Colombia Solidarity Bulletin Nº 10

Al explicar anoche las razones que llevaron a su Gobierno a respaldar el uso de la fuerza en Irak, el presidente Álvaro Uribe dijo que "Colombia ha pedido al mundo apoyo para derrotar el terrorismo y no puede negarse a apoyar la derrota del terrorismo donde quiera que este se exprese. Para pedir solidaridad debemos ser solidarios". El Tiempo 21 de marzo

Desde julio del 2000, cuando arrancó la aprobación de Plan Colombia en el Congreso de Estados Unidos, hasta la fecha, Washington ha aprobado ayuda para el país por 2.051,6 millones de dólares. .. Después de Israel y Egipto es el que más ha recibido, en ese lapso, ayuda de este tipo de E.U. Con esos recursos se han adquirido, entre otros, 90 helicópteros, para entrenar y dotar dos brigadas, una contra el narcotráfico de 3.000 hombres, y otra fluvial con 32 unidades de 5 lanchas artilladas. ..Y el dinero aprobado el pasado 14 de febrero se utilizará para la dotación -incluidos 10 helicópteros más- y entrenamiento de la brigada que protege el oleoducto Caño Limón Coveñas ...Cuando el presidente Bush estaba pasando tal vez los momentos más difíciles para formar su coalición aliada contra Irak, el presidente Uribe se mostró muy solidario con él "Como pedimos apoyo para luchar contra el terrorismo, no dejamos solos a nuestros aliados en esa lucha", dijo, al referirse a las dificultades que atravesaba Estados Unidos en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU. Un día después, el 3 de marzo, se produjo la llamada desde Washington, Bush le dio las gracias por su apoyo y le comentó de una ayuda adicional que podría venir. El Tiempo 22 de marzo

Este lunes, cuando el presidente George W. Bush le solicite al Congreso una gigantesca adición presupuestal para financiar el conflicto con Irak, incluirá una tajada cercana a los 100 millones de dólares para Colombia. Para el año entrante (2004) han sido solicitados casi 600 millones de dólares más, El Tiempo 23 de marzo

En un análisis hecho por Planeación Nacional, se establece que de los gastos del Gobierno Central se destinan a funcionamiento para defensa y seguridad casi el 15 por ciento y para la inversión, tan sólo el 0,9 por ciento... Portafolio 26 de marzo

El Pueblo NO

Gobierno a respaldar el uso de la fuerza en Irak, el presidente Álvaro Uribe dijo que "Colombia ha pedido al mundo apoyo para derrotar el terrorismo y no puede negarse a apoyar la derrota del terrorismo donde quiera que este se exprese. Para pedir solidaridad debemos ser solidarios". El Tiempo 21 de marzo

Desde julio del 2000, cuando arrancó la aprobación de Plan Colombia en el Congreso de Estados Unidos, hasta la fecha, Washington ha aprobado ayuda para el país por 2.051,6 millones de dólares. .. Después de Israel y Egipto es el que más ha recibido, en ese lapso, ayuda de este tipo de E.U. Con esos recursos se han adquirido, entre otros, 90 helicópteros, para entrenar y dotar dos brigadas, una contra el narcotráfico de 3.000 hombres, y otra fluvial con 32 unidades de 5 lanchas artilladas. ..Y el dinero aprobado el pasado 14 de febrero se utilizará para la dotación -incluidos 10 helicópteros más- y entrenamiento de la brigada que protege el oleoducto Caño Limón Coveñas ...Cuando el presidente Bush estaba pasando tal vez los momentos más difíciles para formar su coalición aliada contra Irak, el presidente Uribe se mostró muy solidario con él "Como pedimos apoyo para luchar contra el terrorismo, no dejamos solos a nuestros aliados en esa lucha", dijo, al referirse a las dificultades que atravesaba Estados Unidos en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU. Un día después, el 3 de marzo, se produjo la llamada desde Washington, Bush le dio las gracias por su apoyo y le comentó de una ayuda adicional que podría venir. El Tiempo 22 de marzo

Este lunes, cuando el presidente George W. Bush le solicite al Congreso una gigantesca adición presupuestal para financiar el conflicto con Irak, incluirá una tajada cercana a los 100 millones de dólares para Colombia. Para el año entrante (2004) han sido solicitados casi 600 millones de dólares más, El Tiempo 23 de marzo

En un análisis hecho por Planeación Nacional, se establece que de los gastos del Gobierno Central se destinan a funcionamiento para defensa y seguridad casi el 15 por ciento y para la inversión, tan sólo el 0,9 por ciento... Portafolio 26 de marzo

Otro 11 de septiembre, pero de 28 años atrás, había muerto un presidente de nombre Salvador Allende resistiendo un golpe de Estado que tus gobernantes habían planeado. También fueron tiempos de horror, pero eso pasaba muy lejos de tu frontera, en un ignota republiqueta sudamericana. Las republiquetas estaban en tu patio trasero y nunca te preocupaste mucho cuando tus marines salían a sangre y fuego a imponer sus puntos de vista. Sabías que entre 1824 y 1994 tu país llevó a cabo 73 invasiones a paises de América Latina? Las víctimas fueron Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, la República Dominicana, las Islas Virgenes, El Salvador, Guatemala y Granada. Hace casi un siglo que tus gobernantes están en guerra. Desde el comienzo del siglo XX, casi no hubo una guerra en el mundo en que la gente de tu Pentagono no hubiera participado. Claro, las bombas siempre explotaron fuera de tu territorio. Gabriel García Márquez

"Varios intelectuales y congresistas colombianos pidieron al presidente Alvaro Uribe rechazar la intervención en Iraq, repudiaron el apoyo que ofreció el gobernante a EU y señalaron que "no es en nuestro nombre que se va a legitimar semejante crimen contra la humanidad"... dijeron que el presidente asumió una postura de 'sumisión' que 'avergüenza' al país al respaldar la campaña militar estadounidense contra Iraq... está firmada entre otros, por la liberal Piedad Córdoba, los indígenas Gerardo Jumí y Francisco Rojas Birry, el ex sacerdote Bernardo Hoyos y Carlos Gaviria, que presidió la Corte Constitucional y representa en el Senado al Polo Democrático, una nueva convergencia de formaciones independientes y de izquierda."

"O nos movilizamos o morimos todos", fue la expresión de un campesino del departamento del Valle del Cauca, luego de una incursión paramilitar que dejo regados en el campo los cuerpos 13 de sus compañeros y amigos. Esta escena, se ha vivido y se vive en varias partes del mundo. La Guerra es la palabra clave... en fin la apuesta de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica a la GUERRA es definitiva dentro de su viejo concepto de dominar el mundo. Por ello nos unimos a todos los hombres y mujeres del mundo que se levanten en contra de la Guerra... Berenice Celeyta

Uribe opta por la Guerra e invita a la Intervención

La invasión a Irak de parte de los Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña junto con la guerra civil de Colombia forman parte de la misma historia; dos frentes de la guerra global para dominar al mundo, sus gentes y sus recursos.

Los seis países latinoamericanos que apoyan la intervención de Estados Unidos en Irak son los mismos que reciben ayuda militar de los Estados Unidos o que se encuentran negociando el Tratado de Libre Comercio con este país- son Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Republica Dominicana y Panamá. Álvaro Uribe Vélez es el único líder sudamericano que apoya la guerra contra Irak. No solo eso, su gobierno ha invitado a la intervención en Colombia ". el narcotráfico y el terrorismo son una amenaza potencialmente mas seria que Irak y debería ser combatida con un despliegue militar similar al del Golfo Pérsico", dijo Uribe en Quito, Ecuador el 15 de enero del 2003. En relación con la movilización de 300.000 soldados para invadir a Irak añadió; "¿Por que no pensar en una fuerza similar para terminar este problema? Nuestro problema es tal vez mas serio que el de Irak, ya que nuestro conflicto puede acabar con la selva amazónica."

Este mensaje lo repitió el Vice-Presidente Francisco Santos, "un despliegue similar al de Irak, el cual apoyamos, se nos ha preguntado cuando veremos una acción similar de la comunidad internacional para apoyar a la democracia colombiana." Estos llamados a la "comunidad internacional" se dirigen tanto a Blair como a Bush, punto que Santos expresó claramente cuando estuvo en Londres en Marzo, solicitando cooperación de inteligencia y otras formas de asistencia militar al gobierno británico. El gobierno colombiano desea que los Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña lo ayude a hundir a su propio país en mas guerra y quiere hacerlo pronto. ¿Por qué?

Lo que hay detrás de las solicitudes de una intervención militar- La Crisis Económica

La crisis de seguridad en Colombia y la crisis fiscal están intrínsicamente ligadas. El Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez ha duplicado el gasto en materia militar. En enero Uribe negoció un crédito con el FMI, el cual a su vez ha generado más de 11 billones de dólares en préstamos. Esto ha situado a Colombia, aun más, en las manos de sus acreedores internacionales y el elite financiero colombiano. Cumplir con la deuda externa se ha convertido en el gran tema del presupuesto anual de la nación. En 2002, el 36.5% del presupuesto se gastó en el cumplir con esta deuda. Solo en los primeros seis meses del periodo de Uribe, el peso ha sufrido una devaluación del 26% frente al dólar. ¡Con mas de la mitad de la deuda externa denominada en dólares, esto implica que en pesos Colombia debe 13% mas de lo que debía en septiembre pasado!

Uribe necesita desesperadamente atraer flujos de dinero desde el extranjero para así fortalecer el peso y evitar una devaluación mas acelerada. Sin embargo, el capital financiero dicta sus normas. El FMI ve el déficit fiscal, o sea el gasto excesivo del estado comparado con los ingresos, como la causa de la crisis. En cambio esto no es la causa sino la expresión de la misma. La causa es que las demandas de los acreedores han ganado mucho terreno y fuerza en las políticas del gobierno.

Solo existen dos curas para esta enfermedad. La solución Bus-FMI-Uribe y la solución del pueblo. La primera mata al paciente y la segunda a la enfermedad.

La solución Bus-FMI-Uribe es librarse del "estado de derecho" proclamado en Colombia en la constitución de 1991 y personificarlo con las ganancias limitadas que el sector público provee. El primer movimiento del nuevo gobierno fue un paquete de recortes en los derechos laborales y pensionales, y una reforma tributaria aprobada. La segunda fase es una propuesta de referendo muy compleja. El tercer elemento de la ofensiva de Uribe fue presentado en el Congreso de la República el 4 de marzo. El Plan Nacional de Desarrollo, para el cual Uribe ha elegido el eslogan de "Estado Comunitario". El Comunitarismo fue originalmente una filosofía social progresiva que surgió con los "Diggers" (excavadores) en el siglo XVII durante la revolucion inglesa. Esta filosofía se hizo muy popular en las universidades estadounidenses al principio de los 90s y apareció en la política tradicional gracias a Clinton. La idea principal es aquella de que la comunidad es la que tiene la responsabilidad y el interés en la toma de decisiones por el bien común de todos y todas.

Pero con cada nueva reencarnación, el comunitarismo se ha vuelto cada vez más reaccionario. El comunitarismo estatal de Uribe es asimétrico-los ricos son la única comunidad que interesa- y es autoritario, es un llamado a la movilización para apoyar a las clases poseedoras de los bienes, a comprometer los recursos en el frente de guerra, a cumplir con sus responsabilidades como condición para disfrutar la riqueza. Al mismo tiempo es un camuflaje para su asalto a los derechos de las comunidades de la clase obrera, los indígenas, comunidades negras, pobres y campesinas.

La democracia social esta siendo sistemáticamente destrozada en Colombia y el sector estatal es el principal campo de batalla. Empresario tras empresario se niega a participar en las negociaciones anuales sobre la Convención Colectiva de Trabajo establecida hace más de diez años. El ejemplo más claro es la empresa del petróleo del estado Ecopetrol, la cual ha presentado sus propias contra demandas. Por meses los medios de comunicación colombianos han llevado una campaña de desprestigio contra los trabajadores petroleros sindicados a la USO y a su convención colectiva.

La principal política del gobierno actual es acabar con todas las convenciones colectivas y derechos laborales, principalmente donde los trabajadores estén representados por la fuerza sindical. El estado comunitario de Uribe acabará con sectores de la población que habían adquirido una cierta vida digna, cortando sus salarios al mínimo legal a través de privatizaciones y despidos. Es una política para acabar con la dignidad de los trabajadores a través de la destrucción de su colectividad. Salud, comunicaciones, servicios públicos (SINTRAEMCALI), educación y otras instituciones del sector estatal están bajo amenaza, y están preparando una resistencia unificada.

Colombia ha entrado en una nueva fase

Como con todos los proyectos radicales hay un riesgo para Uribe y los que le apoyan. La crisis económica está llevando estos ataques hacia los sindicatos de los trabajadores estatales, pero la naturaleza de estos ataques podría generar una respuesta popular masiva. La oposición política al referendo está creciendo. A pesar de los asesinatos, la campaña por la abstención activa ha roto ya la barrera del miedo, el arma del gobierno que consiste en la intimidación psicológica. Para añadir y como lo hemos visto en Bolivia, resistencia a la privatización de los servicios de agua lleva el potencial de una revuelta social.

La imagen se complica aún más en el contexto internacional. El gobierno de Uribe está preparado para vender su país a las multinacionales, pero ¿a qué multinacionales? Mientras Estados Unidos, empuja por un Área Libre de Comercio para las Américas (ALCA), Europa está usando los GATS para el acceso total al mercado a través de sus multinacionales. La competencia sobre el ALCA está causando tensiones con los vecinos de Colombia. La dependencia de Uribe a los Estados Unidos significa que se dirige hacia la ruptura con la solidaridad Latinoamericana. La clase dirigente colombiana ahora busca un acuerdo bilateral con Washington.

¿En que dirección Colombia va Colombia? Uribe intenta duplicar la historia de las maquiladoras en México. Nuevos empleos pero bajo la dirección del capital multinacional que emplea una fuerza de trabajo derrotada y sin sindicalizar. Pero la destrucción constructiva es un duro hueso de roer. Uribe tiene que garantizar las condiciones seguras para la inversión, y tiene que hacerlo pronto antes que la deuda aumente a niveles insostenibles, por eso su guerra contra la guerilla se ha convertido en un imperativo económico. Uribe tiene que vencer simultáneamente a la resistencia armada y a la resistencia civil para crear suficientes condiciones positivas para que las multinacionales obtengan sus beneficios. Sin embargo, el panorama argentino es el escenario más posible. El capital descontrolado vuela fuera del país arruinando las vidas de millones de ciudadanos de clase media así como la de más de 10 millones de pobres - la debacle.

