Exiled Colombian Union Supporter Says ‘Just Vote No’ on Free Trade Deal

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/01/28/exiled-colombian-union-supporter-says-just-vote-no-on-free-trade-deal/

Thanks to the United Steelworkers (USW) for alerting us to this blog by Gerardo Cajamarca, an exiled Colombian community leader and union supporter now living in Minnesota. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Colombia with a congressional delegation, called for passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Reportedly, one stop on the legislators’ tour was a polo club—where better to meet the ordinary Colombian? As Cajamarca demonstrates in this crosspost from the Huffington Post, the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will not help the workers in his native country.


Gerardo Cajamarca

When I heard that some Bush Administration dignitaries were planning to offer Congressmen junkets to Bogotá to win their votes for the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement, I began to daydream about the tours of my home country that I’d like to give lawmakers to explain why the pact is so wrong for both nations.

My expeditions must remain fantasies, though, because I can rarely return to Colombia safely now. I fled in 2004 when it was clear I would be murdered imminently by the paramilitaries, groups the U.S. government has officially designated as terrorists. The U.S. granted me sanctuary, and I live now in Minneapolis.

The version of Colombia that will be offered Congressmen by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab or U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez will be the sanitized tourist one. Gutierrez said recently, for example, that he likes to take lawmakers to the streets of Medellin, infamous as a drug capital, and show them how children may now safely walk to school. These administration-orchestrated trips for Congressmen are called CODELS, reminding me of the English word coddle. On those excursions, there would, of course, be fancy hotels, embassy parties and chauffeured limos.

I would offer less-pampered outings, the stuff of everyday life in Colombia. That is what I believe the Congressmen should experience.

It’s fine to see children walking to school, but I would also take the Congressmen to the park at the archeological site known as Cercado de los Zipas in Facatativa, which is the town from which I fled. At that site on Dec. 28, an acquaintance and fellow unionist, Sigifredo Higuera Ramirez, was shot in the head as he exercised. The union to which this 63-year-old man belonged, SINALTRAINAL, has said it was an assassination.

FULL story at link.