Idea
by Diane Lefer
in New Clear Vision
For five years, the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiated between
the administrations of George Bush and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was stalled in the US
Congress because of violence against Colombian workers, including 51 union
leaders assassinated in 2010 alone.
On April 7, President Obama and current Colombian President Juan Manuel
Santos announced they had reached an agreement that would smooth the way for
passage. Under this plan, actions that violate labor rights would be
criminalized (as though assassination isn’t already criminal); investigators
would be assigned to look into abuses, and leaders could request protection. I
do wonder how Colombia will be able to provide this protection given the extent
of the violence. In the past months, I’ve received word almost every week of new
murders: not only union organizers but small farmers and the honest judges who
hear these cases, while the perpetrators too often are members of or linked to
the security forces.
The attack on labor matters, of course, but the US Congress needs to
understand it’s not the only problem with the FTA. Nothing stands in the way of
our countries negotiating specific trade deals while the plan for so-called
“free trade” actually restricts the parties’ freedom, taking away the freedom to
negotiate and the freedom to set national economic policy.
To consider just a few troubling provisions:
What’s “free” about delaying the introduction and production of generic drugs
in order to protect the profits of Big Pharma in Colombia where at least 50% of
the people live in poverty?
What’s “free” about the US being allowed to continue our generous subsidies
to agribusiness while Colombia would not be allowed to assist its own farmers.
Instead, Colombia’s role would be to export biofuels and specific
plantation-grown products, such as bananas — exactly the products that have led
to some of the worst human rights abuses in the country. Today, 5 million
Colombians — mostly rural people with limited education and no urban skills–are
internally displaced, driven from their land and homes by killings and threats
of violence. Over ten million acres of productive land are now in the hands of
drug traffickers, paramilitary groups and their wealthy allies who plant African
palm and yuca, creating huge monoculture agribusiness plantations to grow food
for machines instead of for people.
The FTA will therefore increase violence and income inequality in a country
where the two most secure founts of income for the masses are the drug trade and
the armed conflict — both of which the US is engaged in fighting at the cost so
far of $6 billion. The FARC guerrilla army today is largely composed of young
teens who join without any ideological indoctrination but in search of regular
meals.
In a positive development, both the Colombian courts and the InterAmerican
Court for Human Rights have ordered stolen lands returned to displaced
communities. The US has even provided some financial assistance to implement
return, but these communities face continued violence. In past months, because
of the banana export business, communities in the Urabá region of Chocó have
faced the invasion of their territory. Contractors working in concert with
paramilitaries and Colombian soldiers, lure desperate people to the area where
they are tricked into illegally occupying land in order to grow bananas for
multinational Banacol. The situation is already fraught with danger and
injustice and can only be exacerbated by passage of the FTA.
With the FTA, Colombia would lose the right to enforce environmental
regulations on transnational oil and mining corporations such as Canada-based
multinational Greystar which seeks to create a huge open pit gold mine in the
Andes using explosives and sodium cyanide leaching basins. The proposed site,
the páramos (or high altitude moors) of Santurbán, is the source of water for
the department of Santander. Local people protested. Artist David Navarro got
attention for the cause when he took 17 co-conspirators up to the páramos where
they stripped off their clothes and Navarro photographed an eloquent series of
images: fragile bodies and fragile ecosystem, one woman holding a lamb in her
naked arms.
A few years ago, activists presented 2 million
signatures to the legislature seeking a Constitutional amendment, similar to one
passed in Uruguay, recognizing clean drinking water as a human right. The
proposal would prohibit water supply privatization, something only too likely to
be imposed under “free trade.” So far the activists have not prevailed, but the
environmental movement keeps growing and holds broad appeal as it promises
grassroots empowerment and change without the Marxist orientation that polarized
the population and scared many citizens away from reform.
There’s potential here to transform a long-suffering country. In the 1960s,
inspired by the Cuban Revolution and spurred on by unconscionable exploitation
and injustice and the all-too-frequent and predictable murders of political
reformers, many of the most idealistic Colombians concluded there was no
alternative to violent resistance. They went to the mountains and the jungles to
join the armed struggle. Today, it seems when activists head for mountains and
rainforest they go peacefully in defense of the environment. On March 14th, to
mark the International Day of Action for Rivers, communities around the country,
with significant youth participation, protested against dams and hydroelectric
megaprojects. In January, in Putumayo in the Amazon basin (where no paved road
exists between the department capital and its major city), a nonviolent
coalition of indigenous people and Afro-Colombians blocked — at least so far —
the construction of a highway through their territory for the benefit of an oil
consortium.
Meanwhile, back in Santander, after a groundswell of protest against the
Greystar gold mine, Carlos Rodado, the minister of Mines and Energy, reviewed
the company’s environmental impact and technical study and said the gold mining
project was not viable. Translating his words: “If the operation of Greystar’s
mine is going to be of the same quality as the studies that have been presented,
we have serious reason to be worried.”
The Uribe administration seemed more interested in catering to foreign
investors than in protecting the environment. Under Santos, there are signs of
change but this welcome shift is threatened by passage of the FTA. Does it make
any sense for Colombia to lose the right to protect the environment at the very
moment when that power is being used?