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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2003
Colombian Coca Cola workers struggle for justice
Chicago--My name is Luis Cardona. I am part of a program
for labor union leaders that have been subjected to death threats in Colombia.
This program began last year with 26 leaders and will last one year. We must
return after this time and cannot return to the U.S. for two years. As things
get more dangerous, I must re-evaluate if it is safe to return. Our families in
Colombia are open targets for the assassins. I would also like to talk about the larger social
problems in Colombia. The biggest are injustice, lack of democracy, corruption
and impunity. The causes are Plan Colombia (which we call "Plan
Washington"), the fumigation programs and the Free Trade Area of the
Americas. The state-run corporations and oil companies work with
foreign corporations to exterminate union leaders. Corporations currently
focused on this are Coca Cola, Monsanto and Occidental Petroleum. These
corporations are in close contact with the military. Contracts are created for
"disappearances," all with the complicity of the government. Given that, I'd like to talk about what my life was like
when I worked for Coca Cola. Between 1995 and 1996, five of our comrades were
assassinated. Thirty activists were run out of the plant, fearing for their
lives. The final assassinations occurred in December 1996. In November, when we
workers presented a petition demanding negotiations, the head of the bottling
plant told us that they had already contacted the paramilitary and they would
call them out if we continued. We said that they had until Dec. 6 to tell us whether
they were going to negotiate with us. On Dec. 5, the paramilitaries raided our
plant and assassinated the secretary of our union and a member of our
negotiating team. The secretary was shot once in the head and five times through
the heart. That same day, they tried to take me out of town to
torture me. I thought I was trapped and would rather die running away, so I ran
to the police station. The commander didn't let the paramilitaries in because he
wasn't sure what was going on. The police arranged for me to move with my family
to a different area. Why didn't the police just turn me over? It was because
there was a big fight going on in the streets when I was being chased. By the
time I got to the police station people had realized what was happening and
mobilized in my defense. That night the paramilitaries came to the union
offices, ransacked it and took everything of value. Then they burned it to the
ground. One week later the paramilitaries returned and went to all the unionists still working at the factory, and said they had until 5 p.m. to renounce their union membership. If they did not, they would either lose their jobs or their lives. They all signed out of fear. Two weeks later, paramilitaries took one of the activists out of the plant and assassinated him at the cemetery. We remaining workers were just too scared to continue. We decided we needed to take our case out of the plant and the community. So we went to Bogotá to spread the word nationally and internationally. A union committee stayed in Bogotá for nine months and tried to negotiate with Coca Cola. Some of the workers were even willing to be reassigned to another part of the country. But instead Coca Cola filed a suit against the union and tried to eliminate it. To add insult to injury, while we were gone fighting for our union, the company said that we had left the job site so we were fired. I got a severance package of about $1,500 for 12 years of work. The USW has helped us create a lawsuit against Coca Cola in U.S. courts. So far we've given presentations to human rights organizations in Atlanta, Ga.-- the home of Coca Cola--and Brussels, Belgium, and last Dec. 6 in Bogotá, which allowed us to commemorate the deaths of our comrades in 1996. On this same day, the president of Coca Cola-Colombia resigned. What we are hoping to achieve is not only that international human rights organizations hear about what Coca Cola is doing, but also that everyday people from underdeveloped countries can find out for themselves what is being done and make their own judgments. We want the people to apply pressure on this company. One of the things we've been doing since April of last year when I arrived is start a campaign against Coca Cola. We're not calling for a boycott at this time because we're focusing on getting our message out. We have organized support from high schools, universities, unions and other support groups. We've gotten UC-Berkeley and the University of Montana to get rid of all their Coca Cola products and agree to a resolution that they will not sell any products on campus until the matter of the Colombian workers is justly resolved --Luis Cardona Translated by Erica Rae For information, go to www.cokewatch.com |
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