Castro Zapata, Julio Alberto Otero, ADIDA, United Steel Workers of America, Dan Kovalik, Leo Gerard, USWA, DAVID BACON">
COLOMBIA: US fuels dirty war against unions
BY DAVID BACON
The Bush administration's call to step up US reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal, is producing more than environmental consequences. One of the main countries now a source for coal burned in US power plants is Colombia. And in Colombia, US energy, military and trade policies are becoming intertwined with devastating consequences for the country's labour movement.
Leading a union often means losing a job, even blacklisting. In many countries, it can bring imprisonment by governments which view unions as a threat to the social and economic elite. But in some countries, election to union office carries even greater peril. The most dangerous country by far is Colombia, where labour activism is often punished with death.
Forty-four Colombian trade union leaders had been violently murdered this year alone. Last year's assassinations cost the lives of 129 others. According to Hector Fajardo, general secretary of the country's largest union federation, the Unified Confederation of Workers (CUT), 3800 trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia since 1986. Out of every five trade unionists killed in the world, three are Colombian, according to a recent US union report.
US unions increasingly point to a network of US policies which they believe contribute to the targeting of Colombian unionists. US military aid provided by Plan Colombia often supports activities by right-wing paramilitary groups, which in turn target trade union leaders. Bush administration energy policies encourage the use of coal in US power plants, and millions of tonnes are now mined in the midst of Colombia's civil war by US corporations. And free-market economic reforms, pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are provoking a wave of resistance by Colombian workers which is being met by violent repression.
In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita were riding from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno Rodriguez and Orcasita were chairperson and vice-chairperson of the union at the mine, a local of Sintramienergetica, one of Colombia's two coal miners' unions. As the company bus neared Valledupar, 48 km 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 heat 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 later found, his fingernails had been torn off.
Protesting the deaths, 1200 miners at Loma stopped work.
The Loma mine is owned by a US multinational corporation, Drummond Company, based in Birmingham, Alabama. Drummond opened the Loma mine in 1994, and it is now Colombia's second largest.
At first, according to Ken Zinn, North American regional coordinator of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions, the company promised workers in its US mines that its Colombian coal wouldn't be imported into the US to compete with its US operations. But since 1994, Drummond has closed five mines in Alabama, laying off 1700 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Its one remaining US mine employs about 500 miners.
Last year, five million tons of Colombian coal crossed the Alabama State Docks in Mobile. It was bound for plants operated by the Alabama Power Company, a division of the Southern Company, which also operates generating facilities in Florida and Mississippi. The plants were formerly fuelled by Drummond's US mines. Another half million tons went to the Alabama Electrical Cooperative.
Alabama used to export coal — 13 million tons in 1996, mostly from Drummond mines. Last year's exports totalled only three million tons. At the Loma mine, production rose by four 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 labour costs. A UMWA miner in Alabama earns US$18 per hour, or US$3060 per month, not counting benefits. At the Loma mine, the four wage classifications range from 1,500,000 to 2,100,000 pesos a month, about US$477-955.
Drummond, says UMWA vice-president Jerry Jones, transferred operations to Colombia "knowing that country's hostile political climate and egregious human rights violations". Conditions for Colombian miners are some of the world's most dangerous. An April 27 blast at the Cana Brava mine in Santander province took the lives of 15 miners. In October of 1997, another explosion buried 16 coal miners alive in El Diviso mine, near Cucuta.
Colombia is the world's fourth-largest coal exporter — it shipped 30 million tons of coal in 2000, worth US$794 million. Coal is the country's third-largest source of export earnings.
The Cerrejon Norte mine is the largest open-pit producer in Latin America. Formerly state-owned, it is now operated as a joint venture between the government and Exxon Corporation. It accounts for half Colombia's total output, and is the largest export mine in the world. Last year the government's mines in central Colombia were privatised as part of economic reforms mandated by the IMF, and sold to a consortium of South African, Swiss and British investors for US$384 million.
Drummond clearly sees an interest in supporting a Bush administration policy which encourages the increased use of coal in electrical generation. And it sees US military intervention in Colombia in its interest as well. "We are in support of the Colombian Plan and the US efforts in the drug war", Mike Tracy, a Drummond spokesman, told independent journalist Stephen Jackson.
