Colombia and Business Lobby Hard For Trade Pact

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe flew to Washington in early June to try again to persuade members of Congress to support a pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA), as well as another round of foreign aid (see page 1).  An earlier trip in May was unsuccessful on the trade issue when Colombia was excluded from a May 10 trade deal on Panama and Peru (page 1).

A burgeoning paramilitary scandal has made public what human rights critics have long said, that paramilitary groups in Colombia operate with the support of the government. The scandal has brought about several resignations from Uribe’s cabinet, in addition to the arrests of over a dozen members of Congress, the head of the secret police, and several mayors. An April NPR story reported that the scandal confirmed that paramilitaries “worked in concert with the state to eliminate union members who denounced abuses or corruption.”

“Para-gate,” combined with the government’s failure to demonstrate sufficient progress on violence against trade unionists and impunity, forced the Bush administration to agree to put Colombia on a different track than pending agreements with Panama and Peru. 

The question now is what steps Colombia will be required to take to satisfy enough members of Congress to bring Colombia FTA to a vote.  While the AFL-CIO, USLEAP and others state that the Colombia FTA is not fixable and nothing can be done in the near term to warrant approval, key members of Congress and the Bush Administration are prepared to accept relatively token steps.

$100,000 a Month for FTA Push

Business supporters have responded with a major lobbying effort, led by Wal-Mart, Caterpillar, and Citigroup.  The Colombian government has also hired a K Street firm for $100,000 a month to lobby in favor of the FTA.  Proponents are increasingly putting forward the argument that failure to approve an FTA with the Administration’s closest ally in South America will hand a victory to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Pro-Uribe groups have also organized delegations of pro-FTA trade unionists from Colombia.  The delegations have been denounced by the Colombian trade union movement, whose three major confederations representing the vast majority of union workers have emphatically rejected the FTA.

Disinformation Campaign by Both Governments

Lobbying for the FTA includes a disinformation campaign in which the Colombian government has been joined by the U.S. State Department in providing Congress with false information about declining levels of violence against trade unionists.  

On April 24, State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere, Charles Shapiro, testified before a House subcommittee that the Colombian government had sharply reduced the number of trade union murders.  He cited the leading Colombian NGO on labor issues, Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS, the National Labor School) as reporting a decline to 38 murders in 2006.  However, the ENS had reported the previous month that 72 trade unionists had been murdered in 2006, an increase over the 70 tolled in 2005.

Mr. Uribe has been even more disingenuous, declaring in an April 2007 press conference that “only” 25 trade unionists had been murdered in 2006.  His own Ministry of Social Protection released a report the same month that counts 60 trade unionists murdered in 2006.

The much lower numbers are due in part to a cynical ploy by both governments that now excludes the number of unionized teachers murdered.  Since more teachers are killed in Colombian than any other sector, discounting teachers significantly alters the figures–but not the reality.

No Progress on Impunity     

The Uribe government has also been trumpeting a reallocation of its prosecutors, with 13 of 40 now deployed to focus specifically on murders of trade unionists.  While more resources focused on this is a positive, the only real measure of progress against impunity is results, measured in numbers of successful prosecutions and murderers put behind bars.  As reported in the March newsletter, there has been little progress on this score.  An April update from the Colombian government confirmed the glacial pace, reporting only two convictions for the 236 trade unionists murdered in the 2004-2006 period.  

USLEAP’s contribution to the effort to defeat the free trade agreement with Colombia has focused on providing members of Congress and the press accurate analyses about violence and impunity in Colombia to counter the misrepresentations by the Uribe government, the U.S. State Department, and others.  USLEAP’s most recent analysis is posted on the USLEAP website.  The material can be used to counter any local media reports in favor of the Colombia FTA.