tarism when in February 2004 their indigenous assembly staged a very public 'trial' of the military for the murder by the army of a young man from their community.
They went on to lead a march of tens of thousands of indigenous protesters in September from Santander de Quilichao to Cali calling for respect for life on the planet; the autonomy of their territories and an end to military and paramilitary occupation. historical amnesia' ics, trade unionists, farmers and business people to present papers and proposals...
You as a worldly wise writer, do know that "armed bands" do not convoke forums, and listen and accept proposals from a plurality of sources on making Colombia an effective democracy.
With the backing of the US government the Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations and launched an attack on the demilitarized zone.
Should the guerrillas and their peasant supporters have responded by preparing to cast "blank votes"?
Would they have survived? Was that the point at which, in your opinion, the guerrillas turned into "armed bands, kidnappers and assassins"?
1 am serious, Saramago. I want you to give me your
They also called for a rejection of the constitutional reforms' that Uribe was putting through Congress after he failed to win backing for them in a referendum; and a rejection the free trade agreement with the US due to be signed early this year.
The FARC had tried to derail preparations for the march by kidnapping the commission heading the initiative. The police, meanwhile, had tried to intimidate answer because the FARC's proposal for agrarian reform and de-militarization has the backing of millions of peasants, dispossessed and tortured by the Colombian government which you refused to name, which you obliquely referred to as the "situation in Colombia".
Why such discretion when speaking of a government like the present terrorist President Uribe, who has launched a scorched earth policy throughout the countryside?..
Why not condemn the vast US presence in Colombia - $3 billion dollars in aid, 800 military advisers, a dozen military bases and several thousand mercenaries paid for by the Pentagon?
Doesn't that count as a "foreign invasion"?
The guerrillas the FARC and the ELN-are today, and OCCUPaLIO of municipal buildings to stop privatisation and repeatedly forced the government into agreements and compromises.
President Alvaro
Uribe has staked
everything on
handing over the
resources of the
country and the
public sector to
private and US
multinational
interests. dental Petroleum and Chevron- Texaco, costing the company tens of millions.
The strike in this key strategic sector was immediately declared illegal. Sympathetic actions broke in various parts of the country and the strikers stayed out. The government sent troops to the oilfields.
Legal repression was swift -USO workers were immediately locked out, 1000 workers were "disciplined, and 93 were fired. In the end the strikers were forced back to work.
Workers from the food workers union SINALTRAINAL took on Coca Cola whose local bottling plants were notorious for having used paramilitaries to break unions in the past. The unionists staged a hunger strike in eight cities demanding relocation after an announcement by the company that 11 of its 16 bottling plants were to close.
The action was finally called off in exchange for negotiations on relocation but less than a month later two relatives of Coca Cola union leader Efrain Guerrero were murdered in their home by armed men and three of their children seriously wounded.
Thus the battle continues between Uribe, Colombia's elite and the US on the one side and Colombia's remarkable trade union and social movements on the other. • Source:' 'Colombia in 2004, Parts 1, 2, and 3', Justin Podur. • Further information: www.colombiasolidarity.org.u k/index.shtml