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Report from International Caravan By Betsey Piette
I later learned their names: Jose Luiz Martinez, student; Manuel Pajaro, worker and union organizer; Luis Mesa, teacher; Hermes Mercado, popular professor and union leader; Victor Mieles, a member of the Sinaltrainal union; Roberto Maclean, student; and Adolfo Lambiano, union member. All were killed by paramilitary death squads, which operate with impunity throughout Colombia. It turned out that the workers were debating whether to call a general strike each time another worker is assassinated. Globalization's war against the workers has taken a heavy toll in this tropical city of 1.5 million people on Colombia's northeastern Atlantic coast, an 18-hour bus ride over the mountains from Bogota, the capital. Over the past decade 68 union leaders, students, teachers and political activists from Barranquilla have been murdered. In addition to those killed outright, resistance to neo-liberalism has been answered with 210 reported death threats, 40 union leaders displaced from their homes and 50 others exiled. At union halls we visited, photographs of slain members adorn the walls. Since 1986 almost 4,000 labor unionists have been murdered throughout Colombia--a majority of the unionists killed worldwide. Only five people were convicted in any of these murders between 1986 and 2002. Two days of testimony Six members of the International Caravan to Colombia to Save Unionists' Lives were visiting Barranquilla. Our group included representatives from the United States, Britain and Spain. We spent two days hearing testimony on the crisis facing workers in this region. Over 500,000 workers and peasant farmers have been displaced in this region of Colombia alone. We heard from Corina Ochevarios. After killing her husband and sons, the paramilitaries drove this woman from her village. A man who would not give his name told how people in his village were sickened from breathing dust from a coal mine owned by a U.S. company. Three officers of the electrical workers' union, at whose office we were meeting, had been killed. Others had been arrested or received threats. Three months ago, in response to the union's protests and a campaign against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, police occupied 11 branches of the public electrical company and locked out 600 workers. Workers are forced to remain in their homes, since they can be fired if they don't answer their phone when the company calls. Meanwhile, they are not receiving salaries or any health benefits as the state moves to privatize the plants. Eight state-run electrical companies have been sold to Just Energy, a U.S. company. A woman whose husband, a professor at the University of the Atlantic, was killed also declined to give her name for fear of retribution. Her husband had been organizing against corruption at the university when, in February 2001, he was shot in the face five times, at home in front of her and their children. She noted that when a mayor connected with the paramilitaries was killed a few days ago, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe went on television to say he'd get the murderers "dead or alive." She wants to know why the authorities showed no such interest in finding her husband's killers. Jesus Tovar, leader of the CUT in Barranquilla, presented statistics on human rights abuses in the region. He linked them to the drive toward privatization in the telephone, electric, water and health-care industries. According to Tovar, companies first lay off union workers and subcontract labor. Ninety-eight percent of the work force is now on some kind of sub-contract. Four hundred firms shut down from 1998 to 2000, affecting over 4,000 workers in Barranquilla. Privatization, concentrated in the service industries, has resulted in 800 workers being laid off. Throughout Colombia 11 million workers are living on sub-minimum salaries of approximately $300 a month, with no health care or social security. Meanwhile the cost of rent, water, electricity and phone service surpasses their wages. In Barranquilla, 99 percent are without union representation. Public school education here is limited to five hours a day. Children often go without breakfast or lunch. Tovar spoke of his personal situation. His mother, a union activist, was tortured and killed in 1992. His father, also active, was forced to flee to Venezuela. After organizing a strike in 1971, Tovar was "blacklisted." He has had to move five times. Last year his shoulder and ribs were broken. Death threats were also issued against his wife and daughters. But Tovar and his union brothers and sisters in Barranquilla and throughout Colombia are continuing to resist. They hold out hope for international solidarity from workers around the world who share a common class enemy and a common struggle. Colombian workers are on the front lines in the battle against globalization and privatization, which is a life-and-death struggle for them. |
Barranquilla,
Colombia.- As I sat in the electrical workers' union hall here on June
23, trying with my limited Spanish to follow a spirited debate taking
place at a local meeting of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, the
biggest labor federation in Colombia, my eyes were drawn to a banner
behind the stage. On it were sketches of seven men. I wondered who they
were.