That support translated into a US$50,000 donation by Drummond to the Republican National Committee last July. Overall, the coal industry dumped US$3.8 million into the 2000 elections, and gave 80% of it to Republicans. In turn, George W. Bush's campaign pursued a "cars and coal" strategy to win mining states, among others, based on an industry-friendly perspective.
On November 3, days before the election, candidate Bush told a West Virginia crowd that "coal is going to help energise America". He didn't promise, however, that it would be US-mined coal. 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.
Responsibility for the murders of Locarno and Orcasita was laid at the feet of Colombia's rightist paramilitary army, the United Defence Groups (AUC), by the police commander for Cesar province, Hugo Alfono Cepeda. He told Colombian television network RCN that "it appears that it's attributable to paramilitaries who operate in the region". According to Ken Zinn, the AUC 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 FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
The region has been the scene of intense conflict between the guerrillas and the AUC. The FARC allegedly levies a 10% tax on coal moving by rail out of the mine, which Drummond has refused to pay, and the 344-km rail line to Puerto Drummond on the coast was bombed five times in the last year. In response, Drummond president Gary Drummond visited Colombian President Andres Pastrana last year to demand increased protection.
"In the conflict, a lot of assumptions are made quickly", says Rafael Albuquerque, who represents the International Labour Organisation in Colombia, "One of those assumptions is that many union leaders support the guerrillas."
Locarno and Orcasita made repeated pleas to 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.
But while coal mine union leaders were clearly targets, they're not the only ones.
Just days after the murders in Valledupar, two leaders of the Colombian electrical workers' union, Andres Granados and Jaime Sanchez, were gunned down March 22. 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. Amnesty International accused the AUC of responsibility.
Another assassinated 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 labour protest.
The AUC is held responsible by unionists for almost all of the trade union assassinations. Robin Kirk, who monitors human rights abuses in Colombia for Human Rights Watch, says that there are strong ties between the AUC and the Colombian military. "The Colombian military and intelligence apparatus has been virulently anti-communist since the 1950s", 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."
The AUC, which by numerous press accounts, operates in cooperation with the military, is backed by some elements of the business elite behind the scenes. "There are powerful economic interests that support the paramilitaries", Kirk says, "and they do target trade unionists, and attack union leaders again and again."
Violence against trade unionists is part of a larger context of violence against community leaders, human rights activists, and advocates for social change generally. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, 6000 Colombians were killed as a result of social and political violence in 2000. The CCJ attributes 80% of the cases to the paramilitaries, 5% directly to the government, and 15% to left-wing guerrillas. Roberto Molino of the CCJ told a delegation of US unionists, that "in the case of the paramilitaries, you cannot underestimate the collaboration of government forces".
Kirk draws a distinction between union assassinations by the AUC and union members killed by guerrillas. "The guerrillas sometimes kill people who belong to unions because they believe they are cooperating with the AUC. But the paramilitaries kill them because they are trade unionists."
The Colombian government also views union activity as a threat because it challenges its basic economic policies. President Pastrana is under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to cut the public sector budget, causing the mass terminations, along with cuts in education, health care and pensions.
In March, the General Confederation of Democratic Workers organised a 24-hour strike of 700,000 workers, including 300,000 teachers and education employees, protesting mass layoffs.
The Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE) struck again on May 15 for 48 hours, over a proposal to cut the education budget by US$340 million. "If this bill is approved, it will have a very negative effect on educators and health care workers throughout Colombia", said FECODE president Gloria Ines Ramirez. Heath care workers also joined the strike. On June 7, tens of thousands of Colombian workers took to the streets in marches across the country, opposing the IMF.
Being a teacher union activist in Colombia is as dangerous as being a coal miners' 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 CUT teachers' union ADIDA. On May 14, Julio Alberto Otero, a university lecturer and union activist, was also killed.
The wave of death and violence is made possible by growing US aid to the Colombian armed forces. Under Plan Colombia, the US has funnelled over US$1 billion into the country, almost entirely in the form of military assistance. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of US military aid in the world.
Both Colombian and US unions say this money funds a dirty war against all critics of the Colombian social and economic order, including unionists.
Earlier this year, the United Steel Workers of America sent a formal delegation to Colombia in the wake of the murders of Locarno Rodriguez and Orcasita. Led by attorney Dan Kovalik, the delegation met with leaders of the CUT. After the delegation made its report, Leo Gerard, USWA president, warned the US government that "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".