More union activists get assassinated each year in Colombia than in the rest of the world put together, and that is why we went there.  We were a delegation from the U.S. of five union members and two others, conducted by the non-profit organization Witness for Peace. The focus of our trip was on meeting Colombian union brothers and sisters: the labor federation, CUT, in the city of Cali, as well as the municipal workers union and the university union there, the dockworkers in the rapidly expanding port city of Buenaventura, and the sugar cane cutters in the fields of the Valle de Cauca, where Cali is located.  We heard how bosses circumvent Colombian labor law by forcing workers into “cooperatives,” which amounts to making everybody a temporary employee, without health or retirement benefits, job security, or even any guarantee of making the minimum wage.  We learned how privatization has destroyed family-wage jobs for the sake of profiting foreign corporations.  And we learned how ownership remains hidden behind falsefront entities, making it easier to get away with irresponsible corporate behavior.

It’s worse than that, of course.  Six leaders of the cane cutters movement stand under threat of jail terms and massive fines in retaliation for a strike the cutters undertook last year.  They, and others, are the targets of public threats by paramilitaries who do the dirtywork of the powerful – newstories not withstanding, the paramilitary menace did not end with “demobilization.”  In Colombia, threats are not idle.  We heard face to face from the father of a university student who was killed when riot police stormed the campus, and we stood with an indigenous community leader at the spot where his brother and nineteen other people were killed by paramilitaries because others coveted the land where they lived.  A human rights group has counted 50,000 cases of people murdered or “disappeared” over the past fifteen years.

Despite these realities, the people we met remain clear-eyed in their analysis, strong in their determination, and warm in their hospitality.  We have something to learn from them in this regard.

One thing was agreed on, whether we were talking with unions, indigenous or human rights groups, or even the mayor’s office of the city of Cali, one of the principal cities of Colombia – they all opposed the proposed Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Colombia.  Because the agreement has already been ratified by the Colombian government, we in the United States have to be the ones to stop it.  When I went to Colombia, I already knew the agreement was bad for us; now I know it is bad for the majority of people in both countries.  The time has come to stop the Free Trade Agreement for good.

                                                                                           John Walsh, GCC/IBT 767M, Portland V.P.

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