Lo único que queda es la solución del pueblo. Hace dos años, cuando iniciamos esta Campaña, Colombia era la ultima pieza del rompecabezas continental del neoliberalismo gringo. ¡Como han cambiado los tiempos! Hoy, país tras país, los pueblos latinoaméricanos estan resistiendo, sus exigencias se ven reflejadas en gobiernos que, de algun modo u otro, tienen que enfrentarse a los Estados Unidos. Hay verdaderas razones para tener esperanzas de que se forme una alianza unida contra el imperialismo.

Todo la basura de Cali y los municipios de Yumbo y Jamundí, unas 1800 toneladas diarias, se almacenan en un relleno sanitario en el sector de Navarro. Este "basuro" será cerrado el 31 de mayo de este año pero la historia del mismo es muy particular.

El 23 de diciembre de 2002 la CVC (Ministerio de Medio Ambiente) obliga a EMSIRVA (Empresas Municipales de aseo público de Cali) a no disponer residuos solidos en el relleno transitorio de Navarro, pues pondría a la ciudad de Cali y los Municipios de Yumbo y Jamundí en un estado de emergencia sanitaria. Esta emergencia ya se habia dado antes, en 1997 y el alcalde hizo un alianza con un consorcio español, SERVIAMBIENTALES-TRATESA-FEBESA-UTE para construir un nuevo relleno sanitario. Desde el año 1999 SINTRAEMSIRVA (El Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa de Servicio Público de Aseo de Cali) ha venido denunciando los constantes inclumpimientos que la empresa española SERVIAMBIENTALES ha venido presentando tanto en los recursos economicos iniciales de ocho millones de dolares para la mitigacion del impacto ambiental en Navarro como en múltiples incumplimientos del contrato. Nuncan construyeron el nuevo basuro, nunca modernificaron el actual basuro de Navarro pero EMSIRVA les pagaba como si lo hicieran.

En el 2002 el alcalde de Cali bajo presiones del nuevo gerente de EMSIRVA cortó este contrato y la empresa recuperó el control del relleno sanitario. Sin embargo actualmente SERVIAMBIENTALES reclama entre 25 y 30 millones mensuales desde el momento de entrega del basurero. Mientras el caso va al tribunal de arbitramiento la CVC le da un nuevo plazo a EMSIRVA a encontrar un lote para el nuevo relleno sanitario, el 31 de mayo de 2003. El alcade ofreció a EMSIRVA cien mil dolares para comprar un lote, el 50% de este dinero vendrá del sector privado.

La CVC ha sugerido un lote en el municipio de Yumbo, situado en la carretera de Cali a Buenaventura para así poder importar basura de Europa. Deshacerse de la basura en Europa cuesta 100 dólares por tonelada, traerla a Colombia sólo 45 dolares. Ademas el terreno de Yumbo pertenece a un familiar de un alto funcionario de la CVC. En estos días se está efectuando una audiencia pública en el municipio donde de los mas de 90 ponentes, 87 se muestran en contra de la nueva ubicación del basuro por razones medio ambientales, económicas y sociales.

Metodos "terroristas"

Si no se encuentra un lote habra una crisis sanitaria en Cali. El 27 de marzo un grupo de 600 personas que viven de la recuperación de material reciclable bloquearon la via de acceso al relleno sanitario de Navarro. Los recicladores exigen concertar con el Municipio su reubicación una vez se cierre el sitio de disposición final.

A raiz de la protesta se personaron en el lugar de los hechos, Personería, Defensoría y como no el cuerpo antimotines de la Policía Nacional. Los miembros de organismo de control una vez que tomaron acta de la protesta se retiraron junto a los medios de comunicación que ya habian conseguido su imagen de la protesta.

Minutos después los antimotines empezaron a cargar con gases, humo, disparos y todo su arsenal contra los manifestantes. Llegaron los refuerzos, el batallón antiguerilla del ejército nacional. Y con ellos llegaron sus tacticas antiterroristas. Gases lacrimógenos usados contras las casas aledañas donde residen algunos de los recicladores, como resultado de ellos una niña de tres meses se debatía entre la vida y la muerte y una vecina de la localidad tuvo que ser trasladada urgentemente al hospital. Disparos presumiblemente al aire, donde dos manifestantes fueron heridos de bala, uno de ellos en el pie derecho. Y por último un miembro de la fuerza pública sacó su navaja de uso personal y acuchilló a un trabajador el cual tuvo que ser internado en la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos del Hospital.

Emilio Rodriguez

Multinacional Chantajea a los Caribeños con Cortes de Electricidad

Desde el año 2001, en el Caribe Colombiano, se hacían mas frecuentes las quejas de sus habitantes contra los continuos cortes de la electricidad que hacían las empresas comercializadoras de electricidad que operan en la región, Electrocosta y Electricaribe. Pero meses después, a través de una demanda interpuesta por algunos industriales a raíz de los cortes de electricidad, se develó la razón de las interrupciones del servicio: Las empresas recurrieron a los cortes de electricidad para obligar a los usuarios a pagar las deudas por consumo.

Esta situación se agravó, con la multiplicación de las protestas populares en toda la región. Los pob-ladores bloquearon las vías, confrontaron a la policía, realizaron marchas hacia las oficinas de las empresas. Esta situación se dio (y aún se sigue dando) en los municipios del Dibulla, Fonseca y Palomino en la Guajira, en Valledupar en el Cesar, en Barranquilla y Luruaco en el Atlántico, en Turbaco Bolívar, en Montería Córdoba, entre otros. Las protestas se hacían cada vez más frecuentes y mas agresivas, especialmente contra los contratistas de las electrificadoras que realizaban los cortes de la electricidad en las zonas pobres de las grandes ciudades. En Julio de 2002, en una protesta en la pob-lación de Soledad departamento del Atlántico, un niño resulto muerto. Este hecho generó una pedrea masiva contra las oficinas de Electricaribe, que fue acusada por parte de los manifestantes como res-ponsable de la muerte del Joven. Estos cortes también generaron enfrentamientos entre las personas que tenían conexiones fraudulentas a la red y las que se encontraban conectadas legalmente, gen-erando numerosas víctimas en los últimos tres años.

Dados estos problemas, las Empresas comercializadoras optaron por cortar la electricidad desde los centros de control, dejando sin electricidad regiones enteras, en las que se encontraban personas que pagaban sus facturas y los deudores, dejando municipios enteros sin electricidad como el municipio de Turbaco, Bolívar o Barrios enteros como "Dividivi" y "31 de Octubre" en Riohacha Guajira. Está política acrecentó la indisposición de la gente contra las empresas comercializadoras.

Esta problemática se remonta al año 1998, cuando el Estado Colombiano decidió reestructurar las empresas estatales de electricidad y venderlas al mejor postor, argumentando que los políticos de la región las controlaban para comprar votos, o apropiarse de dineros y contratos ilícitamente. En el año 2000 Unión Fenosa, compañía de electricidad Gallega, la tercera más importante de España, compró las empresas comercializadoras de toda la Costa Caribe por algo mas de 400 millones de dólares. Con los altos índices de pérdidas de electricidad y los bajos niveles de pago, la compañía tenía que adoptar una estrategia agresiva, la que le permitió aumentar el recaudo del 40% al 75%, a costa de presionar con cortes de electricidad selectivos a la población entera. Estos cortes que llegaron a afectar incluso el suministro de agua, pues los acueductos de la región precisan de electricidad para funcionar. Así estas empresas llegaron a suspender los servicios de electricidad y agua en varios barrios pobres de grandes ciudades como Barranquilla, o municipios pequeños como Turbaco en Bolívar.

Debido a que Unión Fenosa no toleró incluso las deudas con el Estado Colombiano, en el mes de Diciembre de 2002, amenazó con dejar sin electricidad a 100 ciudades y pueblos de la región si el Estado no la ayudaba a resolver su situación financiera. Esta situación se resolvió parcialmente con el ofrecimiento del Estado de pagar con electricidad proveniente de una de las empresas generadoras estatales de electricidad. Paradójicamente, en el momento de sufragar las pérdidas las empresas multinacionales acuden desesperadamente a los Estados, mientras que se apoyan en el mito del libre mercado en el momento de las privatizaciones de las empresas, esto es lo que ha llamado como privatización de las ganancias y la socialización de las perdidas.

Estos hechos constatan que la administración de los servicios públicos específicamente la electricidad, bajo manos privadas corresponde de manera clara con la necesidad de rentabilidad y capitalización, y con el fin de conseguir sus intereses pueden llegar a limites insospechados, considerando inclusive al corte del suministro del agua y la luz para presionar a poblaciones enteras para pagar sus deudas. Esta situación es complicada si se considera que el corte de un servicio público como la electricidad o el agua son un derecho humano fundamental que no puede utilizarse como un medio de presión o coerción, que se ha utilizado solamente en las guerras o los peores conflictos. Es importante conocer las difíciles condiciones en las que se encuentra la población de la región, en la que se registran los mayores índices de pobreza que en algunas regiones sobrepasa el 80%, pareciera que cuando una empresa multinacional presta un servicio público, a él solo podrán acceder los que tienen con qué pagarlo, que en Colomba cada vez son menos, gracias a la adopción irrestricta de las recetas del FMI.

Queda claro que las compañías multinacionales no tienen escrúpulos a la hora de defender sus utilidades, en el caso de los servicios públicos deja serias inquietudes sobre los conflictos sociales que pueden generar sus métodos de presión para el pago de las facturas. El caso más inquietante, es que llegó a chantajear incluso al Estado Colombiano, obligándolo a resolver los problemas de recaudo de la empresa, bajo la pena de suspender el servicio en 100 poblaciones. En tal situación, el Gobierno cedió pagando a las comercializadoras con energía eléctrica equivalente a diez millones de dólares argumentando que no quería dejar un precedente negativo a los inversionistas extranjeros que en el futuro se interesaran en el país. Sin embargo el fondo del problema no se ha resuelto, Unión Fenosa sigue controlando las empresas comercializadoras de electricidad, y regiones enteras de la Costa Caribe colombiana siguen en peligro de privarse del servicio de energía y los beneficios que vienen con ella (acueducto, hospitaes, comunicaciones), debido a que los ingresos en muchos casos no son suficientes para pagar el valor de las facturas, lo que es llamado manipuladoramente por los medios masivos de comunicación como cultura de no pago.

"On Thursday 20 March 150 ECOPETROL (state oil corporation) workers accompanied by union leaders from the CUT and a number of activists held a protest outside the ECO-PETROL offices in Bogotá. They sang and chanted against the Uribe Velez government's support for the war in Iraq, against US intervention and for peace in our country, and also against Chevron-Texaco taking the gas in the Guajira region of Colombia. US flags were burnt and the traffic held up for a while, before the workers returned to work."

"On Friday 21 March there was a march against the bloody genocide in Iraq. Groups like the (trotskyist) PST, (anarchist) Banderas Negras, students, workers and many more who support the right to life gathered in Catastro at 11 a.m. and marched towards the U.S. embassy, displaying our anti war messages and carrying out civil disobedience to open people's eyes as to what is going on. Earlier on North Americans Against the War, local Christian pacifists and a theatre group had all arrived outside the embassy, bringing the total present up to about 200. We moved slowly in order to tie up the traffic on Calle 26, whistling and applauding as more people joined the march. Squads of riot police were there (ESMAD and others) as always, prepared for anything, not realizing it was a peaceful march. Having said that, we were hoping to occupy the pedestrian bridge outside the embassy when we got there, but the robocops prevented us. Onlookers in their apartments or from passing cars raised their arms or beeped in support."

"Arriving at Carrera 50 we took up the area behind the embassy, blocking the road so that the traffic would pile up and people would notice us. And three hours after the march had begun we were back on Calle 26 where we blocked the road again for some minutes in order for a little ceremony to round things off for the day. Some people had brought a 6x4 metre large American flag made from newspaper which we poured petrol over. Before burning it a student spoke to those present saying: For some this flag means liberty and democracy but for others bloodshed, fear and destruction. We're going to burn it so they know we don't want them in Iraq, or here, or anywhere else in the world. For 20 seconds people spat on, trampled on and kicked the flag as it burned. We then dispersed, concerned that one of the riot squads might be round the corner waiting to detain someone, but everyone stuck together in their groups." *

Protest at the war in Iraq and the Colombian government's support for it has multiplied in Colombia in recent days. The protests have linked the invasion to the war in Colombia and cutbacks in social spending and services.

Bogotá. More than 15,000 people marched again last Thursday (27 March) from the Central Administrativo Distrital to the US Embassy in opposition to the attack on Iraq and U.S. intervention in Colombia. The blue block of uniformed telephone exchange workers stood out visually amongst the unions, women's organizations, students, teachers, artists and political movements (FSP, MODEP, MOIR, PTC, PPS, PST, Unios, MRPM, Banderas Negras, VA, MRI, PCC), all united against the imperialist war. The march left at midday and began arriving at the embassy at 13.10. People refused to disperse until around 2pm when the amount of teargas became too much and the police had started to surround some of the young people present, arresting 17 of them. Clashes ensued. Rubber bullets injured one young woman in the eye and a photo journalist in the leg. Two photographers from international agencies denounced the fact that they were beaten. After the march was dissolved some people leaving it occupied a petrol station. This march followed a symbolic display of black umbrellas by 1,000 people two days previously.

On Thursday 27 the town of Sincelejo became what local newspaper El Universal called "the first city on the Carribean coast to protest against the war on Iraq", stating that 4,000 people took part in one of the biggest ever protests in the Sucre region. The day began with a gathering of employees of the Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) and their supporters, striking that day against cutbacks and redundancies in that body. They were joined by unpaid local schoolteachers, who had also called a day strike, local school students, parents and other public sector workers. At the same time in the nearby municipality of Coloso (Montes de Maria) employees of the ICBF's children's homes denounced delays in receiving vital food supplies due to the army's labourious checks on incoming vehicles - part of the security measures ordered because they are in one of Colombia's "Rehabilitation Zones". These are areas where the government has suspended civil liberties and increased repression in the name of the war on the guerillas. These restrictions make the protests held even more impressive.

On Friday 30, 700 university students and teachers marched through central Bogotá. The rain didn't deter twenty students from taking off all their clothes in front of TV cameras along the way, and accusing President Uribe of being a "terrorist" and a "sellout" as they did so. They rallied in a park, where speakers denounced armed conflict whether in Colombia or abroad, stating "we are saturated by war". The march tried to head for the presidential palace but decided to avoid a full head on clash with the large number of riot police, who along with regular police had accompanied the event from the start.

