Colombia: Hear the other side on Sunday

by Alicia Ranney and Kristen Melby • 9/24/08 • In your September 21 article “Colombian ambassador to the United States visits Twin Cities“ (republished from La Prensa de Minnesota), there were several statements the Colombian ambassador made misrepresenting the current human rights conditions in Colombia as well as the projected impacts of free trade for both the United States and Colombia.

To find out more about what is happening in Colombia please join us this Sunday, September 28th at the Resource Center of the Americas Coffee Hour at 10am or at Trinity Lutheran Church at 5pm to hear Professor Gustavo Moncayo (a high school teacher who led a walk of approximately 600 miles through Colombia to promote the “humanitarian accord” to secure the release of the many persons, including his son Pablo Emilio) and Consuelo González de Perdomo (who for 6 years and 4 months was held in captivity and just released January 10th of this year).

Contrary to assertions made, Colombia’s human rights record is not improving. An Amnesty International study published in July, 2007 shows the number of extrajudicial killings committed between 2002 and 2007 increased 65% in comparison to the previous five year period. Colombia continues to be the world’s leader in union assassinations. This year alone, 41 unionists have been killed, already surpassing the total for 2007. Imagine if here in Minnesota we had seen four trade union members murdered every month of this year. These killings are not “alleged” but have been well documented by the international community (with 2,200 labor activists killed since 1991). Furthermore, members of the Uribe administration, including some of President Uribe’s closes advisors and family are either under investigation by the Colombian courts or are incarcerated in Colombian prisons for conspiring with paramilitary death squads responsible for these killings.

The Colombian ambassador Barco argued that a Free Trade Agreement would benefit both Colombia and the United States and that it would produce over 700,000 jobs. A quick Google search of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would find similar statements made during the run-up to passing that agreement. Trade lobbyists at the time (and even today), repeated a similar song and dance that “hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs would be created” in the US as a result of NAFTA. Thanks to 15 years of NAFTA and all subsequent NAFTA model agreements there is plenty of solid evidence about the true impact of NAFTA trade. Here are a few highlights:

• Three million US manufacturing jobs off-shored, outsourced and displaced. Here in Minnesota, we have seen almost 58,000 of our own jobs disappear due to this bad model of trade.
• The national trade deficit has also ballooned to unprecedented levels.
• Over 300,000 family farms have disappeared while farm incomes have shrank by 13%.

As for Colombia, we must ask ourselves what kind of jobs will be created? Will these jobs be dignified jobs that pay a decent if not living wage? Or like in Mexico, will the trade agreement create a boon of maquila/sweat-shop jobs based on low wages, exploitation and humiliation.

Barco also mentioned that Colombian farmers may suffer and this is a shared concern. In Mexico, two million farmers lost their livelihoods, real wages declined, and the rate of immigration from Mexico to the United States under NAFTA has nearly doubled. Additionally, between 1994 and 2002 the basic food basket in Mexico increased by 257% and wages lost over ½ of their purchasing power. Like NAFTA impacts on the Mexican campesinos, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement will pressure farmers in impoverished areas to migrate for better work or turn to illegal drug production.

The NAFTA model has led us down a road of economic turmoil. While the winners soak up fortunes on Wall Street, the losers are all of us left on Main Street. With so many good paying manufacturing jobs disappearing, real median wages for families have declined. And in the past eight years, the US has experienced the slowest rates in job growth since the great depression.

It’s not such a huge leap in logic to conclude that continuing down this road, will only lead us to more of the same. A forthcoming report from the Economic Policy Institute has found that if we continue under the NAFTA model and continue to push forward bad trade deals like Colombia, Minnesota could potentially see an additional 485,000 (one out of every five) jobs off shored.

It’s time to change directions in the way we do trade. New trade models, like the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act introduced earlier this year is a road map that will put us in the right direction and ensure that trade agreements support workers and family farmers on all sides. It will ensure that human rights are a cornerstone to trade, not just an unenforceable talking point. Colombia of all countries has a long way to go in improving its human rights record and ensuring that the rights of workers and human rights activists are respected and taken into account. This won’t change tomorrow and it definitely won’t change if the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is forced through Congress. Finally, it is no secret that the US economy is in no shape to swallow yet another bad NAFTA trade deal. With families worrying about the housing market, gas and food prices, they don’t need another trade agreement that will continue to move their jobs off-shore.

Kristin Melby is the Regional Organizer for Witness for Peace-Upper Midwest. Alicia Ranney is the State Director for the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition.