemployment comes on top of a dramatic impoverishment of the Colombian population. Twenty-five million of the country's 40 million people live in poverty, defined as lacking enough resources to provide for basic daily needs. Urban professionals and other middle-class layers have been hard hit by the plummeting value of the Colombian peso. In 1996, the exchange rate was 1,040 pesos to the dollar; now it is over 2,100 to the dollar. That sets imported goods effectively out of reach for all but the wealthiest. In the countryside, 1.5 percent of landowners own 80 percent of arable land, according to a report by Colombian human- rights activist Luis Alberto Matta. This gross polarization is exacerbated by paramilitary death squads that have forced millions of Colombian peasants off their land and into the cities--only to have their land swallowed up by the big landowners and drug barons. Colombia is an oil-producing country. Yet its resources are siphoned off by U.S. and other international oil conglomerates like Occidental and BP. During the last week of July, gas at the pump in Colombia cost nearly $2 per gallon--more than in the United States. Those prices have caused a 51-percent drop in gasoline consumption. THE REVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGE Economic crisis is sweeping much of Latin America. Oil-producing Venezuela is in a recession. Brazil, Latin America's economic powerhouse, faced a painful financial crisis in 1998. But what sets Colombia apart is the presence of a powerful revolutionary alternative to the U.S.-backed Pastrana government. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia- People's Army (FARC-EP) has waged a 36-year struggle for what they call a New Colombia. They now effectively control more than 40 percent of the countryside. As part of talks with the government, the FARC-EP has organized a series of public audiences, where wide sectors of the population can come to the site of the talks and make proposals or participate in dialogues on the problems facing the country. In July, for example, close to 1,500 students attended an audience on "youth and employment." So at the same time that the unions are waging a national strike calling on the government to renegotiate the foreign debt, the FARC-EP is making a moratorium on debt payments a central item of discussion at the talks. Direct links between the FARC-EP and the mass movement are extremely difficult because the government relies on paramilitary death-squad terror. Union leaders are routinely assassinated for leading strikes on the grounds that they were "aiding" the FARC-EP. The revolutionary insurgencies and the mass struggles are proceeding in parallel, representing twin challenges for Colombia's U.S-backed ruling class. But the economic crisis is bringing those struggles much closer together. Of course, this weak link in the globalized web of imperialist exploitation has not gone unnoticed in Washington. The Clinton administration finalized a $1.3 billion military-aid package to Colombia, already the third- largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world. This is part of a larger "Plan Colombia," a program for $7.5 billion in donations from the biggest capitalist countries to shore up Colombia's government militarily and economically. Human-rights groups in Colombia have condemned the Plan Colombia as an escalation of the war. Labor unions have included opposition to the Plan Colombia as part of the Aug. 3 national strike. This adds an important political dimension to the strike. "The only way that the three union federations would suspend the strike on Aug. 3 would be if the government radically altered its economic policies," CUT leader H�ctor Fajardo told El Espectador on Aug. 1. "It would have to suspend its agreements with the IMF, the application of Plan Colombia, and not present the reforms of pensions and labor law." That puts Colombia's working class on a collision course with Wall Street and the Pentagon. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
