Three Guatemalan Trade Unionists Murdered

Pedro Zamora, general secretary of the union representing workers at the Pacific coast Port of Quetzal, was gunned down 50 meters from his home in Puerto Iztapa, on Monday January 15, 2007. The assassins fired 100 rounds into Zamora's pickup truck, striking him twenty times.

On February 7th, 2007, two more two Guatemalan union members were murdered. Walter Aníbal Ixcaquic Mendoza and Norma Sente de Ixcaquic were members of the Frente Nacional de Vendedores de Guatemala.

More trade unionists have now been killed in Guatemala in the first year of CAFTA's implementation in Guatemala than the two years prior to CAFTA's passage.

When Pedro Zamora was attacked, he was on his way home from work and had just picked up his three-year-old son, Angel. Angel was grazed by two bullets (one in the knee, another in the abdomen), escaping with minor physical injuries. Nevertheless, Angel was traumatized by witnessing his father's murder; as Pedro Zamora lay badly wounded, one of the killers told the boy, "Don't worry. We're not here to kill you. We came to kill your father." The killer then stuck a pistol in Zamora's mouth and fired the fatal shot.

Mr. Zamora's union, STEPQ (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa Portuaria Quetzal) has been protesting the lack of transparency in the financing of an expansion of the Port of Quetzal, Guatemala's primary Pacific Coast port and has so far blocked privatization. Port managers have responded by militarizing the port, illegally firing and arresting union leaders, and refusing to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

An international delegation that included Tim Beaty, Director of Global Strategies for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, helped raise the profile of the case internationally, calling for a full investigation into the murder, an end to threats against union members and their families, reinstatement of fired union leaders, and contract negotiations. Nine fired union members were subsequently reinstated but there's been no progress on a credible investigation.