USLEAP’s Program Coordinator, Lupita Aguila participated in the protest outside, while Stephen Coats, the Director of USLEAP, and I attended the event inside. In a small ballroom within a downtown hotel, we were served fresh fruit, muffins and beverages, along with an elaborate butter molding for our croissants. I opened the Program booklet and immediately noticed the Monsanto logo at the top of the page, the sponsorship of the event, which highlighted the business perspective of the audience and the corporate atmosphere. I prepared myself.
Vice President Santos began by stating Colombia is not well understood because there is a misinterpretation of its reality. He went to explain to us how Colombia has changed and why U.S. companies should invest in the country. He stated that foreign investment would increase employment and tax revenue in Colombia, which will in turn improve the well being of Colombian citizens. He also argued that since President Uribe took office in Colombia about seven years ago, violence has decreased drastically: “Change has been dramatic…whoever says differently is a liar.” Santos detailed the many initiatives the Colombian government has created to assist the people of Colombia. Near the end of Santos speech, he accused NGOs in the United States of ignoring the progress the Colombian administration has made, using half-truths, and not engaging in the debate of what should be done to improve the situation in Colombia. Half way through his speech, some of the protesters from outside entered the ballroom armed with banners about displacement and poverty in Colombia. As security tried to hurry them out, Santos invited them to stay so they could hear the “truth” about his country.
Colombia is known for its internal violence and corruption, and is infamous for being the world’s most dangerous place to be a trade unionist. More trade unionists have been killed every year since President Uribe has been in office than in any other country in the world. The Vice President stated that the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, is safer than Detroit, Michigan, based on his data of crime and violence in both cities. The number of trade unionist murders actually increased in 2008 over 2007.
According to Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS), an independent non-governmental organization in Colombia that investigates and educates about worker and union issues in Colombia, “there was a strategic change in the forms of violence against unionized workers,”. For example, there was an increase in detentions, death threats, restrictions to union freedoms, and “the use of a variety of strategies to make the magnitude of violence invisible.” This can be seen through the issue of impunity in Colombia and the holes within the Colombian judicial system that may distort official data of violence (possibly the data Vice President Santos used during his speech).
Obviously, human rights and labor supporters, or those who contain what Santos calls an “anti-multinational ideology,” were the minority at the event. Naturally, there was hardly time left for questions, just enough for two. One man asked why the Colombian government has taken so long to respond to US Labor and Trade NGOs. Gary Cozette, the director of CRLN, asked Santos to respond to the anti-Coca Cola campaign taken on by a number of U.S. universities, paramilitary violence issues, and the situation of companies that took land from Afro-Colombians for the production of palm oil. Santos answered by saying he personally dealt with the palm oil issue and that the lands were given back to the original residents. In response to the anti-Coca Cola campaign, he said the Colombian government told the U.S. universities to take the issue up with the ILO.
This speech was one of many, as members of the Colombian administration are touring the U.S. this week, including a meeting with the Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton.