Colombian Unionists Targeted:  Can Three Assassins Get a
Government to do Their Dirty Deeds?

By Fred Hirsch  ([log in to unmask])

Published by Portside
August 15, 2012

The Colombian government is preparing to throw two union
leaders to the mercy of paramilitary terrorists on the
testimony of three murderers.

William Mendoza is President of the Food and Beverage Workers
Union (Sinaltrainal) in Barrancabermeja, Santander in north
central Colombia.  Juan Carlos Galvis is on the union's
National Executive Board and President of the Santander branch
of the CUT, the nation's' main labor federation.  I met them
both when I was sent to Colombia by my local Union, Plumbers
and Fitters Union, Local 393, on a labor delegation inquiring
into the violence against trade unionists in 2002.

Colombia is internationally recognized as the most lethal
nation in the world for trade unionists. More unionists are
killed there than anywhere else in the world. William and Juan
Carlos both live and work in Barrancabermeja, the location of
the largest oil refinery in Colombia, on the shore of the
Magdalena River.  Barranca, as the city is commonly called, is
visibly under the authority of the Army, Navy and local
police.  The locals, however recognize that the paramiltary
death squads have firm political control.  Juan Carlos has
stated, "The Paras do whatever they want here in
Barranca...They have the political power. They have the
economic power."  It is essentially, he says, "a totalitarian
agenda."  William defines the totalitarian agenda as "A regime
in which the common denominator will be terror, hunger and
misery for the people so that the rich can become even
richer."

Both Juan Carlos and William  represent the workers in
Barranca's Coca Cola plant.  They have been targeted with
death threats since 2001.  They, and others like them are
labeled "subversives" by the paramilitaries, linked falsely to
the guerilla movement, and are labeled  "military targets."
William told me that the violence against Sinaltrainal is
based in Coke's determination to force the union out of its
bottling plants:  "They want to impose casual labor, part-time
labor, and drive down our wages and working conditions."

During the last 30 years the union and its activist members
have lived in a pervading climate of terror.  Paramilitary
terrorism seems to peak at contract time. Three Sinaltrainal
leaders have been assassinated in Colombia precisely when
contracts have come up for negotiations.  Over time, 25
Sinaltrainal leaders have been killed, 2 have been
"disappeared," 14 imprisoned, and 6 forced to leave the
country. Many others and their family members have been
attacked and threatened with death. The perpetrators have had
total impunity from the law even though some have even
confessed to their crimes. Thanks to political pressure
brought by the labor movement and human rights organizations
in Colombia and abroad, following a government study, Juan
Carlos and William are now accompanied 24 hours a day by
government supplied  bodyguards. For more reliable security,
they keep in constant contact with the Union and the local
human rights organizations with both a walkie talkies and cell
phones.

Sinaltrainal leaders and activists are not the only victims in
Barranca.  The Oil Workers  Union (USO), various human rights
groups and the militant women's organization (OFP) suffer the
same intimidation.  According to William, this violence is
done "by paramilitary forces that accuse us of being an
obstacle to investment and development."  It is no secret that
the paramilitaries are supported through the drug trade, by
large landowners, and by the official military, which has
received billions in U.S. aid.  A U.S. Embassy spokesman gave
our visiting delegation that same description when we had an
audience with them in Bogota in 2002.  Proving the
paramilitary connection with a multinational corporation in a
U.S. Court is more difficult.

The United Steelworkers of America (USW) brought suit against
Coca Cola in Florida on behalf of Sinaltrainal and its
victimized members in Colombian bottling plants. The USW
charged that Coke bottlers "contracted with or otherwise
directed paramilitary security forces that utilize extreme
violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or
otherwise silenced trade union leaders," They presented
substantial and credible evidence, but the decision failed to
nail the company on the technicality of a claimed separation
between the Atlanta based Coca Cola Company and Panamco, its
subsidiary in Colombia.

Juan Carlos was party to the law suit. He said, "If we lose
this fight against Coke, first we will lose our union, next we
will lose our jobs, and then we will all lose our lives!"

For Juan Carlos, who survived an assassination attempt, the
worst and most dangerous outrage was last November when two
"paras" broke into his home. One pointed a gun at his daughter
and said they'd kill the girl if his wife screamed. They
demanded information about him from his wife, Jackeline, then
bound and gagged her and sprayed her face, hair and clothing
with red paint. The intruders wrote threats on the walls, and
made off with two computers and memory drives.

William's young daughter has received phone threats against
her father from men who watch the house and track her going
and coming to and from school.  Some years ago his four year
old daughter was snatched by two men in broad daylight in a
public park in Barranca. His wife ran after them, drew
attention with a great commotion, and was able to take hold of
the little girl and thwart the attempted kidnapping. Later
that day William received a phone call from a paramilitary
leader who said they did not intend to keep the little girl,
but to return her "in a plastic bag."

Today William and Juan Carlos are alleged to have taken part
in placing a bomb in a Coca Cola plant in 1998. The charge was
leveled in 2008 and is only now being activated. Up until this
spring the Colombian government, anxious to complete the
U.S./Colombia Free trade Agreement, was eager to play down
violence against the labor movement.  William says "Now that
they've finalized the Free Trade Agreement they want to finish
off Sinaltrainal."

Their accusers are three paramilitary leaders whose death
squads were supposedly demobilized in 2006 in return for
telling their story in "free testimony" for which they
received varying degrees of amnesty under the 2005 "Justice
and Peace" Law 975.

The three accusers are: Rodrigo Perez Alzate, Wilfred Martinez
Giraldo, and Saul Rincon.  Perez Alzate, alias "Julian
Bolivar," has confessed to 45 murders.  He led the
paramilitary "Central Bolivar Bloc" of the Magdalena Medio
area, which is accountable for 20,868 victims. Martinez
Giraldo, alias "Gavilan," under Perez Alzate's command, was in
charge of the paramilitaries in Barranca. The third accuser.
Saul Rincon, alias "Coca Cola," reported to Gavilan.

Rincon worked as a guard in the Barranca Coke bottling plant .
He was active in Sinaltrainal until 1995 when, contrary to
union policy, he accepted Coke's "voluntary retirement" plan,
a company scheme to buy out union employees and replace them
with non-union contract workers. Rincon quit all contact with
the union and later joined the paramilitaries.  He is now in
prison for the assassination of Rafael Jaimes Torra, Treasurer
of the Oil Workers Union.

Over a year ago Saul Rincon called the union from prison
demanding a visit from a member of the Executive Board.  He
threatened that if he didn't get the visit, William Mendoza
and Juan Carlos Galvis would be denounced by former guerillas.
It seemed then that a frame up was in the making.

William told me that, "The government now wants to use the
judicial process against Juan Carlos and me. They want to send
us to prison where we will be assassinated, and in that way,
they would strike a blow against Sinaltrainal....The charges
are obviously false. They couldn't kill us so they are trying
to frame us...We can't expect anything good to come of
Colombia's so called justice.  We have eight witnesses who
know the situation. We hope their testimony will clear up the
matter, but nothing is easy here. There is no justice.

"Juan Carlos and I live in Barrancabermeja with our families.
We have had health problems due to the stress of this
situation. We are suffering severe fatigue and the doctor
tells us that continuing with these levels of stress will give
us heart attacks."

"It is tough," says Juan Carlos, "We are on the brink of
death, but we keep surviving. We bring in new members to the
union, but the company fires them. If it weren't for
international solidarity, we would have been eliminated long
ago. That is the truth."

William says, "The judicial system in Colombia is now making
its decisions based on politics, not the law." In a recent
letter, he writes, "We need you to send letters from members
of Congress and from North American organizations protesting
this prosecution against Juan Carlos Galvis and me."  They
need us, in William's words, "to continue the political
pressure on the Colombian government. That is the deciding
factor..."

William Mendoza and Juan Carlos Galvis are working to save
their own lives, but the fight to save their union and affirm
the right of  workers to organize is the passion that has
driven them to this point. They clearly understand their
contradictory predicament: that the harder they fight for
workers' rights, the more they endanger their very lives - yet
they fight.