Elsewhere on the same day 5,000 members of indigenous communities from the department of Cauca blocked the Pan American highway for several hours to protest the problems they have faced locally as well as the war on Iraq.

Álvaro Uribe explained last night the reasons why his government backs the use of force in Iraq, saying "Colombia has asked for the world's help to defeat terrorism and we cannot deny our support to the fight to defeat terrorism wherever it appears". El Tiempo 21 March

Since July 2000, when the US Congress first approved Plan Colombia, Washington has granted US $ 2,051.6 million of aid... Only Israel and Egypt have received more US aid in this period. This has paid for 90 helicopters, for the training and equipment of two brigades, one of 3,000 men against narco-trafficking, and a river brigade of 32 units and 5 armed launches ...

The money approved on 14 February has been used to equip (including 10 more helicopters) and train a brigade to protect the oil pipeline from Caño Limón to Coveñas ...

When president Bush was passing his most difficult moments in forming his coalition of allies against Iraq, Colombia's president Uribe showed Bush his full solidarity "Just as we ask for help in the fight against terrorism, we mustn't desert our allies in this fight", Uribe said, referring to the US's difficulties in the UN Secrurity Council. The next day, 3 March, there was a telephone call from Washington. It was Bush thanking Uribe for his support and promising that additional aid would soon be coming. El Tiempo 22 March

This Monday, when president George W. Bush asks Congress for a giant budget to finance the conflict with Iraq, he will include the proposal for close to US $100 million of additional (military) aid for Colombia. In all, nearly US $600 million more has been asked for for the coming year (2004). El Tiempo 23 March

According to an anlaysis by the National Planners., it has been established that 15% of central government spending is for defence and security, and only 0.9% for investment ... Portafolio 26 March

The People Say NO!

"It was another September 11th , but 28 years earlier, that a president by the name of Salvador Allende died resisting a coup d'etat planned by your government. Again, it was a time of horror, but it happened far from your borders in an unknown little republic in South America. These little republics were in your back yard and you never worried much when you sent your marines and their blood and fire to impose your point of view. Did you know that between 1824 and 1994, your country has led 73 invasions in Latin America? The victims? Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, the Virgin Islands, El Salvador, Guatemala and Grenada. Your government has been at war for almost 100 years. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there's hardly been a war anywhere in the world that your Pentagon's not been involved in. Of course the bombs always exploded far from your country..." Gabriel García Márquez

"Several Colombian intellectuals and Congress representatives asked president Alvaro Uribe to reject the intervention in Iraq, repudiating the support that his government offered the US and pointing out that "it is not in our name that you are legitimising this crime against humanity"... They said that in endorsing the US military campaign against Iraq the president had assumed a posture of 'submission' that 'shamed' the country ... this declaration was signed by the Liberal Piedad Córdoba, indigenous representatives Gerardo Jumí and Francisco Rojas Birry, former priest Bernardo Hoyos and Carlos Gaviria, who formerly presided over the Constitutional Court and who is now in the Senate representing the Polo Democrático, a new convergence of the left and independent formations." El Espectador 28 March 2003

"We all mobilise or we all die" was the expression of a peasant in Valle del Cauca right after a paramilitary incursion which left 13 of his friends and comrades lying dead. This scene has been lived through and is being lived through in many parts of the globe. War is the key word ... the opting by the United States of North America for WAR is a decision within its long standing project to dominate the world... That is why we unite with all men and women of the world who are risen up against the War" Berenice Celeyta

Uribe Opts for War - and Invites Intervention

The US/UK invasion of Iraq and Colombia's civil war are part of the same story; two fronts in the global war to dominate the world's people and its resources.

The six Latin American countries that support the US intervention in Iraq are themselves either receiving US military aid, or are negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with the US -they are Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Panama. Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe Vélez is the only South American leader who supports the war on Iraq. And, remarkably, his government invites intervention into Colombia.

"Drug traffic and terrorism are potentially a larger threat than Iraq and should be challenged through a similar military deployment to the one in the Persian Gulf," Uribe said in Quito, Ecuador on 15th January 2003. Referring to the mobilisation of the 300,000 soldiers to invade Iraq, he added "Why not think of a similar force to put an end to this problem..? Our problem may be more serious than Iraq, because our conflict may finish off the Amazonian rainforest".

This same message was repeated by Vice-President Francisco Santos: "Similar to the deployment in Iraq, which we support, we have been asked when will we see a similar action from the international community to aid Colombian democracy". These pleas to the "international community" are directed at Bush and Blair, a point that Santos made clear when he came to London in March, seeking intelligence co-operation and other forms of military assistance from the British.

The Colombian government wants US and UK help in plunging its own country further into war, and it wants to do it quickly. Why is that?

Behind Calls for Military Intervention - Economic Crisis

The security crisis and economic crisis are inextricably connected. Uribe is doubling spending on the military. To help pay for this, in January he negotiated a $2 billion stand-by credit with the IMF which has in turn released a further $11 billion of loans, putting Colombia evermore into the hands of international creditors and the country's own financial elite. Servicing the public debt has already become a major item in the state's annual budget, 36.5% in 2002. In the first 6 months of Uribe's presidency alone, the peso dropped 26% against the US dollar. With more than half of the public debt denominated in dollars, this means that in peso terms Colombia owed 13% more in March than it did last September!

Uribe is desperate to attract inflows of foreign capital, to avert ever more rapid devaluation of the peso and hence ballooning, unsustainable debt repayments. But finance capital sets its terms. The IMF sees the excess of state expenditure over income, the fiscal deficit, as the cause of the crisis whereas it is its expression. The cause is the ever increasing dominance over government policy of the creditor's demands.

There are only two cures for this ill. The Bush-IMF-Uribe solution and the people's solution. The first kills the patient, the second kills the disease.

The Bush-IMF-Uribe solution is to do away with Colombia's 'state of social right' proclaimed in the 1991 Constitution and embodied in the limited gains of public sector provision. The new government's first move was a package of cutbacks to labour and pension rights, and regressive tax reforms. Uribe's highly complex referendum proposal is the second phase. The third phase was introduced in Congress in March, a 4 year National Development Plan for which Uribe has adopted the catch phrase of the 'communitarian state'.

Communitarianism was originally a progressive social philosophy that arose with the Diggers in the seventeenth century English revolution. The idea became quite popular in US universities in the early 1990s and re-entered into the political mainstream through Clinton. Communitarians argue that there is such a thing as society, based on communities of individuals with rights and responsibilities. But with each new incarnation, communitarianism has become evermore reactionary. Uribe's communitarian state is asymmetric - the rich are the only community that matters - and it is authoritarian, a call to mobilise the support of the property owning classes, to commit resources to the war effort, to fulfil their responsibilities as the condition for enjoying wealth. And it is a camouflage for his assault on working class, indigenous, black and poor peasant communities.

Social democracy is being systematically destroyed in Colombia, and right now the public sector is the principal battleground. In one state corporation after another managers are refusing to participate in annual negotiations on the basis of Collective Agreements established for the last ten years or more. The most public example is the state oil corporation ECOPETROL. For months now Colombia's mass media have been waging a campaign of denigration against the oilworkers' union USO and its Collective Agreement.

Uribe's underlying policy is to strip away all collective social and labour rights, especially where they have been consolidated by union power. His 'communitarianism' will end the relatively stable conditions of state sector workers, slashing their wages down to the legal minimum, massive job cuts and privatisation. It is a policy to end workers' dignity through destruction of their collectivity. Health, telecommunications, public utilities (SINTRAEMCALI), education are all under attack, and are developing a united resistance.Colombia has entered a new phase

As with all radical right projects, there is a risk for Uribe and his backers. The economic crisis is driving attacks focussed on unionised state workers, but the very nature of their relationship with the communities they serve means that attacks could generate a broad and militant popular response.

Political opposition to the referendum is growing. Despite all the assassinations, the campaign for active abstention has already broken the fear barrier, the regime's weapon of psychological intimidation. Added to this, and as has been seen in Bolivia, resistance to privatisation of water services carries the potential of widespread social revolt.

Uribe's government is prepared to sell his country off to the multinationals, but what multinationals? While the US pushes for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Europe is using the GATS round to push for full market access for its companies. Jockeying over the FTAA is certainly leading to tensions with Colombia's neighbours. Uribe's dependency on the US means that he is inclined to break with Latin American solidarity.

In what direction is Colombia heading? Colombia's rulers want a bilateral deal with Washington. Uribe intends to duplicate the Mexico maquiladora story. New jobs, but under the rule of North American capital employing a defeated, non-unionised workforce. But such "constructive destruction" is a hard trick to pull. Uribe has to guarantee secure conditions for direct investment, and he has to do it quickly before the debts mount to impossible levels.

The invitation to intervention, the war drive against the guerillas, has an economic imperative. Uribe has to simultaneously defeat the armed resistance and civilian resistance to provide acceptable conditions for the multinationals. More likely is the Argentina scenario, uncontrolled capital flight wrecking millions of middle class lives, as well as tens of millions of the poor - meltdown.

Which only leaves the peoples' solution. Two years ago when we started this Campaign, Colombia was the last piece in the US neo-liberal contintental jig-saw. How times have changed! Today, in country after country, the peoples of Latin America are fighting back, their demands are reflected in governments that, to some degree or another, have to stand up to the USA. There are real grounds for hope, for a united alliance against imperialism.

No to Military Intervention! Yes to Peace!

No to Privatisation! Yes to Public Services!

Solidarity with the Colombian People!

SINTRAEMCALI - MOMENT OF DECISION

If there is anyone on the front line in the stuggle against capitalism it is the SINTRAEMCALI workers and their leaders. Their fight to stop the privatisation of water, electricity and telephone services provided by EMCALI municipal corporation is not a simple labour dispute, it is about the values on which society should be run.

PERSECUTION

The state is closing in and before long the paramilitaries will have laid full seige. The union has contacts all over the city, and from varied sources it evaluates the situation thus:

1. .. Cali is surrounded by four paramilitary fronts. There are towns nearby where union organisers just cannot enter, on pain of death. Three unions have been targeted - SINTRAEMCALI, the university workers union SINTRAUNICOL and the technical and further education workers union SINDESENA. A special unit of 150 paramilitaries has infiltrated into Cali itself with the specific purpose of hitting these unions and their supporters;
2. .. the paramilitaries have decided that within the next three months they will assassinate four named leaders;
3. .. in the six months since Uribe came to power there has been increased persecution. For example very close tailing by the police intelligence unit SIJIN of the union leaders and their familes, including their children to their places of study. SINTRAEMCALI leaders have been filmed at work, in meetings, and relaxing on Sundays;
4. .. the raids on union members homes has increased and is now a daily event.. Early this morning 25 army members raided the home of a worker in the drains section.
5. .. the Interior Ministry is cutting back the union leaders' security schemes. The bodyguards have not been paid for two months.

All of this is in addition to the confrontation on 29th January, when the national police broke up SINTRAEMCALI's rally with tear gas and explosive papas, home made grenades.

SINTRAEMCALI - URIBE SHOWDOWN

"You must respect me! You must respect me!" shouted president Uribe Vélez across the table at SINTRAEMCALI's president Lucho Hernandez. Lucho was calm, "I respect the president, but the last part of what you just said is not true". "Yes he said it!" shouted the audience.

This verbal confrontation on 10th March was shown on national television and reported in all the press, a Colombian union leader had dared to stand up to Uribe. The setting was a supposed 'public' forum to which Uribe and his Superintendent of Public Services presented their options for the future of EMCALI public services corporation. The meeting was packed with employers and politicians and took place inside a military airbase. Lucho, accompanied by Congress representative Alexander Lopez and three representatives of Cali's poor communities, had to argue his way in. There are two "publics" in Colombia - the elite and the common people, and Uribe's consultation was obviously meant only for the elite club.

This goes to the core of the dispute over EMCALI's future. Are water, electricity and telecommunications services to be for the whole community or just the rich? For years SINTRAEMCALI has been battling for genuine community-led services. EMCALI has the lowest rates of all public and private corporations in Colombia. General prices rose by 27.8% between 1998 and 2001. Privatised electricity corporation CODENSA increased its prices to the lower strata by 46 %, while EMCALI has kept charges just below the rate of inflation.

Uribe's position is clear. His first option is to liquidate EMCALI and sell it off. His second option will keep EMCALI formally in the public sector, but on the two conditions that SINTRAEMCALI's Collective Agreement is broken, and that a Social Capitalisation Fund be established. This Fund would manage all EMCALI's debts and be controlled by the corporation's creditors, the US company Intergen and the national and international banks whose debt demands are bleeding the corporation, plus token representation from the workers and service users. In Uribe's proposal the Fund would be able to direct decisions on investment, debt and the business's operational contracts. A public-private partnership with the private element, finance capital, in the driving seat.

The point in dispute between Uribe and Lucho? Uribe claimed that on his previous visit to Cali on 9th August he had committed government support to the Social Capitalisation Fund. Lucho pointed out that he had not, and despite the baying against him of the business class, even the establishment El Tiempo newspaper reported that video evidence proved Lucho right.

Uribe relies on intimidation to get his way. He set a two week deadline, that ends on 24th March, for the union to submit [this has since been extended to 1st May - see next page].

All sections of the establishment from the press to the army are piling on the pressure. But SINTRAEMCALI workers enjoy massive support for their stand from the Cali community, and now emphatically from national leaders of the Polo Democratico opposition, and from state sector unions (education, health, oil, telecomms) likewise challenging the privatisation programme, which in Colombia means fighting for their very survival.

In a week of solidarity action Congressman Wilson Borja, Senator Gustavo Preto, presidential candidate Lucho Garzon, indigenous representative Taita Lorenzo Almendra, intellectuals Fals Borda and Daniel Libreros and other trade unions came to Cali to rally in defence of EMCALI. They addressed three mass meetings, the real community had come out to hear them, not Uribe. Alexander Lopez and Wilson Borja pointed out how Uribe's National Development Plan is being put to the test in the struggle to defend public services. Gustavo Preto emphasised that alongside the campaign for an abstention against Uribe's referendum, the struggle to defend EMCALI has become the 'point of inflexion' of the mass movement to break neoliberalism in Colombia, "from this point we unite, and the struggle goes up".

Solidarity for this united struggle came internationally through messages of support from Ecuador, Spain, from UNISON, War on Want, the TUC/Justice for Colombia and several individuals in Britain, and from delegations of ten US trade unionists as and the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.

