From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:17:22 -0500 (CDT)
6. IN THESE TIMES -- July 23, 2001
U.S. aid fuels a dirty war against unions
By David Bacon
7. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Sunday, 22 July 2001
Colombian Leftists Free 12 Hostages
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* 6 *
IN THESE TIMES
July 23, 2001
U.S. aid fuels a dirty war against unions
-----------------------------------------
By David Bacon
In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Orcasita were riding
from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno and
Orcasita were president and vice president of the union at the mine, a
local of Sintramienergetica, one of Colombia's two coal miners' unions. As
the company bus neared Valledupar, 30 miles from the mine, it was stopped
by 15 gunmen, some in military uniforms.
They began checking the identification of the workers, and when they found
the two union leaders, they were pulled off the bus. Locarno was hit in
the head with a rifle butt. One of the gunmen then shot him in the face,
as his fellow workers on the bus watched in horror. Orcasita was taken off
into the woods at the side of the road. There he was tortured. When his
body was found later, his fingernails had been torn off.
Leading a union often means losing a job, even blacklisting. In many
countries, it can bring imprisonment by governments who view unions as a
threat to the social and economic elite. But the most dangerous country by
far is Colombia, where labor activism is often punished with death. By
mid-May, 44 Colombian trade union leaders already had been murdered this
year. Last year, assassinations cost the lives of 129 others. According to
Hector Fajardo, general secretary of the United Confederation of Workers
(CUT), the country's largest union federation, 3,800 trade unionists have
been assassinated since 1986. Out of every five trade unionists killed in
the world, three are Colombian.
U.S. energy, trade and military policies are contributing to the
devastation of the country's labor movement. Bush administration energy
policies encourage the use of coal in U.S. power plants, and millions of
tons are now mined for export by U.S. corporations in the midst of
Colombia's civil war. Free market economic reforms, pushed by the
International Monetary Fund, are provoking a wave of resistance by
Colombian labor, which is being met by violent repression. And U.S.
military aid provided by Plan Colombia supports activities by right-wing
paramilitary groups, who in turn target trade union leaders.
The Loma mine is owned by Drummond Co., a multi-national corporation based
in Birmingham, Alabama. Drummond opened the mine in 1994, and it is now
Colombia's second largest. At first, according to Ken Zinn of the
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers'
Unions (ICEM), Drummond promised its U.S. workers that it wouldn't import
Colombian coal to compete with its U.S. operations. But since 1994,
Drummond has closed five mines in Alabama, laying off 1,700 members of the
United Mine Workers. Its one remaining U.S. mine employs about 500 miners.
Alabama used to export coal -- 13 million tons in 1996, mostly from
Drummond mines. Last year's exports totaled only 3 million tons. But 5
million tons of Colombian coal crossed the Alabama State Docks in Mobile
last year. It was bound for plants operated by the Alabama Power Co., a
division of the Southern Co., which also operates generating facilities in
Florida and Mississippi. The plants were formerly fueled by Drummond's
U.S. mines. Another half million tons went to the Alabama Electrical
Cooperative.
At the Loma mine, production rose 4 million tons in 2000, to a total of
11.8 million, after the company built a huge drag line. The company
expects to sell 15 million tons next year, and 25 million tons by 2006.
For Drummond the transfer has resulted in substantial savings on labor
costs. A union miner in Alabama earns $ 18 an hour, or $ 3,060 a month,
plus benefits. At the Loma mine, wages range from about $ 500 to $ 1,000 a
month. Mineworkers Vice President Jerry Jones says Drummond transferred
operations to Colombia "knowing that country's hostile political climate
and egregious human rights violations."
Colombia is the world's fourth-largest coal exporter -- it shipped 30
million tons of coal in 2000, worth $ 794 million. Coal is the country's
third-largest source of export earnings. Last year the government's mines
in central Colombia were privatized as part of economic reforms mandated
by the IMF, and sold to a consortium of South African, Swiss and British
investors for $ 384 million. The formerly state-owned Cerrejon Norte mine,
the largest export mine in the world, is now operated as a joint venture
between the government and Exxon Mobil Corp. Conditions for Colombian
miners are some of the world's most dangerous. An April 27 blast at the
Cana Brava mine in Santander province killed 15 miners. In October 1997,
another explosion buried 16 coal miners alive in El Diviso mine, near
Cucuta.
Drummond clearly sees an interest in supporting a Bush administration
policy that encourages the increased use of coal in electrical generation.
