Targeting unions in Colombia

There are lots of places in the world where you need to watch your step. You don't want to be a Sunni in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad (or vice versa). It's probably not smart to speak Tamal in southern Sri Lanka. You might want to keep being a Muslim under wraps in parts of Mindanao. But most of all you don't want to be a trade unionist in the U.S.'s one remaining ally in South America, Colombia.

"Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist," says Jeremy Dear, chair of the British trade union organization, Justice For Colombia (JFC), "In fact, more trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia during [Alvaro] Uribe's presidency than in the rest of the world over the same period."

In April, the Colombian Trade Union Confederation reported that the first part of 2008 saw a 77 percent increase in the murder of trade unionists.

One of the latest victims was Luis Mayusa Prada, a union leader from Saravena. On Aug. 8, two men pumped him full of bullets—17 to be exact. Prada was the third member of his family to be assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries. His sister Carmen Mayusa, a nurse and leader of the National Assn. Of Hospital and Clinic Workers, is on the run from death threats.

Prada, who left behind a wife and five children, was the 27th unionist to be murdered in 2008 and joins 3,000 others who have been assassinated in the past two decades. Only 3 percent of the cases have ever been solved.

The fact that so many cases go unsolved is hardly surprising. The perpetrators work hand-in-glove with Colombia's police, military and, according to recent revelations, President Alvaro Uribe and his political allies.

According to the Washington Post, the head of Uribe's secret police, who also served as the President's campaign manager, was arrested for "giving a hit list of trade unionists and activists to paramilitaries, who then killed them." Fourteen of Uribe's supporters in congress have been jailed for aiding paramilitaries, and 62 others are under investigation.

There is an unholy trinity between the government, the Colombian military, and multi-national organizations that has reduced the number of trade unionists from more than three million in 1993 to fewer than 800,000 today.

Nor is there any question why trade unionists are the target.

Starting in the 1990s, foreign owned companies began investing heavily in Colombia. From 1990 to 2006, according to a recent study by Al Jazeera, direct foreign investment increased five-fold, making up 33 percent of the national earnings. In 2007 that jumped another 30 percent.

A major impetus for this influx of foreign capital is the push for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S., an initiative begun under the Clinton Administration forms a centerpiece for the Bush Administration's Latin America policy.

Most trade unionists have resisted the influx of foreign investment because it has led to the privatization of government-owned services, such as hospitals and water systems. Unionists also fear that a FTA will wipe out Colombia's small farmers and manufacturers, as it has done all over Latin America.

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