The regional Public Defender, a state official akin to an Ombudsman, called a Public Hearing on 12th March. The government was invited but did not at end. Lots of young people from SENA, the apprentice education institution, arrived chanting and singing. An auditorium for 300 people was packed to overflowing, with several hundred more outside.

SINTRAEMCALI presented a full report, showing that EMCALI's biggest problem is the huge debt it is carrying. The corporation is a microcosm of the country as a whole, the minimum condition for viability is non-payment of corrupt contracts (the contract with Intergen is an Enron like scam) and renegotiation of the debt.

Colombia's army and police show no respect for the people. While the Hearing was taken place, they were stripping trade unionist body guards of their arms and filming the leaders. A special army roadblock was in place to harass the leaders afterwards. Human rights defender Berenice Celeyta was directly threatened by an army sergeant, "Go kill yourself!"

Everyone is now very concerned for Lucho Hernandez's life, his stand against Uribe is recognised as a psychological breakthrough against the climate of fear. The community respects SINTRAEMCALI. If the privatisation goes through it will be by trickery and violence.

Update: Speaking over the phone union President Luis "Lucho" Hernandez reported on the latest round of negotiations that took place at a military airbase near Cali on Monday, 24th March. The union offered to cut the workers benefits by 20 million pesos annually, as a sacrifice to save EMCALI corporation. But this offer was rejected by Uribe as being insufficient. "Uribe wants the workers to hand over all our rights, that is his price for not liquidating EMCALI. But once we have given up our rights, he will then privatise the corporation anyway", Lucho said.

The union is under intense pressure from all sections of the establishment. Threats against the union leaders and their families have not gone away, Lucho has had to move home once again.

Meantime the community is mobilising.

Andy Higginbottom

OUT TO THE STREETS! URIBE IS IN CALI AGAIN

24th March was a bank holiday Monday in Cali. A day when all the men and women working at EMCALI, EICE, as well as their partners, joined togther in Plaza Caicedo to await the results of the meeting taking place in the Military Base between the President of the Republic, "Super" Eva Maria Uribe, SINTRAEMCALI, the mayor and various citizen's watchbodies and associations.

It was not a public event, everything had been organised by word of mouth from the previous Friday. That day the union had received a threatening letter from director Lourdes Salamanca advising that President Uribe did not recognise the accord signed on 18th March establishing a timetable for negotiations between all the parties. Salamanca had insisted and that the corporation's future would be decided by Uribe on 24th March.

Those who were present and informed were the Anti-Mutiny Police who surrounded the plaza and took down the details of everyone who approached. And in the plaza were the narks [literally "straps"], the usual agents of military intelligence dressed in civilian clothes.

The speaker system broadcasting into the plaza reported that the President of the Republic was being fraternal and friendly with the trade union, that the meeting was being conducted on good terms and that, yes, the two presidents were "respecting each other".

Meanwhile, in the district of Agua Blanca it was a different story. There were around 100 people from the displaced communities, as well as community organisations and students in solidarity with SINTRAEMCALI, gathered for the defence of their public services and demanding their rights as displaced people.

The day's protest started at 10.30am with a blockade of the principal street, with tyres, trees and guaduas. Dramatic events started to unfold half an hour later. A civilian dressed man driving a car with number plates "Aro 172" shot indiscriminately at the demonstraters, one of whom was lightly injured in their left arm. At the request of the demonstrators the police went to where the car was but, with a complicity already well known in such cases, the police ignored the man who had fired the shots and advised the community that the best way to avoid worse injury was for them to give up the protest.

Other members of the state security forces accompanied by men in civilian dress started to seek out and tried to detain five known members of the caleña community. After a great battle, the police dispersed the crowd with their sticks.

At two in the afternoon SINTRAEMCALI's President arrived at Caicedo Plaza, where the workers had been waiting impatiently for news of the meeting. Lucho reported that at last Uribe had recognised the 18th March accord, and that the working commission formed on that date would start its work in the next few days. So we now have another dead line, the First of May. Legally, the Collective Agreement cannot be changed or revised until this date, so historic for all the workers of the world.

Finally, the President of SINTRAEMCALI expressed his admiration for those activists in the community who had once again risked their lives in the Agua Blanca protest, and who had not been intimidated by the sticks or the bullets of the country's privatising forces.

The men and women workers withdrew peacefully from the plaza, in the expectancy that 1st May will be another historic date in the history of struggle to save their employer EMCALI as a state corporation.SINTRAEMCALI Human Rights Department

Alexander López Maya, president of the Sixth Commission of the House of Representatives, has disputed that Social Capitalisation Funds will contribute to saving public services. He points out that article 14 of the National Development Plan, which promotes this new mechanism, is nothing more than another form of privatisation whose application will start with EMCALI...

The congressman argues that article 14 is in contradiction with Law 142, which governs the passing of public services into private hands, when it states that "the Funds can be constituted as independent assets administered by trusts, contracted in a way that conforms with the rules of private law".

López Maya also says that the Plan hands extra-constitutional powers to the national Superintendent of Public Services, at the expense of local autonomy. In the case of EMCALI, as in most others, it is the local authority which is the entity owning corporations providing public services.

"I don't believe that the Government is interested in saving EMCALI and maintaining it as an Industrial and Commercial State Corporation (EICE), since this form of state corporation doesn't appear anywhere in the Development Plan. Although Uribe says that he wants to keep EMCALI as an EICE, everything in his Development Plan about these Social Capitalisation Funds shows the contrary". Alvaro Angarita

* Uribe's proposed Social Capitalisation Fund for EMCALI will have two categories of shareholders. Preferential "A" shares will be awarded to creditors and suppliers according to the size of the debt to them. The workers and users of EMCALI's services can obtain category "B" shares. This apparently provided a stake in the corporation for interested members of the community (and the 'social' element of the Fund). But it is a trick. All voting on important matters will be based on size of holding of the "A" shares.

The Displaced People of Agua Blanca

Agua Blanca, on the outskirts of Cali, is home to some of the more than 2 million displaced people in Colombia. They are forced to live in overcrowded makeshift plastic shelters, which offer little protection from the rain, whilst the tropical heat of Cali turns them into sweltering ovens during the day.

The overcrowding is so intense that often 5 families or more are forced share one of these tiny huts measuring less than 10 feet by 10 feet. A few have a mattress or covering on the ground, the majority are forced to sleep on the bare earth, which is often wet and waterlogged. The communities lack the basic materials to repair, or make watertight their shelters. One such community in Agua Blanca has only one tap for more than 5,000 people. The lack of water endangers the health of everyone. The children are malnourished and suffering from many of the diseases associated with extreme poverty and hunger. The entire community is suffering from the lack of food, medical attention and adequate shelter. In Uribe's Colombia, displaced people are entitled to assistance for 3 months after registering as displaced. However the very organisation set up to help the victims of paramilitary terror has been infiltrated by the paramilitaries. The majority of displaced people are too scared to give their names and details to the very people responsible for displacing them. Some desperate people have resorted to telling the authorities that the guerillas displaced them, simply as a way to protect themselves and secure a little food for their families; whilst in reality they have been displaced by paramilitaries looking to extend their control of strategically important regions, often those being fumigated under Plan Colombia.

The Colombian state both denies these communities their basic legal rights, and fails to protect them from further harassment. Many people are displaced more than once. State forces further harass these communities, raiding them, and forcibly evicting them. In March this year the community of Daniel Guillard were attacked by the police. They destroyed all their shelters and burnt their few possessions, including all the wood and plastic used to construct the shelters. Two members of the municipal human rights department witnessed the destruction of the camp. Not only did they fail to stop the burning of the community's possessions, they also made no attempt to advise them or support them in gaining the shelter the municipality is legally obliged to provide.

The harassment of these displaced communities by the state and the paramilitaries is another horrific extension of the attempt to crush all forms of social protest and resistance by the government of Uribe Velez. We call for the abolition of Plan Colombia and other measures which have led to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. We also call on the government of Colombia to provide for all displaced people the legal rights guaranteed to them by law. It is vital for the protection of these communities that they receive international support and accompaniment. They are also desperately in need of aid, especially food, medical supplies and building materials. Please contact the Colombia Solidarity Campaign for further details if you are able to help.

Since 2001, in the Caribbean Coast of Colombia, complaints have become ever more frequent from a population suffering from power cuts carried out by the electricity service providers Electrocosta and Electricaribe. However, months later, after industrialists filed a complaint relating to the power cuts, it has been revealed that the companies cut the power in order to force consumers to pay outstanding bills.

The situation has been worsened by the growth in popular protests throughout the region. The people have blocked roads, confronted the police, and organised marches to the companies' offices. This situation occurred (and is still occurring) in the municipalities of Dibulla, Fonseca and Palomino in the Guajira, in Valledupar in Cesar, in Barranquilla and Luruaco and in the Atlántico, in Turbaco Bolívar, in Montería Córdoba, to cite just a few. Protests are becoming more frequent and more aggressive, particularly against the electricity contractors who are charged with the task of cutting the power in the poorest regions of the big cities.

In July 2002, during a protest in the city of Soledad in the Atlántico Department, a child ended up dead. This event generated a torrent of protest against the offices of Electricaribe, with the demonstrators accusing the company of being responsible for the death of the child. The power cuts have also caused confrontations between those people who have illegal connections to the electricity grid, and those who have legal connections, which has resulted in numerous victims over the last three years.

As a result of these problems, the Commercial Providers have opted to cut the electricity from the main control centres, which leaves entire regions without power, regardless of whether they have paid their bills or not. Entire municipalities have been left without electricity such as Turbaco and Bolívar and whole neighbourhoods such as "Dividivi" and "31 de Octubre" in Riohacha Guajira. These acts further inflame the anger of the people against the commercial companies.

This problem can be traced back to 1998, when the Colombian State decided to restructure state electricity enterprises and sell them to the highest bidder, arguing that they were controlled by local politicians who used them to buy votes or appropriate money through illicit contracts. In 2000 Unión Fenosa, a Spanish company from Gallega, the third most important in Spain, bought all of the electricity enterprises on the Costa Caribe (Caribbean Coast) for a little more than 400 million dollars. With the high rate of electricity wastage, and low rate of bill payment, the company adopted an aggressive strategy that allowed it to increase payments from 40% to 75% by causing power cuts in selected areas. These power cuts also affected water supplies, as the aqueducts are reliant on electricity to function. For that reason the provision of both electricity and water was suspended in a series of poor neighbourhoods in big cities such as Barranquilla, and small municipalities such as Turbaco or Bolívar.

Unión Fenosa's refusal to tolerate debts also extended to pressuring the Colombian State, and in December 2002, it threatened to leave 100 cities and villages without electricity unless the government helped to resolve the financial situation. The situation was partially resolved by the Colombian state offering the company electricity as payment in kind from one of its generators. Paradoxically, multinational corporations descend desperately on the state when they face losses, while propagating the myth of the free market during those moments when privatisation processes are taking place. This is what has been called the privatisation of profits and the socialisation of losses.

These events highlight that the administration of public services by private companies concerns itself only with profitability, and with only that goal in mind unthinkable actions such as power and water cuts can be applied to pressure the populations into paying their debts. This situation is complicated by the fact that the cutting of supplies of public services such as water and electricity contravenes fundamental human rights, and has been used only during wars and the worst conflicts. They should not be used as a means of pressure or coercion. It is important to understand that the regional population are suffering from terrible levels of poverty, which in some areas exceeds 80%. It appears that when a multinational enterprise provides a public service they will only offer it to those who can afford to pay, and in Colombia the number who can afford it is getting smaller and smaller, due to the adoption of the International Monetary Fund's policies.

It is clear that these multinationals have no scruples when the hour to defend their interests comes. In the case of public services it leaves us with serious worries relating to the social conflicts that their methods of coercion to force payment might generate.

What is even more worrying is that they will even blackmail the Colombian state by threatening to cut off power to 100 population centres, thus forcing it to resolve the financial problems of the company. Faced with that situation the government paid the equivalent of $10 million dollars arguing that they did not want a negative incident which might put off other foreign investors who may in the future be interested in the country. However, the root of the problem still remains unresolved. Unión Fenosa remains in control of the electricity providers in the region, and the populations of the Caribbean Coast of Colombia remain in danger of being deprived of energy and the ensuing benefits of this public service (aqueducts, hospitals, communication).

They are suffering because in many cases they do not have sufficient income to pay their bills; this is the root of what the mass media misleadingly and manipulatively calls the 'culture of non-payment'.

FORCED DISAPPEARANCE At 12.30pm on 11th March 2003 several individuals carrying arms and with their faces covered broke into the dwelling of ANTONIO JOSE CARVAJAL. They forced him to go with them. Minutes later they returned demanding that the family give them his identity papers...ANTONIO JOSE is a militant of the Colombian Communist Party.

COLOMBIAN FRIENDS OF THE EARTH UNDER ATTACK The Association Centro Nacional Salud, Ambiente y Trabajo, CENSAT AGUA VIVA - Friends of the Earth Colombia - an environmentalist organisation and member of the largest international federation of environmentalists (Friends of the Earth International - FOEI) has become the subject of state harassment and intimidation by paramilitaries.

ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP DAUGHTER OF CUT HUMAN RIGHTS DIRECTOR The CUT's National Human Rights Team, denounces before national and international public opinion the attempt to kidnap ANA PAULINA TOVAR GONZALEZ, daughter of DOMINGO TOVAR ARRIETA Director of the Human Rights Department.

PROTEST URIBE'S EXTERMINATION POLICY Through its Human Rights Department the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia -CUT (United Workers Federation) denounces the policy of exterminating trade unionists, especially those of the CUT, under the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez and its proclaimed "Democratic Security".

PROTEST AGGRESSION DIRECTED AT CALI'S DISPLACED COMMUNITIES At at 5:00 a.m.on Wednesday 19th March 2003, the Colombian police attacked the displaced communities in the Barrio of los Lagos I (Commune 13), in the urban and marginalized district of Agua Blanca, near to Cali.

COCA COLA UNION LEADER WILLIAM MENDOZA UNDER THREAT William Mendoza, president of the CocaCola workers' union (Sinaltrainal) in the city of Barrancabermeja in Colombia, and his family are again being threatened by the right-wing paramilitary death squads.