And it sees U.S. military intervention in Colombia in its interest as
well. "We are in support of the Colombian Plan and the U.S. efforts in the
drug war," Mike Tracy, a Drummond spokesman, told journalist Stephen
Jackson, writing in the Latin American Post.
That support translated into a $ 50,000 donation by Drummond to the
Republican National Committee last July; $ 25,000 to the National
Republican Congressional Campaign; and $ 20,000 to the National Republican
Senate Campaign last October. Overall, the coal industry dumped $ 3.8
million into the 2000 elections, and gave 88 percent of it to Republicans.
In turn, the Bush campaign pursued a "cars and coal" strategy to win
mining states, among others, based on an industry-friendly perspective.
(And after the election, the administration dropped a campaign pledge that
it would back carbon-dioxide emissions reductions from coal-fired power
stations. That policy change has a big impact on the Alabama plants
burning Colombian coal.)
On November 3, Bush told a crowd in West Virginia, where he would beat Al
Gore four days later, that "coal is going to energize America." He didn't
promise, however, that it would be mined in the United States.
Colombia's rightist paramilitary army, the United Self-Defense Group
(AUC), was blamed for the murders of Locarno and Orcasita by the local
police commander. According to Ken Zinn of the ICEM, the AUC had issued a
number of death threats against the leaders of the union at the Loma mine,
accusing them of being in league with the country's main guerrilla group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). "In the conflict a lot
of assumptions are made quickly," explains Rafael Albuquerque, who
represents the International Labor Organization in Colombia. "One of those
assumptions is that many union leaders support the guerrillas."
The region has been the scene of intense conflict between the FARC and the
AUC. The guerrillas allegedly levy a 10 percent tax on coal moving by rail
out of the mine, which Drummond has refused to pay, and the 215-mile rail
line to Puerto Drummond on the coast was bombed five times in the last
year. In response, company President Gary Drummond visited Colombian
President Andres Pastrana last year to demand increased protection.
Locarno and Orcasita themselves had repeatedly pleaded with the company
for protection. In a meeting just a week before the assassinations, the
union demanded that Drummond provide security for its workers, and that
the company abide by a previous agreement allowing them to sleep overnight
at the mine. The company ignored the agreement and refused to allow the
men to stay. Protesting the deaths of their leaders, 1,200 miners at Loma
briefly stopped working.
The mining union leaders have not been the only targets of the AUC. On
March 22, just days after the murders in Valledupar, two leaders of the
Colombian electrical workers union, Andres Granados and Jaime Sanchez,
were gunned down. In mid-March, Eugenio Sanchez Diaz, a union activist in
the oil town of Barrancabermeja, was dragged from his home and shot in the
street. On the last day of March, Jaime Alberto Duque Castro, leader of
the El Cairo Cement Workers Union, was kidnapped by armed gunmen. Another
union leader, Ricardo Orozco, vice president of the Colombian Hospital
Workers Union, had his name on a list of 50 union leaders in Barranquilla,
which was circulated by the paramilitary death squads. He was shot by a
gunman in April, and his death was followed by two days of national labor
protest.
Robin Kirk, who monitors human rights abuses in Colombia for Human Rights
Watch, says that there are strong ties between the paramilitaries and the
Colombian military. "The Colombian military and intelligence apparatus has
been virulently anti-Communist since the '50s," she says, "and they look
at trade unionists as subversives -- as a very real and potential threat.
Generally they see groups on the left as linked to the ideology that led
to the formation of guerrilla groups."
Violence against trade unionists is part of a larger context of violence
against community leaders and human rights activists. According to the
Colombian Commission of Jurists, 6,000 Colombians were killed as the
result of social and political violence in 2000. The CCJ attributes 80
percent of the killings to the paramilitaries, 15 percent to the
guerrillas and 5 percent directly to the government. But Roberto Molino of
the CCJ says that "in the case of the paramilitaries, you cannot
underestimate the collaboration of government forces."
The Colombian government also views union activity as a threat because it
challenges its basic economic policies. The Pastrana administration is
under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to cut the public sector
budget, causing mass terminations, along with cuts in education, health
care and pensions. In January, finance minister Juan Manuel Santos
announced measures that would close many state agencies, laying off 42,000
workers. The money would be used to pay the country's debt to foreign
banks and lending institutions, making Colombia more attractive to foreign
investors. In March, the General Confederation of Democratic Workers
organized a 24-hour strike of 700,000 workers, including 300,000 teachers
and education employees, protesting the layoffs. On June 7, tens of
thousands of Colombian workers took to the streets in marches across the
country opposing the IMF.
The Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE) struck on May 15 for 48
hours over Santos' proposal to cut the education budget by $ 340 million.
FECODE President Gloria Ines Ramirez predicted that the cuts would deprive
500,000 Colombian children of an education, and 3 million people have
already signed petitions opposing them. Heath care workers also jointed
the strike. "We will not allow the government to make budget cuts for two
of the most important necessities for our poorest sector simply to pay
interest on the foreign debt," Ines declared.
Being a teachers union activist in Colombia is as dangerous as being a
coal mine leader. Since 1986, 418 educators have been murdered. In just
one week in early May, Dario de Jesus Silva, a 22-year veteran teacher in
Antioquia, and Juan Carlos Castro Zapata, another school worker in the
same province, were assassinated. Both were activists in the teachers'
union ADIDA. On May 14, Julio Alberto Otero, a university lecturer and
union activist, was also killed.
The IMF mandate for privatization has been just as bitterly resisted. The
union for workers at the government corporation EMCALI, which provides
garbage, water and electricity to Cali city residents, has fought the
company's sell-off. One of the union's activists, Carlos Eliecer Prado,
was killed in May. "Colombian trade unionists have been targeted by dark
forces moving inside the state," a union statement warned. "They seek to
silence through assassination, eviction or terror those who are against
privatization and those who defend human rights."
The wave of death and violence is made possible by growing U.S. aid to the
Colombian armed forces. Under Plan Colombia, the United States has
funneled more than $ 1 billion into the country, almost entirely in the
form of military assistance. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of
U.S. military aid in the world. The money funds a dirty war against all
critics of the Colombian social and economic order, including unionists.
This spring, the United Steelworkers sent a formal delegation to Colombia
in the wake of the murders of Locarno and Orcasita. The delegation met
with leaders of the CUT. After the delegation made its report,
Steelworkers President Leo Gerard warned the U.S. government, "We are
strongly opposed to the amount of military aid being sent to the Colombian
army when trade unionists and innocent people are being killed by the very
military forces we are financing."
The Steelworkers' criticism follows a position taken by the AFL-CIO last
year, which also called for ending military assistance. Labor's strong
reaction to the Colombian murders stands in contrast to its relative
silence during the Reagan administration-sponsored wars in Central America
in the '80s. During that era, Cold War anti-communism led AFL-CIO
President Lane Kirkland to try to suppress wide-spread criticism of U.S.
foreign policy in union ranks. Kirkland and other labor conservatives
accused most Colombian unions of being too left-wing. In turn, the
Colombians, like many Third World labor federations, accused the AFL-CIO
of supporting only anti-communist unions that defended U.S. foreign
policy.
Today, U.S. unions want relations with all sectors of Colombian labor, and
use a single standard in calling for the defense of unions under attack.
"Trade union rights are human rights, and our union will fight to protect
them everywhere," Gerard says. "We demand that the Colombian government
protect all trade unionists in their country and do everything in its
power to bring these assassins to justice."
Copyright 2001 Institute for Public Affairs
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* 7 *
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, 22 July 2001
Colombian Leftists Free 12 Hostages
-----------------------------------
BOGOTA -- Leftist rebels freed 12 workers being held for ransom at a
hydroelectric plant in Colombia, an army officer said Sunday.
Rebels from the National Liberation Army, or ELN, released the workers in
good health late Saturday, said army Maj. Carlos Martinez.
The rebels had seized the plant in Antioquia province Friday. They
demanded $130,000 for their release but no ransom was paid.
The captive hydroelectric plant supplies energy to a nearby Frontino Gold
Mine in the township of Segovia, 167 miles north of the capital Bogota.
The 5,000-strong ELN, Colombia's second largest rebel army, earns huge
profits by abducting people for ransom.
Meanwhile, the larger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, attacked a small town in southern Colombia, destroying
a police station and a jail, raiding a bank, and freeing dozens of
prisoners in fighting that ended early Sunday.
Using homemade grenades and mortars, at least 250 FARC fighters attacked
the township of Bolivar in Cauca province on Saturday, Cauca Police Capt.
Victor Aguero told the Associated Press.
During the 12-hour assault, the rebels freed 73 prisoners, 12 of whom
later turned themselves in rather than risk being caught by military units
heading to the area, said Oscar Galvis, a spokesman for the nation's
prison system.
Aguero said the assault on the remote township, 272 miles from the capital
Bogota, was eventually repelled by some 20 police officers with support
from the air force. One policeman was injured.
Also on Saturday, FARC combatants in northern Cesar province killed four
soldiers and injured five others.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
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