 Pedro Mosquera |
 Jorge Ortega |
 Luis Mayusa |
These photos of unionists who have been killed by the Colombian government and paramilitaries are from Justice for Colombia.
Writer Alberto C. Ruiz reports on recent State Department cables released by Wikileaks and says:
What these cables portray is an organization, the AFL-CIO, which is beholden to the U.S. State Department and which is reporting to it on a regular basis. Among other things, it is reporting on the perceived blemishes of the union movements in those countries in which it operates. And, as during the Cold War, the “blemishes” it is reporting on in many instances revolve around the left-wing, and possibly socialist or communist, nature of these unions. Of course, the AFL-CIO is reporting on this to the U.S. government which is hostile to such left-wing institutions and which is indeed bent on wiping them out. The cable emanating from Nicaragua actually shows the Ambassador himself calling upon the AFL-CIO for help in agitating against Sandinista President Daniel Ortega.
This type of conduct by the AFL-CIO is particularly dangerous in the case of Colombia where trade unionists are being threatened and killed in record numbers by state and quasi-state actors which receive their support from the U.S., and where the U.S. is such a powerful, intervening force.
At worst, such red baiting of the union movement in a country such as Colombia to that countries’ military backer (the U.S.) serves to put the lives of unionists – who the AFL-CIO actually claims to protect – in danger.
Further, such conduct on the part of the AFL-CIO has an adverse impact on U.S. policy. For example, in the case of Colombia, undermining the union movement in the eyes of the U.S. government only serves to undercut the cause of the U.S. and Colombian unions who desperately attempted, and succeeded for several years, to prevent passage of the Colombia FTA, largely on the grounds that Colombia should not be rewarded for anti-union violence. This message was greatly compromised — and possibly fatally so as seen in the ultimate passage of the FTA under Obama — by the AFL-CIO’s representative in Bogota who, at least as reflected in the cables, portrays the Colombian unions’ concerns as unworthy, either because the unions are themselves somehow unworthy because they are communist-ridden or too political (that is, too concerned about government officials collaborating with paramilitary death squads), or because the issue of violence isn’t the big deal those unions are claiming it is.