White Dog Cafe - Breakfast Talk with a Colombian Trade Unionist

Some Info About Current Developments in Colombia:
(From the International Action Center-Philadelphia, PA)

This civil war has seen several Colombian and U.S. administrations but now is intensifying with extreme right wing governments in both countries and a falling U.S. economy desperate to access free trade agreements. They are trying to get the terrain ready for the FTAA through the imposition of the requirements of the IMF, WTO and WB. In an August 8th US Dow Jones newswire after a press conference in Bogotá under the heading "US To Explore Possible Free Trade Deal With Colombia", it mentioned that "After meeting with President Alvaro Uribe, congress and local business leaders, (U.S. Trade Representative) Robert Zoellick said: "In my view, we can now begin to work toward the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement." "The U.S. has a very strong interest in moving for the FTAA..."

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez's first year in office has been marked with the worst and most damaging measures affecting the general population and in particular the social and union activists. Has imposed devastating economic measures with privatization of state enterprises as centerpiece and Patriot Act-like "antiterrorist" legislations that criminalize any opposition to his government and give police absolute powers to search homes and detain people arbitrarily while promoting and encouraging the snitching of neighbors.

Of the 44 millions Colombians, 33 million are poor - 75% of the population. In Bogotá alone, with a population of 6,635,401, sixty three out of a 100 residents are poor and one million face extreme poverty. Many children have Panela water instead of food for days. Panela, although delicious, is only raw cane sugar dissolved in water.

Unemployment is almost 15%, and 61% of working people do so in the informal economy sector. 35.5 % are underemployed. Uribe's package of economic reforms has increased taxes and the cost to access of basic foods and basic human services like health care, education, transportation, etc.

Privatization of important sectors like health care and telephone service has produced massive lay offs.

More than 2 million people, a great sector of them Afrocolombians, have been displaced, accused of being or aiding the guerrilla, recipients of paramilitary violence at the service of multinational corporations that want those territories for their business ventures. Last July and August a mostly Afrocolombian community in Buenaventura, in the south west coast was shot and bombed by the military and paramilitaries under the pretext of harboring and aiding the guerrilla.

Two weeks ago, 42 leaders of different religious, human rights, social and workers organizations and unions were detained in the Arauca region. Arauca is lately one of the most active with paramilitary activity and where president Uribe interestingly moved his seat of government for 2 days. There are reports that the paramilitary also engages across the border, into Venezuela, acting in unison with that country's oligarchy to destabilize the government of the Bolivarian Revolution.

It is also in oil-rich Arauca where a 500-mile pipeline that carries petroleum from US-based Occidental Petroleum Corporation starts. Secured and protected by U.S. military troops. Colombia is now the biggest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt.

It is no coincidence that General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have also visited Colombia in less than 2 weeks apart last August. It highlights Washington's interest in the military escalation of its intervention there. Rumsfeld echoed what president Bush has said several times after 9-11 of 2001: "Colombia is a very important country that is in our same hemisphere". (and it is) "on the front line of the global war against terrorism."

Uribe has time and again asked the US to send troops to Colombia to fight the insurgency, no longer any of those two governments are using the fig leaf of the "war on drugs".

It is this scenario of repression, militarization of society and strangulation of any democratic space for dissent together with the economic devastation that has had the effect of uniting different sectors of the civil society to confront the right wing agenda of Álvaro Uribe.

Unions have been in the forefront of the struggle, fighting and placing themselves, literally, on the line of fire, trying to unite and include those who for decades have been excluded. They know that the only way to win a free and just society is through struggle and they have committed to this end.