Clips from the Struggle

Community Mothers fight police

"Yesterday's Community Mothers' protest in front of the Colombia Institute of Family Welfare became a camped battle with police. The women, who were protesting against budget cuts, brought police intervention when they took over the four lanes of 68th Avenue." El Tiempo 13th March 2003

Lorica Witnesses Symbolic Fish BurialTwo thousand people from ASPROCIG (Ciénaga Grande Producers and Community Development Association) marched through Lorica's main streets yesterday. The demonstrators symbolically buried a giant fish in protest at the environmental damage to the Sinú River caused by the Urra dam. The Association brings together peasant farmers, fisherfolk and the Embera Katio indigenous people all of whom call for the dismantling of the hydroelectric project. El Universal Cartagena, 15th March 2003

The "José Alvear Restrepo" Lawyers Collectibve was awarded the Martin Ennals prize on 31st March 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland for it outstanding and courageous work.

ETB Privatisation Blocked - For Now

SINTRATELEFONOS the union of telecommunicatons workers at Bogotá Telecommunications Corporation ETB has exposed corruption in the comany's management. This action backed by a series of protests and marches has temporarily blocked privatisation. The union calls for international solidarity to help keep its services in the public sector.

Contact: Sandra Cordero sandrapat67hotmail.com and sintratelefonoshotmail.com

Activists and trade unionists from around the world responded to the CUT's call for international solidarity with the Colombian Oil Workers Union USO. Despite a campaign to undermine support for USO, delegates from five countries visited Arauca, as part of February's solidarity mission.

Arauca - Laboratory of War

Arauca is one of Colombia's two foremost oil producing regions. Last September it was declared a "zone of consolidation and rehabilitation," bringing the department under direct military rule. Recent articles in the mainstream Colombian media have reported Arauca's "recapture" by the forces of the state. The Interior Minister himself has labelled Arauca as the "Laboratory of War", and the national press are full of praise for the actions that they say have returned peace and stability to this troubled area, and liberated its residents from the grip of the guerilla. We discovered a very different reality.

The history of Arauca is one of governmental neglect. Even after the discovery of oil, the vacuum created by the complete lack of government presence and investment has left Colombia's rebel armies as the main providers of the area's sparse public services. Community leaders reject the repeated claims of the oil companies (US Occidental Petroleum "Oxy" and Spanish company Repsol operate in Arauca) that oil production brings investment and development to the area. When villagers in Caño Limon, next to the country's largest oil field, asked Oxy for assistance in building the region's first school, they received just 50 bags of cement. The regalias, royalties paid from oil profits to the regions of production were traditionally squandered on prestige projects or stolen by corrupt officials, leaving next to nothing for social investment. Central government has now stopped the payment of regalias completely, saying that they are stolen by the FARC and ELN. Skeleton state services have been left with no funding at all.

Emergency measures introduced as part of the declaration of the special zones have given the military civil powers over the population. On arriving at the airport, along with all arrivals resident or otherwise, we were filmed, photographed and questioned by the security forces. Colombia's Constitutional Court has ruled these procedures illegal but the army has been reluctant to abandon their new powers. In a subsequent meeting with the regional Procurador, these illegal army activities were dismissed as military over exuberance. Meetings with the regional authorities, whether military, police or civil judicial were largely unproductive, all showed a united front in denying the existence of paramilitary groups in the area and refused to answer questions about human rights violations by the armed forces. The Governor (a military appointee) the Prosecutor and the Chief of Police had all been appointed by central government since the declaration of the special zone and seemed well trained in dealing with human rights delegations.

Regional trade unions and social groups told an entirely different story from the government's and press' established truth. Representatives of teachers union ASEDAR, described a systematic attack against their members by paramilitary groups which had begun arriving in Arauca the previous year. 3 teachers were assassinated in 2002, and a further 96 were forcibly displaced. We heard stories of some schools without teachers and other schools without students, due to massive forced displacements. Students in several schools had been accused of being guerillas and subsequently murdered.

Health workers union, ANTHOC, and municipal services workers union, SINTRAEMSERPA, told us of similar persecution against their members. Workers from these unions, who due to the nature of their work have to travel extensively in rural areas had been publicly labelled as subversives by high ranking army officials. 5 health workers have since been assassinated. Gustavo Minera of ANTHOC claimed that health workers were targeted if they treated people who were accused of being guerillas. Threats and arbitrary detentions of municipal services workers have decimated union membership, leaving no one left to protect public services from privatisation. Union President Luis Roja, was particularly concerned that the increase in paramilitary activity targeted against public services workers coincided exactly with the increased presence of the army in the zone.Campesino organisations ACA and FENSUAGRO, and indigenous organisation, CRIA, testified to the huge increase in military and paramilitary violence in rural areas since the declaration of the zone of consolidation. We were told of close collaboration between the army and paras, joint roadblocks and patrols, and joint operations that had resulted in several massacres. Neither the police nor the army had shown any interest in investigating these events. Campesinos are further affected by the curfews and travel restrictions that prevent them from taking their produce to market, leading to food shortages throughout the department.

Large-scale displacement had led to severe health problems and malnutrition for those forced into urban slums. 10 members of one campesino organisation had been massacred in the village of Rosario. Estella Rodriguez of ACA claimed that it was impossible to know the true extent of human rights violations and massacres due to the travel restrictions and curfews which left many communitie completely cut off from the outside world, and particularly vulnerable to attack. Journalists, human rights defenders and investigators are unable to reach isolated areas.

Perhaps the most worrying of our meetings was with representatives of the regional press. All articles for publication in newspapers and on radio have to be cleared by the military. It is impossible to publish anything vaguely controversial. One senior military official accused the press of being terrorists. 2 local journalists were assassinated in 2002, and 2 others fled the department following death threats. All the journalists whom we met spoke of their absolute fear of the authorities, and their inability to exercise their duty as journalists. Bernardo Salas, a journalist from the local paper in Arauca told us, "there is no press freedom here."

The Oil Workers Union, USO, is the largest and most influential union in the region. Their representatives told us of persecution against their members that had led to a number of assassinations and imprisonments of union officials. The situation for the union was further complicated by the heavy militarisation of all oil installations. Oxy provide landing strips within oil installations for US spy planes working in counter insurgency actions, and combined with a heavy army presence in all workplaces, the oil installations have become a principal target for the guerilla. According to Luis Alvares, president of the USO in Arauca, workers are forced to continue working in what sometimes descends into all out war, with insurgents firing rockets and mortars into the installations, and the army inside responding with tanks. When workers complained, and the union requested that the army bases should be moved to outside the work plants, management accused the union of being guerillas.

This stigmatisation of the union was repeated at the highest level of Oxy management, when they accused union members of blowing up the oil wells. This of course has led to increased persecution of the union by both the army and paras. Oil workers at Oxy have a special dispensation which obliges them to travel during curfew hours, a time that is considered too dangerous for normal movement. One bus carrying workers was subsequently shot at by an army helicopter, and another was blown up by paramilitaries, killing 3 workers and injuring 12 more. Members of USO were also very worried by the environmental impact of the Oxy operation. Water in the area has been drying up at an alarming rate, leading many people to speak of the "desertification" of the land and river systems. It is well known that Oxy pumps river water into their wells to increase pressure for oil extraction, but no one really knows what effect this is having on local water levels. So far Oxy has refused union demands for an in depth environmental study of local water resources and the impact of oil production.

Due to travel restrictions and curfews imposed by the army, we were unable to travel much within Arauca. We did however visit Saravena and met with trade union and social organisations. Saravena is home to the infamous 18th Brigade of the army, and to US troops who supposedly arrived in January 2003 to train the Colombian army in protecting the oil pipeline. According to sources we met, including the Mayor of Saravena, the US troops have been in the area since September 2002, and far from being restricted to a training role, are regularly seen patrolling the area during counter insurgency operations. Understandably the local population is very worried that this is the first step in a huge US military build up. Everyone wonders how the US will respond if one of these troops is killed or captured by the guerilla.

The social movement in Saravena told us of their persecution at the hands of the army. In November, 3,000 townspeople were rounded up at gunpoint and herded into the sports stadium. Here, the security services photographed, filmed, questioned and finger printed everyone before marking each person with indelible ink. Most people were released the following day, although 43 people from the town remain in prison on charges of rebellion.

The majority are trade union leaders, with teachers and health workers the worst affected. Another great source of worry was the creation of the informers network. Local people told of serious abuses of this system, with the army bribing children with sweets, money and trips in tanks to inform on their parents, and adults falsely informing on others to settle scores. Trust and the very social fabric of the community were quickly being replaced by suspicion and fear. According to Orlando Pais of the CUT in Arauca, "all inhabitants are treated as guerillas, all us Araucans are considered enemies of the state." We were also told of how 12 self-confessed paramilitaries have been incorporated into Uribe's campesino soldier network with the full knowledge of local authorities.

All social organisations and representatives of civil society with whom we met agreed that, contrary to national press reports, violence and human rights violations have increased dramatically in Arauca since the declaration of the special zones, and that despite the greatly increased army presence, paramilitary violence have reached unprecedented levels. All groups, even local civil authorities, mentioned two main obstacles to solving the social and armed conflict in Arauca. The first is the lack of will from central government for peace. A recent United Nations proposal for regional dialogue between armed actors and civil society in Arauca has unfortunately been dismissed out of hand by the Uribe government. The second main obstacle is the massive investment in the military solution that not only inflames the conflict but diverts much needed funds away from social investment, services without which there will never be justice and peace.

David Rhys-Jones

Photo: mural protesting US takeover of the region

Photo: mispelt slogan of the paramilitary AUC

Wake Up Call!

Bogotá, Wednesday 4th February

Listeners to CARACOL radio station got a wake up call this morning. Carlos Castaño, the leader of the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia AUC, had a 47 minute interview on the main breakfast show. Castaño's main message is that opposition to Uribe's referendum project is subversive and hence the leaders of the abstention campaign are targets that have to be eliminated. Castaño added that he has no problems with the armed forces. Evidently Uribe's government and the interests it represents have little problem with Castaño. He has been granted immunity from prosecution.

This mass media platform for a man who boasts in his autobiography of directing assassinations and massacres for more than a decade (he is responsible for thousands of deaths) illustrates how far Colombia's ruling class has come to openly adopting the fascist option. CARACOL is owned by the Santo Domingo conglomerate, one of the big four groups that dominate the economy. Santa Domingo are major shareholders of the Bavaria beer company, and large sections of the media.

The International Delegation for the Right to Life, invited by oil workers' union USO and the union centres CUT and CGTD, started its work today. We heard testimonies from unions and NGOs reporting the horrific scale of human rights violations.

The CGTD has a humanitarian Catholic philosophy. It has 122 thousand registered members (an underestimate according to its officials). Members are mostly in the private sector trades of sugar production, textiles, engineering and pharmaceuticals, as well as local government employees and telecommunication workers in the state sector.

Last year 12 CGTD members were assassinated. National Organiser Gabriel Perez reports that across the board employers are trying to break collective agreements, to withdraw whatever limited rights such as pensions the workers have managed to achieve. These contrapliegos - counterdemands - are presented to arbitration tribunals that find in the employers' favour. Gabriel Perez comments that Uribe fully supports the private sector offensive to reduce labour costs: "This government doesn't know anything about social dialogue".

The CGTD cooperates with the CUT and the much smaller CTC (51 thousand members) in the Comando Nacional Unitario, the United National Command. There are137 thousand members of independent unions not affiliated to a centre. And then there is the CUT with 546 thousand members the majority section.

The National Trade Union School ENS points out that the total number of 856 thousand trade unionists represents just 5% of Colombia's economically active population, a sharp decline from the peak of 15% unionisation at the beginning of the 1990s.

The CUT has many public sector affiliates fighting cuts and privatisation. Its members have been the hardest hit by repression. Domingo Tovar, director of CUT's Human Rights Department, reported that last year there 507 were human rights violations against the federation's members, including 172 assassinations, 164 recorded death threats, 26 kidnappings, 17 assassination attempts, 7 forced disappearances and 132 detentions. About 80 CUT members were forced into exile.

Drawing on information provided by the CGTD, the CUT and ENS the provisional figure is that 184 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated in 2002. FECODE, the teachers' federation, suffered the most, with 79 members assassinated.

Electrical industry union SINTRAELECOL's president reported that the union has 9,600 members. It has lost 37 members to assassinations in the last 3 years. 370 of its members have just been sacked in one go.

ASONAL organises judges, magistrates and state employees in the justice system. The union reports that assassinations are used to attack the independence of the justice system. 15 of its members are in exile, 10 have been disappeared. Uribe's Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio has announced 600 sackings.

The health workers' union ANTHOC has 25 thousand members out of the estimated 70 thousand in the state health sector. Uribe's government plans to cut 25 thousand health jobs. The union has suffered 567 human rights violations in the last two years. The principal perpetrators are the paramilitaries. In Cesar hospital directors have been marking out the activists that they want to get rid of.

UNEB is the union of bank workers. They have been spared the worst of the human rights abuses, but are struggling on two fronts: for the right to strike and for agreements to be negotiated across the industry.

USO has enormous respect. Not least because it was the union that fought to create the state oil corporation, and continues to fight for the hydrocarbon industry to be shaped in the interests of the Colombian people. Fernando Ramirez reported that 87 USO members have been assassinated and 3 disappeared. Seven USO members are in prison, including the union's International Secretary Hernando Hernandez, who is under house arrest.

The university workers' union SINTRAUNICOL, brewery workers' SINALTRABAVARIA, apprentices' and technical education workers' union SINDESENA, soft drinks and food workers' union SINALTRAINAL all gave evidence of the state and paramilitary repression against them. *

FENSUAGRO is a federation of agricultural workers and peasants, with nearly 10 thousand members. Martha Sanchez, the federation's Women's Secretary, estimates that in the last 20 years as many as 4 thousand members have been assassinated. The truth is that much of the repression of rural workers and peasants is less documented. Human rights organisations agree that most of the fighting in Colombia's civil war is still in the countryside. They estimate that last year 4 thousand out of the 4,600 political homicides were in rural areas.

The CUT unions insist that those like Carlos Castaño who are carrying out this genocide do their bloody work with complete impunity from prosecution by the state authorities. The responsibility lies not only with those who pull the trigger, but with the intelligence gatherers, the financiers and intellectual authors of these crimes against the Colombian working class.

Valentin Pacho, representing the World Federation of Trade Unions on the delegation, and a former General Secretary of the Peruvian trade unions, pointed out how similar the Colombian horror today is to the experience of the Fujimori 'democratic' dictatorship in his country.

Fernando Ramirez summed up by stressing the need for active international solidarity:

"We need our own Embassies of People's Solidarity".

Andy Higginbottom

* As this report is being written we hear that the family of a union bodyguard in Bugalagrande has been threatened. Emergency calls are being made to arrange their removal. SINALTRAINAL organises at the Nestle plant in the town.

Photo: University workers' SINTRAUNICOL and agricultural workers' union FENSUAGRO present reports

Photo: Domingo Tovar of CUT and Fernando Ramirez of USO call for urgent international action

CUT's Campaigning Priorities

The CUT's National Committee of 30th-31st January decided on its campaigns for 2003.

First and foremost the CUT will be fully involved in the Campaign for an Active Abstention against Uribe's referendum, due to take place in May or August. Uribe has presented his 18 question referendum as a popular consultation on political reform. Certainly, everyone knows that official politics are highly corrupt but the CUT sees this as a pretext. The real issue is fiscal reform, not political reform. Cutting the state deficit, through raising taxes while drastically cutting expenditure, is what Uribe has agreed with the IMF as the condition for it extending a standby loan facility. But the cause for the state deficit is the ballooning public debt crisis. According to CUT President Carlos Rodriguez Colombia is paying out 50% of its revenues to service the domestic and foreign debt.

Yes votes in the referendum will endorse a package of highly regressive government measures: extension of the sales tax to cover household goods, freezing state workers' wages, withdrawing pension rights and unemployment benefits, merging state departments and cutting the state workforce by up to 100 thousand. Since, according to the 1991 Constitution, a minimum number of votes are needed for the results to be binding, even 'No' votes will be useful to Uribe.

That is why the CUT, along with all popular organisations, is calling for an active abstention. They are challenging for equal access in the mass media for the Abstention position. The abstentionista camp is already winning the political argument, hence the paramilitary announcement of repression against its leaders. In Colombia if the establishment does not get what it wants, very quickly there is a turn to violent methods.

Carlos Rodriguez explained that Uribe's government talks of a Plan B to satisfy the IMF, that will come into force if the referendum goes against him. Plan B involves more taxes, diverting oil royalties and savings funds into current expenditure.

The country is skirting the precipice of financial meltdown, which adds a note of desperation to all government actions.

There is a second dimension underlying the referendum questions, which is indeed to do with reforming the political structures. The effect of these will be to diminish Congress and centralise power in the president, another echo of the Fujimori project. Party lists will have to gain 200,000 votes before they can have an MP. In the context of the intimidation and assassination of left-wing candidates that characterises Colombian elections, this is a clear move to do away with any parliamentary representation for the popular movement.

The CUT's other priorities are opposition to the Free Trade Area of Americas and the government's reform programme. The CUT's fourth campaign priority is defence of human rights, as Carlos Rodriguez highlights: "We want the world to know how many activists and leaders are being killed in Colombia."

Photos: Two figures from the Active Abstention campaign. Above: former CUT president Lucho Garzon speaking at campaign launch Below: "Refe" mascot of the 'abstientistas'

BARRANCABERMEJA - UNIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT UNDER SEIGE

We arrived in Barranca (as the locals call it) on 5th February. The first thing you notice is the heat. The second thing is how many soldiers are in the airport - this is in addition to airport security. And what you have to know about Barranca is that the city and surrounding area are in the hands of the AUC paramilitaries (paras).

We came to offer our solidarity to USO, the OilWorkers' Union and other social organisations, and to see how they manage to operate under such difficult conditions. We had to move about in a convoy of four vehicles for our own protection.

Popular Women's Organisation

The OFP Organizacion Femenina Popular (Popular Women's Organisation) grew out of a Church project targeted at the poor in the diocese. Initially they provided cheap breakfasts, additionally developing projects relating to food security. The OFP has been targeted by the paras who accuse its members being in the ELN (Ejercito Liberacion Nacional National Liberation Army, the second largest guerilla group), and "bad examples" to other women. However now the paras have changed slightly because of the popularity of the OFP, accepting the OFP's social provision but not their political work regarding empowerment of women.

Showdown at Cantagallo

We are taken by boat to Cantagallo along the river from Barranca, for a meeting with the authorities with respect to what they are doing to guarantee human rights. On arrival, we are delayed by the military taking our names and organisations.

As we near the OFP office we see that there is a mobilisation against the meeting taking place. There about 100 people milling about outside. Some have placards saying "We are sympathisers of the AUC". It's a shocking sight. The interpreter tells me that the paras have gone round peoples houses ordering them to turn out, and threatening to turn off the water supply of those who don't go along. There are four or five men going through the crowd orchestrating the commotion and encouraging others to shout. They are out for confrontation. There is an argument between the Defensor del Pueblo (human rights Ombudsman) and people shouting from the crowd. The army is around but makes no attempt to calm the situation.

We in the delegation move to go inside the OFP building. Most of the crowd follows. The top army officer present appears to be from military intelligence, he is taking photos of everyone on his digital camera. (The head of army is apparently away on a human rights training course!) The meeting is overrun. The Army, Police and Mayor are saying that they did not know why it is taking place at all as they have not had any complaints about human rights. When army spoke they were loudly cheered and applauded. This organised intervention has let them off the hook.

As a demonstration of how the extreme right functions, in how the threat of violence without it actually taking place can work, this was very informative. The "paras" succeeded in making the local executive of USO withdraw and also the withdrawal of the complaints.

BARRANCABERMEJA REFINERY

Early next morning, we are at a meeting outside the refinery gates to catch the early shift. I speak in faltering Spanish to make links regarding same policies inflicted on us here as they have upon them. We visit the USO office and various plant meetings called to build for the strike. Some doubts expressed by workers but they appear to have a grim determination to resist.

The main protest is at dinnertime - denunciations of management outside their office. Heavy presence of the army - armed and ready for action. Protests made about privatisation, attacks on the union - its leaders and activists, and that no worker should pay for this war with their job.

MEETING WITH NGOs

Peace Brigades generally accompany people with a political profile who do not have access to the bodyguard programme and have a clear threat against them.

Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights making denunciations of human rights abuses both nationally and internationally. Organises training for protection of human and civil rights. Situation in Magdelena Medio deteriorating as the paramilitary terror is leading to the disintegration of civil society as social and political organisations are unable to function. (The reports of Colombian NGOs have a depressing consistency about them - killings, disappearances, torture and military-paramilitary collusion.)

German Delegation for Peace and Justice is supporting social groups as the first step to a bigger idea: a popular (solidarity) embassy in Bogotá.

Christian peacemaker teams believes in non-violent means to change situations and also state policy i.e. when meeting armed groups pray with them bringing a message of non-violence.

USTC detailed attacks on telecoms workers at present resisting attempted removal of overtime rates for Sunday workers now on alert.

SINALTRAINAL reported that of trade unionists who work in Barranca and other centers for multinational corporations 8 have been murdered and 65 displaced. The local manager of Coca Cola gives 100 crates to the paras, who sell them and keep the profit.

MEETING WITH USO JUNTA DIRECTIVA

USO International Secretary Hernando Hernandez (HH) outlined the union's history, what they fight for and proposals for international solidarity.

USO was founded as a union on 12 February 1923. At that time an oil monopoly existed, the US-owned Tropical Oil Company. The workers were treated inhumanely without respect for basic rights and no guarantees for their families. USO's struggle at this time was to create living conditions for workers and their families. Strikes in 1924, 1928, 1933 and 1937 were savagely repressed. USO managed progressively to improve the conditions of the workers and obtain guarantees for their families.

Since its foundation USO had as a political strategy the objective of nationalising the oil industry. The great strike of 1948 was brutally repressed but it achieved the nationalisation of the oil monopoly and the creation of state oil corporation ECO-PETROL. From then until now there has almost been a state of war between the state and the multinationals on one side trying to privatise ECOPETROL and the USO on the other arguing for rational development of resources and infrastructure.

In 1963, 1971 and 1977 there were strikes to defend the industry. In the 1971 strike a worker Fermin Amaya was murdered by the army, and 30 unionists were detained and condemned in military tribunals to between 20 and 30 years. These sentences were reduced to 1 to 2 years by intense struggle. In 1977, 270 workers were fired.

The union has been viewed as an obstacle to privatisation that has to be dealt with. Different tactics have been used. For example, on 15 January 1988 members of the security forces assassinated the president of the union Manuel Chicano. Of those responsible, one active member of the navy was convicted. Between 1988 and 1992, 80 members and leaders of USO were murdered. In spite of these murders it was not possible for the state to weaken or suppress USO. "The river of blood from USO gives us the courage and strength to fight for our industry and the workers. Many workers put themselves at the disposal of the union to take up our banner".

Later the policy of physical elimination threatened the lives of 100 members and leaders. This forced many into exile. In 1993 a new repressive model introduced the jailing of union leaders penalising union activities. The president of the union at that time was accused of being a guerilla, of terrorism, of murder and of attacking ECOPETROL infrastructure. In this latest repressive model 27 members imprisoned some given 7 years others 2 or 3 years. All are now, free absolved by the courts, pronounced innocent. They were imprisoned for being trade unionists not for anything else. Documents from the trials are filed with the union. At the present time 5 members under house arrest (including Hernando Hernandez detained on 15 January. He chose the union head office as his place of residence).

The Colombian state alleges that union leaders are ELN guerilla leaders or have close relations with the guerilla. USO in these last few years permanently denouncing the state for its actions the union has demonstrated its autonomy and independence. The military accuse USO of having close links to the guerilla because of the similarity of statements made by USO and ELN. USO counters the idea of the coincidence of the statements by stating that the union was founded before the guerilla. "It is their statements that coincide with ours and not the other way round".

The state's strategy appears to be to weaken USO for the reprehensible crime of defending the workers and their industry. USO demonstrates that despite its leadership being declared "military objectives" and facing house arrest and jail USO continues to face the state.

Challenge now being given by the Uribe regime to liquidate USO and union collective agreements that give the workers certain guarantees. In the last 2 months the state has been hitting USO hard. Its presence in the plants is being attacked. The union is not being allowed access to their members "on the job". All members of executive have been threatened.

USO is now going on the offensive. They are resolved to fight. The executive has been given authorisation to declare "hour zero", strike action. The union is now working hard to have the support of the whole people. The union believes ECOPETROL to be national patrimony. The strike when it is called may be brutally repressed, maybe with even more hate than usual.

In closing HH stressed the great importance of international solidarity. He mentioned the three USO "ambassadors" in Europe: Freddy Pulecio in Brussels, and Cesar Carillo and Gilberto Torres in Madrid.

After 40 days of negotiations with directors of state oil corporation ECOPETROL the two sides have not agreed even one article in the Collective Agreement. The union is due to meet Mines Minister, Luis Ernesto Mejía this Friday in a last ditch effort to save negotiations. But USO spokesman Roberto Schmalbach told the press that the union had arrived at "Hour Zero". USO's executive has been empowered to call a general stoppage at immediate notice.

The war on Iraq has entered as a factor in an already tense labour conflict.

Diego Palacio, Minister for Social Protection, has warned that if the strike goes ahead it will be declared illegal, since state oil is an essential service.

The heightened risk for USO members on the brink of a national strike cannot be overstated. International human rights organisations and supporters of democracy in Colombia should be on high alert. USO has lost 88 members to assassinations in recent years, and is a constant target for political persecution. Moreover, like SINTRAEMCALI and workers in other state sectors such as telecommunications, health and education, it is on the front line of the latest round of privatisation plans encapsulated in Uribe's "National Development Plan".

Pacifist groups demonstrated on Monday against the Occidental oil company, which they accused of benefiting from and actively participating in Colombia's armed conflict. With placards that read "Oil, our other Colombian addiction" and "The U.S. gives the arms, Colombia provides the dead" some 200 activists marched on the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum in Los Angeles.

"Occidental Petroleum has succeeded in hijacking US policy on Colombia, and asking US tax payers to foot the bill, while innocent Colombians pay with their lives", asserted Kevin Koening, of Amazon Watch, one of the protest organisers According to Koening, Occidental has pressured the US government to give more military aid to the Colombian Army in order to protect the company's oil pipeline and installations, "About $88 million of US aid was granted last month and the Bush administration is planning a further $110 million next year to protect the pipeline".

Occidental has close relations with the 18th Battalion of the Air Force, say the pacifists. "Oil continues to be a magnet for violence in Colombia and the world over, and US policy is poking the fire" . El Tiempo 24th March 2003

BP not only is the biggest foreign investor in Colombia, this investment is the biggest of any British multinational in the whole of Latin America. From its Casanare oilfields BP controls the production of over half Colombia's oil output. The weight of this £2 billion project in fashioning British government policy towards Colombia cannot be overstated. What is good for BP is good for Britain, as far as Blair's government is concerned.

What is lesser known is the degree to which BP has been active in shaping US government policy on Colombia as well.

BP has joined in with the sustained lobbying of US administrations carried out by top US multinationals with an interest in Colombia. According to the Washington based Centre for Public Integrity BP Amoco Corp has paid $ 2.99 million into presidential and congressional election campaigns between 1995 and 2000. BP is one of the top ten corporate spenders influencing US Latin America policy.

There was a burst of lobbying activity in response to Clinton's decision to de-certify the government of Ernesto Samper on 28 February 1996. Samper's presidential election campaign had accepted large sums of money from the Cali cocaine cartel. Clinton's de-certification of Colombia was a public declaration that he did not regard Samper as a trusted ally in the war against drugs. But de-certification implied the withdrawal of state support for commerce, such as finance for exports and insurance cover for direct investments, and the removal of trade concessions under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA). The US and Colombian business interests that were threatened immediately sprang into action. Exxon alone, which at that time owned half of the El Cerrejon coalmine, spent $7.66 million on lobbying to prevent any negative consequences from de-certification on an investment that was bringing in over $1 billion a year in revenue.

Another move to counter the threat of economic sanctions came from a group of US corporations including Bechtel, Caterpillar, Colgate-Palmolive, Enron, Occidental Petroleum, United Parcel Service and Compaq Computer who formed the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership. The only non-US multinational that joined the group was BP. The Partnership was headed by Michael Skol, who had just ended a 30 year career as a US diplomat. His final post had been Washington's trouble shooter for Latin America.

With the insider knowledge of people like Skol, the lobbying effort of Exxon (Esso) and the corporations grouped in the Partnership paid off. Clinton limited de-certification to a nominal moral sanction. He came to the view that trade and investment interests took priority over the anti-drugs effort.

Andres Pastrana replaced Samper as Colombia's president in 1998. He was presented as free of the taint of drug money that had mired his predecessor, but it did not take long for Pastrana to be linked with a series of corruption scandals. However of far greater concern to the multinationals was the growing strength of the FARC and ELN guerillas. To make matters worse, as far as Pastrana and the multinationals were concerned, by the end of 1998 neoliberal policies had plunged Colombia into its worst ever economic crisis, and the militant social movement showed every sign of fighting back.

