Coca-Cola's Criminal Alliances

At the five plants the Coca-Cola affiliates own in the country 8,700 people are working. The 70% of them are temporary workers, who earn less than one minimum wage [which in Colombia is around CAD$200 a month] in exchange of 16 hours of work a day. This subcontracted personnel is put down to every kind of humilliations. They have no right to join an union, and the salesmen must fulfil a daily quota if they do not want to lose their jobs. Some people prefer to get into debts and pay with their own money the remaining merchandise.

In 1996, in Carepa town, Antioquia province, a paramilitary group entered the plant, murdered the union leader Isidro Segundo Gil and gathered the employees together to tell them that, if they did not close the union, they were going to be killed. On the afternoon of the same day, the paramilitaries went back and tried to kidnap another unionist, who could run away. That night, they plundered and put the Sintrainal headquarters into fire. The Carepa plant manager, Ariosto Mosquera, had publicly threatened the unionists by telling them he had the paramilitaries ready to murder them. Neither the local Army commander, Rito Alejo del Río (accused of supporting paramilitary groups on massacres commited in 1996 and 1997 in Urabá and Atrato regions against afrodescent communities and released in 2004 for preclusion of the case), nor the governor of Antioquia at the time, Ã�lvaro Uribe Vélez (current President of Colombia), undertook any action on the case. The unionists had to quit and go out the region. In February 1999, Cambio magazine published a long story where it told that RubÃn Darío Salazar, a high executive at the company, had met with the paramilitary leaders RamÃn Isaza and Carlos CastaÃo. From time to time, at the W. C.'s in every plant in the country, signed messages signed by the AUC (United Self-Defences of Colombia) threatening the union leaders.

In the last few days, a U. S. court acquitted the multinational company of the charges against it for human rights abuses in Colombia. Nevertheless, that is just an episode at the long legal process that will go on. Meanwhile, five universities in the United States have already terminated their contracts with Coca-Cola because of its links with the Colombian paramilitary groups.

* The original Spanish article appeared in El Espectador, a Bogotá weekly (formerly daily) newspaper. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martí

Note: El Espectador