In fighting for their own lives they fight for, as William put
it, "to ensure that the collective bargaining agreements that
are signed, particularly with multinational corporations, give
a bit more of a share to the working people of Colombia."  Is
that asking too much?  Coca Cola and the paramilitaries who,
according to the USW lawsuit, "contracted with or otherwise
direct" do think it's too much - way too much.  They make it
worth the life of these two fine union brothers in
Barrancabermeja, Colombia.

I was with William the day that he spoke the above words to a
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) convention in San
Francisco.  The slogan of the ILWU is "An injury to one is an
injury to all!" The delegates gave William a standing ovation
and made  an Honorary Member after he spoke that day.  ILWU
members understand that to fight for the rights of workers in
Colombia is to fight for the rights of all workers. For Juan
Carlos and William the stakes are high, their lives. That's
what its all about. Without our help these men are likely to
be placed behind prison walls where they will be killed. These
men are our brothers. They shall not die!

Please send your own message asking that the government of
Colombia stop this blatantly political trial that will take
the lives of William Mendoza and Juan Carlos Galvis. Bring the
issue to your organization to send a message.  Contact your
member of Congress and ask them to do the same.  Emails may
not work.  Postage for a regular letter to Colombia is only 98
cents.  Faxes are very reliable.  Please do it.

			 WHAT YOU CAN DO

Faxes and letters In English or Spanish should be sent
specifically to:

Unidad Nacional de Fiscalía Contra el Terrorismo,
Despacho 28,
Estructura de Apoyo-Parapolítica A la Diagonal 22 B
No. 52-01,  Edificio F, Piso 2 Bogotá, D.C., Colombia
FAX:  001 57 1 383 1410
PHONE:  001 57 091 570 2000

If at all possible, Faxes, Letters or Emails should also be
sent to the following:   (NOTE-For those sending emails, you
can copy and paste in the following emails as a group)
[log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]

And send an email of your letter to WILLIAM MENDOZA
<[log in to unmask]>

JUAN MANUEL SANTOS CALDERON
Presidente de la República de Colombia
Carrera 8 No. 7 -26 Palacio de Nariño Bogotá

Fax: (+57 1) 566.20.71
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

===

ANGELINO GARZON
Vicepresidente de la República de Colombia
Carrera 8 No.7-57 Bogotá D.C.

Teléfonos (57 1) 444 2120 - 444 2122
Fax: (57 1) 596 0651
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Twitter: @angelino_garzon

===

Fiscalía General de la Nación
Diagonal 22B No. 52-01 - Bogotá, D.C.

Teléfonos: 570 20 00 - 414 90 00
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]

===

RUTH CORREA
Ministra de Justicia y del Derecho de Colombia
Carrera 9a. No. 14-10 - Bogotá, D.C.

e-mail: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]>
PBX (+57) 444 31 00 Ext. 1820

===

ALEJANDRO ORDOÑEZ MALDONADO
Procurador General de la Nación
Carrera 5 #. 15-80 - Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

Fax: (+571) 3429723 - 2847949 Fax: (+571) 3429723
E-mail: [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask]@procuraduria.gov.co

===

WOLMAR ANTONIO PÉREZ ORTIZ
Defensor Nacional del Pueblo
Calle 55 # 10-32, Bogotá.

Fax: (+571) 640.04.91
E-mail: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]

===

OFICINA EN COLOMBIA DEL ALTO COMISIONADO DE
NACIONES UNIDAS PARA LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS
Calle 114 No. 9-45 Torre B Oficina 1101
Edificio Teleport Bussines Park - Bogotá, Colombia

Teléfono PBX (57-1) 629 3636 (57-1) 629 3636 Fax (57-1) 629
3637
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

===

Ambassador P. Michael Mckinley
The United States Embassy
Bogota Calle 24 Bis No. 48-50 Bogotá, D.C. Colombia.
Mailing address: Carrera 45 No. 24B-27 Bogotá, D.C.

Email [log in to unmask]

===

[Fred Hirsch is a retired plumber, was vice president of
Plumbers and Fitters, Local 393, in San Jose, California.
Hirsch worked as a plumber and rank and file worker in
construction as well as a union activist and organizer. He has
been a long-time activist in Latin American solidarity
movements, and wrote one of the first pamphlets exposing the
CIA's role in the Latin American labor movement.]

==========

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