1999 was the year of decision. Paramilitary violence became far more systematic and was unleashed on a national scale against the social movement, but Colombia's regular armed forces were still unable to defeat the guerillas in battle. In Washington the alarm bells were ringing, Colombia could go down. Clinton resolved to commit serious effort to re-arming the military and strengthening the Colombian state. The idea of Plan Colombia was born.

Production from BP's Cusiana and Cupiagua oilfieds had come online in 1996, and through the OCENSA pipeline, Colombia's high quality crude was reaching the US market. BP had planned a 30 year production cycle, and hence every incentive to committing the British, Colombian and US governments into an alliance to protect its return on investment. Since 1996 BP has built up a considerable US presence. It merged with Amoco in 1998, and BP-Amoco took over ARCO in 2000 creating a $200 billion corporation, the world's second biggest oil multinational.

The energy corporations Enron, Occidental, BP-Amoco plus interested US armaments manufacturers turned up the pressure in 1999, by which time they too were pushing for active military intervention in Colombia. One unlikely lobbyist for Plan Colombia was Philip Morris, the US tobacco multinational accused of co-operating with Colombian drug dealers in a contraband scam and money laundering.

The US Senate agreed the $1.3 billion funding package for Plan Colombia in June 2000. BP Amoco was deeply involved in the push for a military solution. It's reported Washington lobbying expenditure includes three items of $1.16 million in June 1999, $1.10 million in December 1999 and $1.20 million in June 2000. The US Senate agreed the $1.3 billion funding package for Plan Colombia in June 2000.

Some BP figures

BP announced on 30 January 2003 a swap of its Malaysia Thailand JPA asset for Amerada Hess's Triton interests in Colombia. BP ownership of Colombian assets will be:

SDLA/Tauramena/Rio Chitamena: BP 31%, TotalFinaElf 19%, ECOPETROL 50%

Recetor: BP 50%, ECOPETROL 50%

OCENSA: ECOPETROL 35.29 %, BP 24.8 %*, Total 15.2 %, Enbridge 24.71 %

Current production from the Cusiana/Cupiagua fields is some 190,000 barrels per day gross, with a further 25,000 barrels per day gross from the Recetor licence.

BP's share of Colombian oil production in 2002 was 46 thousand barrels a day, net of royalty. That is worth approximately $1 million a day.

Substantial shareholders include JP Morgan Chase which holds 29.13% of BP's ordinary share capital; the Co-operative Insurance Society Limited holds 21.15% of 1st preference shares and 32.20% of 2nd preference shares; Prudential plc holds 7.30% of 1st preference shares and 11.77% of 2nd preference shares.

BP group's profit before tax was US $11.264 billion, and US $6.922 billion after tax. The average return on shareholder's interest was 10.2% of investment.

Our Letter to BP Exploration Colombia

Note: see previous editions of Colombia Solidarity bulletin for the background to our campaign in support of peasants in Colombia displaced by the ODC and OCENSA oil pipelines. We met three executives of BP Exploration Colombia in Bogotá last December. We have received no official response to the following letter.

January 2003

I am in receipt of the report by Corporacion Excelencia en la Justica and thank you for sending it. I note that both this report and that by Fedesarrollo were commissioned by BP Exploration Colombia.

With regards to the pipelines please find attached our letter to OCENSA.

The evaluation we make of the meetings on 5th and 6th December 2002 is firstly that the BP Group cannot legally or morally separate itself from the issue of just compensation for the Zaragoza and Segovia peasants, for the following reasons:

1. .. BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Limited was directly a leading actor in its role as Project Manager for the OCENSA pipeline in the contracts with the peasants and other substantive arrangements to do with environmental management;
2. .. BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Limited is both a significant shareholder in and customer of OCENSA and ODC, and BP Group states that its policies apply globally and that it expects ethical conduct from third parties;
3. .. BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Limited is treated as a foreign company in Colombia, constituted as a branch of the BP Group based in the UK. There are no separate shareholders and so there is no separate public or shareholder reporting of its activities which are consolidated into the BP Group reports.

Secondly we are extremely concerned with the partiality of the official process in Colombia. Your side appears to have continued privileged access to the environmental and judicial authorities while the peasants are excluded. You cited the Ministry of Environment's report in your letter of July 2002. We complained that the inspection was carried out with OCENSA but without the peasants' lawyers who had originally asked for the inspection being informed. It transpires that you have a draft copy the report, but cannot release it. OCENSA say they have never seen a copy of this report. And neither you nor OCENSA provided a contact at the Minister of Environment whom I could contact about the authorship and status of the report.

The disappearing court hearing, as announced at our meeting. This case was transferred from El Bagre to Bogotá at the request of the OCENSA side to the dispute. Since then access to the process has been effectively blocked to the peasants' lawyers. There is no trace of the jurisdiction on this case, despite strenuous attempts of the peasants' lawyers to track it. At a minimum this is justice delayed, but as a Campaign we are increasingly doubtful of any fairness whatsoever in this procedure.

We remain extremely concerned that BP instigates a fully transparent, immediate and just process of compensation for the peasant victims of the OCENSA and ODC pipelines. In the meantime will continue to campaign publicly in Britain for a just settlement.

Our Letter to OCENSA (extract)

January 2003

While we welcome the cordiality with which the meeting was conducted on 6th December, we record our deep concerns registered at the meeting on the following substantive points:

1. OCENSA does not have written corporate policies in respect of consultation with the community, environment or human rights. There is therefore no baseline against which to assess it claim of implementing ethical policies.
2. OCENSA has not studied the micro-level the impact of disruption to water supplies to the peasants' farms and continues to deny this impact.
3. OCENSA has been the beneficiary of widened corridor from 12.5 metres to 200 metres, but has not paid any additional compensation for this
4. the partiality in the process of the Ministry of Environment inspection, which was carried out with OSCENSA and without consultation with one side to the dispute. Moreover this report is not available, except perhaps as a draft. It is still unclear to whom we may address enquiries about this report.
5. as above our deep concern with a legal process where one side to a civil dispute knows of the hearing and the other side does not. Since the transfer of jurisdiction from El Bagre to Bogotá, to all practical purposes the processing of the case has disappeared from view for the peasants' lawyers. You assured us that you have full faith in the judicial system. On this experience we cannot agree. Here is a civil dispute where one side has the information as to the processing of the case, the side representing a consortium of a s state company and multinational oil corporations, and the other side which represents a vulnerable group of impoverished peasants does not have the information.
6. Above all OCENSA continues to deny moral and legal responsibility for the damage to the lands, livelihoods and lives of the peasants who insist that its pipeline has caused this damage.

International Boycott of Coca Cola

The boycott is one of the international actions approved in each one of the three sessions of the Popular Public Hearings(APP) and it is necessary to clearly establish all operational elements.

The boycott is a means of sustained pressure and condemnation against the policies of the transnational company Coca Cola around the world so that the company repairs the damage caused, changes its policies and makes a commitment to respect the human rights of workers and populations. Our struggle is for peace with social justice and for the well-being of people and for this reason we embrace the struggle against the war, we contribute to the construction of a movement against capitalist globalisation, we participate in the fight against ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) and we share the aspirations of the Continental Social Alliance, of the World Social Forum and all initiatives that enable peoples to achieve happiness, sovereignty and liberty.

The fight against capitalist globalisation is a struggle against the policies of transnational companies. The initiative we have been developing from different corners of the world against the transnational Coca Cola is part of the struggle against war and for the well-being of our peoples.

The 'Hector Daniel Useche Beron Popular Public Hearing Against Impunity : SINALTRAINAL DEMANDS JUSTICE' declared the International Boycott against Coca Cola and others for the following reasons:

• For the violation of the human rights of workers and communities.
• For the profits made on the back of assassinations, imprisonment, displacement, kidnapping, death threats and dismissals of trade union leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, the United States, Venezuela, Palestine, Turkey, Iran and other parts of the world.
• For the contamination of water sources with the waste from their bottling plants.
• For racial discrimination against black communities and those suffering from AIDS in the United States and Africa.
• For using coca to make its products and its support of the criminal policies of the United States against communities whose culture and survival depends on coca leaves, especially in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.
• For its unfettered use of the world's water and the criminal theft of water sources from communities in India.
• For supporting the criminal oligarchy in Venezuela which is attacking the government and its plans to bring dignity into the lives of the people of our sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as well as for its historic interference in the internal affairs of peoples.

The boycott will commence on 22 July 2003 and will initially be for one year. The Second World Social Forum declared 22 July 2003 as the international day against Coca Cola. The boycott will not only consist of NOT CONSUMING THE PRODUCTS OF THIS TRANSNATIONAL COCA COLA, but will also mark the start of a sustained campaign of condemnation, mobilisation and struggle against its policies. In order to realise the declared boycott, we will undertake the following plan of international action:

On 11 February 2003, a proposal for integral reparation was delivered to Coca Cola along with signatures and a political declaration from the three sessions of the APP. We are hoping that the transnational will organise the relevant meetings with SINALTRAINAL in order to come to an agreement which enables us to resolve the problems we have denounced.

On 22 July 2003, there will be a press conference in Rome, Chicago and Bogota in which the start of the boycott will be announced to the world. In countries where it is possible to have access to the press, we ask comrades to do the same simultaneously.

There will be demonstrations, meetings and mobilisations in each of the cities in which Coca Cola has plants. At the entrance to each bottling plant there will be a stall distributing a massive amount of literature denouncing Coca Cola's activities. It has been suggested that in the different cities there should be memorial galleries.

March 31, 2003 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Jose E. Martinez ruled that cases brought by Colombian Plaintiffs under the Alien Tort Claims Act ("ATCA") for human rights violations committed by paramilitaries on behalf of Coca-Cola bottlers Panamerican Beverages, Inc. ("Panamco") and Bebidas y Alimentos ("Bebidas") in Colombia can go forward. Significantly, the court held that the allegations were sufficient to allow the case to proceed on a theory that the paramilitaries were acting in a symbiotic relationship with the Colombian government. This satisfies a technical requirement of the ATCA that there was a component of "state action" in the acts of violence against the Plaintiffs, which allows the international law claims to proceed against the private actors Panamco and Bebidas...

In these cases, there are four separate actions filed by different sets of Plaintiffs. In all of the cases, SINALTRAINAL, the union of food and bottling workers in Colombia, is a Plaintiff, and alleges injuries due to a campaign of violence directed at the union by paramilitaries employed by the Coca-Cola bottlers. Javier Correa, the union's President, hailed the decision as "bringing the workers of Colombia one step closer to justice". Other Plaintiffs include the Estate of Isidro Gil, who was murdered inside the Bebidas bottling facility in Carepa by paramilitaries brought in by the plant management. Other claims include kidnapping and torture of union leaders by paramilitaries working on behalf of Panamco bottlers.

In allowing the case to go forward against Coca-Cola bottlers Bebidas and Panamco, the court dismissed Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Colombia from the case on the ground that the company's bottling agreement did not explicitly give Coca-Cola control over labor relations issues of its Colombian bottlers.

Terry Collingsworth, Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Fund and co-counsel for the Plaintiffs, indicated that Plaintiffs would appeal that portion of the decision... Collingsworth explained. "We are absolutely convinced as a factual matter that one word from Coca-Cola would stop the campaign of terror against trade union leaders in the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. We are entitled to gather evidence on this point and prove it at trial," he added.

Finally, Collingsworth said that "it should bring small comfort to Coca-Cola that the court has ruled that, while the company is not technically in legal control of labor relations at the Colombian bottling plants, there are sufficient allegations that the company's two bottlers in Colombia, Panamco, which is partly owned by Coca-Cola and is designated as one of Coca-Cola's "anchor bottlers," and Bebidas have indeed engaged paramilitary groups to terrorize union leaders. The question still is, why is Coca-Cola allowing this to happen, and how many other acts of murder and torture are required to get Coca-Cola to intervene?

In a similar situation in Guatemala in the early 1980's, Coca-Cola was forced by a consumer campaign to terminate its bottling agreement with a Guatemalan bottler who had used right wing death squads to murder union leaders at that facility. Pointing to this situation, Dan Kovalik noted that "wholly apart from legal liability, Coca-Cola remains the sole entity that can change the practices of its bottlers".

Terry Collingsworth called upon all of the human rights and student groups and others that are protesting Coca-Cola's policies in Colombia to redouble their efforts. "Coca-Cola apparently will only respond to pressure from consumers. As we saw in the Guatemala situation, the company will never do the right thing unless it is forced to by consumers".

The ILRF has also asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to prosecute Panamco and Bebidas under 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, which makes it a crime to provide material support to terrorists. The paramilitary groups working with Panamco and Bebidas have been designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department.

Press Release by the lawyers

The defence team for the three Irish citizens accused of training the FARC, will begin to present their case in Bogotá on the 7th April. Jim Monaghan, Martin McCauley and Niall Connolly have been detained in various Colombian prisons since their arrest in August 2001. The defence team will present independent forensic evidence and sworn affidavits that testify to the whereabouts of the three men during the time they are alleged to have been training FARC rebels in the former demilitarised zone. Jim O'Keefe, a member of the Irish parliament and Sile Maguire, the first secretary of the Irish embassy in Mexico will both testify that they attended a dinner in Havana at which Niall Connolly was present on a date on which prosecution witnesses have testified that he was involved in bomb making classes in Colombia. The defence team will also present a video shown by RTE news in Ireland, that clearly shows Jim Monaghan attending a lecture in Belfast, on a specific day when the prosecution allege he was training the FARC in Colombia.

Since 4th October 2002, when the trial started (the court has only sat sporadically) the prosecution has presented its three star witnesses. The first, the soldier who arrested the three men after an anonymous telephone tip off, testified that the accused admitted to travelling on false documents. The two main witnesses, both alleged deserters from the FARC, have presented confused and contradictory evidence. Edwin Giovanni Rodriguez gave evidence in February after refusing to attend the court as programmed in December. The witness, clearly terrified, and claiming that his wife and child had been kidnapped days before, gave a rambling and often contradictory testimony as to the activities of the three accused. Under cross examination, he claimed that as he is illiterate he is unable to remember much, and that his state of stress was responsible for the differences in and inconsistencies of his evidence.

Jhon Rodriguez Caviedes, now in a witness protection scheme and receiving money from the Colombian army, gave evidence for the third time in a closed court session in Medellin, after the witness protection system claimed that they could not afford the ticket to Bogotá. His new evidence as to when he joined the FARC, when the defendants came to Colombia, and what was taught in the bomb making classes, differed significantly from his previous statement, which in turn differed significantly from his first.

Despite the strength of the defence case, and the flimsiness of that of the Colombian state, worries remain as to the overtly political nature of the trial, and the defendants' right to the presumption of innocence. Following the men's arrest, the then President Andres Pastrana made prejudicial remarks about the men's guilt, as did Fernando Tapias, head of the Colombian armed forces. Most recently current President Alvaro Uribe is quoted in Newsweek, following the bomb in El Nogal, as saying "we have in jail some IRA members who came to help the FARC". Furthermore, the allegations that traces of explosives and drugs had been found on the men's clothing, so widely reported in the media at the time of the arrest, were not mentioned in any court testimony, after it turned out that the US Embassy who apparently conducted the tests and reported the allegations, did not actually have any equipment capable of carrying out such tests.

David Rhys-Jones

For more information about this case contact:
"Bring them Home"catrionaruaneeircom.net
www.bringthemhome.ie tel: 00353 868 311311

VENEZUELA: THE CHAVISTA REVOLUTION ADVANCES

Three months ago the Chávez government in Venezuela was under siege by a jubilant opposition which thought it had the whip hand: with big business shut down by a bosses' lockout, banks closed, massive anti-Chávez demonstrations and cacerolazos (pot-banging protests) every day, overwhelming media hostility and above all, the vital oil industry paralysed, it looked as if the government's days were numbered. The opposition demanded a referendum to be held in early February to revoke the President's mandate, and/or intervention under the OAS (Organisation of American States) Democratic Charter; and with support from the US, Spain, Colombia and other countries, they had reason to be optimistic - or so it seemed.

Today the situation has changed dramatically: the paro (business lockout) collapsed early in February, oil production is recovering, the Supreme Court has declared the referendum constitutionally invalid at this time, progressive Latin American governments have refused to go along with interventionist manoeuvres, and Chávez has taken decisive measures to restore his regime's authority and support. And in the context of the Anglo-American war for oil and hegemony in Iraq, revolutionary Venezuela stands out as a bastion of resistance in Latin America.

Opposition arrogance

The opposition seriously overplayed its hand: short-sighted and arrogant, they demanded Chávez' resignation or overthrow and refused to negotiate. The Constitution provides for a mid-term presidential referendum in August this year, but they wanted it immediately and on their terms. In mid-December when it became clear that the business strike had only limited success, they used their banking and oil industry connections to provoke paralysis of the national economy, with an attitude which could only be described as sabotage. For most Venezuelans this was irresponsible and unpatriotic, and the government's decision to send in the military to control the oil installations met with widespread approval.

Worst of all for many people was the opposition's abuse of its virtual monopoly of media power and its military contacts to call openly for revolt against the constitutionally-elected government, in a blatant repetition of the strategy that led to last April's short-lived military coup. The opposition calls itself the Coordinadora Democrática, but its actions betray the authoritarian and reactionary sympathies of its leaders, several of whom were directly involved in the Pinochet-style repression of the 48-hour dictator Pedro Carmona last year. For democratic Venezuelans this opposition has no credibility whatsoever.

Chávez takes firm action

Faced with this strategy of subversion and sabotage, Chávez reacted with firm measures that many people thought he should have taken last April: purging PDVSA (the state oil company) of its sell-out management, ordering the arrest of opposition leaders who had publicly advocated rebellion, threatening to revoke the licences of TV stations which devoted most of their programming to subversive propaganda, and imposing exchange controls to limit capital flight. During the paro, when food wholesalers and supermarket owners tried to provoke artificial shortages, the military were used to buy food direct from small farmers and cooperatives and sell it in the cities at favourable prices in open-air "megamarkets" which proved very popular, and these have continued since the end of the paro. Price controls have been imposed on basic commodities and members of the Bolivarian Circles and other grass-roots organisations are invited to denounce violations.

New legislative measures and programmes show that these are not just emergency measures but part of a broad counter-offensive in which the government and the popular movement have recovered the initiative. A new Law of Media Responsibility will limit the ability of newspapers or TV and radio stations to use their influence for subversive purposes. A programme supported by the military and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will promote intensive urban allotments in poor neighbourhoods to prevent food shortages and speculation. In response to rural landlords who have been sabotaging the agrarian reform by assassinating peasant activists, Chávez announced the formation of a new Rural Security Guard trained and equipped by the military.

The people organise

Popular organisation in support of the revolutionary process is also proceeding apace. As the old corrupt union federation, the CTV (Confederación de Trabajadores Venezolanos), has become completely discredited by its blatant support for the April coup and the recent opposition paro, alternative chavista unions are gaining ground steadily. The FBT (Fuerza Bolivariana de Trabajadores or Bolivarian Workers' Force), created in September 2000 by chavista union activists, recently got together with other independent unions to form a new labour confederation called UNETE which is to be launched officially on 29 March. "A long time ago the CTV turned into an organisation serving the bosses and anti-national interests", said Eduardo Piñate, an FBT leader I spoke to in December. "The CTV isn't a union organisation any more, it's a corrupt mafia". This may be a slight exaggeration - there are sectors of privileged workers in oil and other key industries who still support the CTV - but there is no doubt about the deep-rooted corruption at the heart of the old Confederation, and the leading role of its boss Carlos Ortega both in the April coup and in the recent paro has demonstrated its total abandonment of any attempt to defend workers' rights. During the paro Ortega repeatedly called on television for Chávez' overthrow or even assassination, and when a judge recently served an order for his arrest he sought asylum in the Costa Rican embassy.

Other forms of popular organisation also received a fresh impulse in reaction to the paro. The Bolivarian Circles continue to grow, and neighbourhood associations of all kinds got together to discuss how to coordinate action to overcome shortages or to combat any new coup attempt. Agricultural and commercial cooperatives are being promoted and are working together to distribute produce as much as 50% cheaper than normal supermarket prices; cooperatives in Caracas and Lara state recently announced an agreement to this effect and similar arrangements are being negotiated in other states.

New opposition conspiracies

Thrown on the defensive, the opposition is once again falling back on its old strategy of military conspiracy. Its trump card is the knowledge that the Bush administration would like to get rid of Chávez and his revolution, although in public - having got its fingers burnt last April - Washington proclaims its respect for democratic and constitutional methods. On March 14th intelligence sources reported a plot in Zulia state, the old oil-producing region around the port of Maracaibo near the Colombian border. Zulia's Governor, Manuel Rosales, is a supporter of the old governing party Acción Democrática (AD), and many of the state's municipalities have opposition mayors. They were said to be conspiring with the commanders of four Zulia military units to destabilise the region and then seize or assassinate Chávez during a visit to the state. Rosales is said to be working with former Venezuelan president and AD boss Carlos Andrés Pérez, impeached for corruption in 1993 and currently living between Florida and the Dominican Republic. Zulia separatism is a historic problem which the opposition tries to exploit, but Chávez also has supporters in the state and the early detection of this plot suggests that they are well organised.

In his weekly TV programme "Aló Presidente" on March 16th Chávez declared that he knew some generals were conspiring again, but "I have a surprise for them"and they would be neutralised. He added that Venezuelans would have a new government on 10 January 2007 as laid down in the Constitution, "and I don't know who will be the President, but it will be a revolutionary". Contrary to widespread expectations Chávez has already lasted four years, and he may well surprise most observers by lasting another four. His "Bolivarian revolution" is bringing more and more material benefits to poor Venezuelans in the form of education, health care, housing, land ownership and cheap food, and most important, popular power and participation. It has also brought a sense of national dignity and independence which appeals to Venezuelans of all social classes and to anti-imperialist sentiment throughout Latin America.

David Raby E-mail: dlrabyliv.ac.uk

Reviews: FACT OR FICTION?

Degrees of Capture

Did you fondly imagine that there might be some useful research going on in our universities to provide alternatives to the fossil fuels that we all know are responsible for global warming? If so, a new report from Corporate Watch entitled Degrees of Capture* will put you straight. The 32-page report outlines how Britain's cash-strapped universities have forfeited their independence in order to prise open the corporate purse. How independent can you be faced with a £25 million donation from BP, as Cambridge University was in 2001? (The money was used to open the "BP Institute"). Oil companies now routinely fund university programmes, academic posts, even lecture halls in exchange for influence over what goes on in them. Independent academic research is vital to solve problems like global warming, but big oil companies are finding ways to make sure that research and development does nothing to harm their interests, and that they continue instead to encourage our dependence on climate destroying fossil fuels by using new research to find ways to keep prices down.

The government claims to support the search for alternative sources of energy, yet through publicly-funded research (that means we pay for it) it continues to search for cheaper and more efficient ways of guzzling up the earth's ever dwindling resources. Not only does this prevent other more useful research taking place, it gives the oil industry the competitive edge over other energy sources which don't have the funds to tempt our universities into doing their work for them. Fossil fuels will eventually run out - we should be looking for alternatives now, not when it's too late.

Ruby Cox

* Available from Corporate Watch, 16b Cherwell Street, Oxford 0X4 1BG tel 01865791391 e-mail mailcorporatewatch.org website www.corporatewatch.org.uk

Nostromo

Set in the fictional South American land of Costaguana around the turn of the last century, Joseph Conrad's Nostromo is the story of a revolution and of the birth of a new republic. As such, it is an archetypal tale of power and political intrigue in a continent that has witnessed enormous upheavals throughout its post colonial history, although there are persuasive arguments to think that Conrad had Colombia specifically in mind while writing this novel, and that the story of the formation of the Occidental Republic was modelled on the breakaway of Panama, right down to the intervention of US forces, fleetingly alluded to within the novel. Throughout Nostromo, the flavour of the period and the setting are evoked with an easy assurance that is almost tangible.

Nostromo is above all a study in incipient imperialism, what Conrad consistently terms the 'material interests'. Central to the novel is the San Tomé silver mine, operated by the pragmatic Englishman Charles Gould. The mine represents the natural wealth of the country and its subordination to the interests of foreign capital. Conrad shows how ultimately these 'material interests', with their all -consuming, impersonal power, come to shape and dominate the world around them. Towards the end, the cynical Dr Monygham can state with considerable justification that 'the time approaches when all that the Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back.'

Conrad conveys his theme with great subtlety through the eyes of Sulaco's social elite, but standing astride the entire plot is the enigmatic figure of Nostromo himself, the magnificent capitaz de cargadores (dock workers foreman), the only working-class character to be developed in any depth. It seems that it is in Nostromo and in his relationship with the family of the aging republican fighter Giorgio Viola (the Garibaldino) we have a cipher for the whole working class. For the old revolutionary, Nostromo is the unquestioned inheritor of his mantle (the man his son would have been), but to his ailing wife it seems that Nostromo is selling himself and her family short. Ultimately, it is Viola's daughters that represent the possibility for the future.

Max Fuller

Turning the Tide

Report from the Turning the Tide: The Growing Resistance to Neoliberalism in Latin America conference, 21-22 February, 2003, New York University, New York City, USA.

With the recent election of left-wing populist governments in Brazil and Ecuador, the tenacity of Hugo Chavez's reformist project in Venezuela, and the growing strength of social movements in Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico, Latin America is clearly in the middle of a "shift to the left" on a scale not seen since the days of Salvador Allende.

A primary reason for this paradigmatic political shift is the failure of neoliberal economic policies that have been implemented with great force all throughout the continent since the "lost decade" of the 1980s, which have further enriched multinational corporations and local elites but have led to greater immiseration for the vast majority of the poor and working classes. As an attempt to better understand these political trends, Left Turn and NACLA magazines, the NYU Department of History as well as other academic centers at NYU, and a coalition of activist groups brought together leaders from social movements all over Latin America to share their experiences and insight with over 250 North American solidarity activists, students, and members of the Latino immigrant community at the Turning the Tide conference, held one month ago in New York.

The plenaries and workshops provided a crucial space for dialogue between activists from both sides of the continental divide. One example was the workshop on neoliberalism and the environment, where João Paulo Rodrigues Chaves of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and environmental law professor Judith Kimerling shared strategies on how to stop the ecological crisis being brought about by policies that favor exploitation of natural resources by foreign investors over sustainable development. Another vibrant, well-attended workshop was the panel on revolution and counter-revolution in Venezuela, moderated by the independent media activist Blanca Eekhout and New York-based author and researcher Fred Rosen, which featured a heated debate on the future of the Bolivarian project and the effects of US intervention on Chavez's government.

Colombian trade union and social activists were also well represented at the conference, despite the practically genocidal conditions that they are currently enduring under the ultra-right wing Uribe government. Patricia Guerrero of the Cartagena League of Displaced Women shared the stage with Bolivian indigenous activist Leonida Zurita Vargas for a discussion on how economic globalization and political violence are specifically affecting Latin American women, and a workshop on "Fighting the Transnationals" featured Colombian trade union activist Luis Adolfo Cardona talking about the current campaign against Coca-cola for its complicity in the intimidation, illegal imprisonment, kidnapping, and murder by paramilitary forces of union leaders at its bottling plants in Colombia.

Also, former SINTRAEMCALI President and member of the Colombian House of Representatives Alexander López shared with conference participants the electrifying story of the successful fight to stop the privatization of EMCALI and a call for solidarity to prevent Uribe's current attempt to destroy Cali's public services corporation and the union which represents its employees as part of the stirring final plenary. In conclusion, the Turning the Tide conference was acknowleged to be a much-needed space for education and reflection as well as a call to action for participants who came together from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires (and many other places in between) to spread our common vision of a new road to social development for the Americas.

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign is an anti-imperialist organisation, campaigning for a socially just and sustainable peace in Colombia based on respect for the human rights and diversity of the Colombian people. The Campaign actively opposes Plan Colombia. Our specific objectives are:

1. .. To oppose any US, British or foreign military intervention, believing that this will only escalate the problems in Colombia
2. .. To oppose the policy of fumigation, and works for a solution to the coca problem based on the real needs of the people
3. .. To draw attention to the role that is played by Multinational Corporations in violating workers rights and exploiting both the people and the environment of Colombia
4. .. To draw attention to the horrific human rights situation in Colombia, and that the overwhelming majority of atrocities can be attributed to the action of the army, police, Colombian state organisms and the paramilitaries, which together constitute a policy of Colombian State terror.
5. .. To oppose the criminalisation of social protest.

The Campaign recognises the collusion between the Colombian government, the armed forces and the paramilitary death squads, and calls for an end to the impunity that this creates.

We actively campaign through multiple strategies, and give a platform, co-ordination and support to Colombian organisations and individuals working for the above objectives.

We also support the right of Colombian refugees to asylum, and campaign actively to defend them.

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