The weekend of 1st and 2nd of April was the first hearing of the People’s Permanent Tribunal’s Colombia Session, during which the multinationals Coca-Cola, Nestle and Chiquita Brands were tried for human rights abuses. The PPT is an international alternative justice mechanism which has the aim establishing the legal responsibilities in situations of massive violations of fundamental rights where there has been no response from official legal institutions. Whilst the PPT can’t actually sentence anyone, the judges are experts in national and international law and work within that framework in order to highlight the truth of the crimes and their causes, so they they can’t just be covered up and erased from historical memory from by the governments and companies who are responsible.
After hearing the testimonies and examining a mountain of written evidence the judges found Coca-Cola directly or indirectly responsible for the assassination of 10 trade unionists and Nestlé responsible for the assassination of 9. Chiquita was found guilty of directly trafficking arms to the paramilitaries. Chiquita is the successor to the United Fruit Company, the US company involved in the Colombian army’s massacre of several hundred striking banana workers on 6th December 1928 and the disappearance of several hundred more over the following weeks – a massacre which provided the inspiration for events in Gabriel García Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”:
It hadn’t rained for three months and it was a time of drought. But when Mr Brown announced his decision a torrential rain poured over the banana region, taking José Arcadio Segundo by surprise on the road to Macondo. A week later it was still raining.
The official version, a thousand times repeated across the country through any method of communication the government found within its reach, ended up prevailing: there had been no deaths, the satisfied workers had returned to their families and the banana company had suspended activities until the rain had passed. Martial law remained in place, in case it was necessary to apply emergency measures because of the public calamity posed by the interminable downpour; although the troops were confined to their barracks.
During the day, the soldiers walked through the torrents in the streets, with their trousers rolled halfway up their legs, playing at shipwrecks with the children. At night, after the curfew, they broke down doors with their rifle butts, pulled the suspects from their beds and took them on a journey without return…. “Of course it was a dream”, the officials insisted, nothing has ever happened in Macondo. This is a happy town”. And so they erased from memory the extermination of the union leaders.
Garcia changed little in his account except the name of the company and the town in which the massacre was carried out and the fact that the army’s commanding officer did concede that 9 people had been killed. On 16 January 1929 US embassador Jefferson Caffrey sent a memo to the State Department saying “I have the honour to inform you that the number of striking workers killed exceeds one thousand”. And of course the story doesn’t stop there, or with the dead left by multinationals such as Coca-Cola and Nestle, despite the ongoing official denials.
A few days after the tribunal I left Bogotá with Maria from the campaign against Nestlé in Switzerland for the town of Bugalagrande, which is home to a Nestle factory and little else. We stayed with the biggest trade unionist I have ever seen and were fed to similar proportions by his wife. So much for being in Colombia making me lose weight…
The Sinaltrainal branch in Bugalagrande is one of the biggest and the union have long been involved in projects with the community, such as building a sports centre, providing a low-interest loans facility and running a community kitchen which provides cheap but healthy lunches to families without the means to feed themselves adequately and also tries to raise people’s consciousness about the causes of hunger. Despite the vast quantities of milk, biscuits, chocolate and soup produced by Nestle in Bugalagrande, there are still people nearby without enough access to any of it. Throughout the 1990’s, the union also worked with peasant groups on a project people’s control over their own food production and consumption, but then the paramilitaries arrived and did away with the project and some of the people working on it. We listened to some chilling testimonies from people who’d be threatened and saw how the factory had polluted the river that runs through the town (they managed to kill all the swallows in the area a couple of years ago).
Over the last few years Nestle have increasingly been employing people on a casual basis (though Adecco – the worst temping agency I ever worked for – although here Adecco actually put psychologists in the workers’ houses watch how they spent their money, presumably so they can try to justify paying them less). Even those new employees with contracts get none of the benefits (such as access to healthcare) that the older workers get, and their salary is a whopping 35% lower. Whilst we were there, the union voted to enter a more confrontational negotiation with Nestle to obtain equal rights for the new workers – last time they did this, in the late 80’s, one of the leaders was killed and the main protagonists were sacked. So things could get nasty again in the next few weeks.
I’ve also been getting even more used to public speaking in Spanish, to the point that it’s starting not to bother me anymore…. The day after the tribunal, I had to give a 15 minute talk about the campaign against Coca-Cola in the UK. I had prior warning for this one, although at the meeting in Bugalagrande Maria and I were both called onto the platform and asked to say something without any warning whatsoever – I think I’m going to have to store up some eloquent and rousing sound bites for when I’m called on to speak without notice as I’m starting to run out of intelligent things to say. The Dame Edna disguise hasn’t come out again – bright pink really doesn’t suit me so I’m reserving the glasses for emergencies.
Easter week was very quiet, except for the occasional priest singing tuneless hymns in the streets. Everyone was either praying or off partying in other parts of the country. I worked with Maria on a proposal for the campaign against hunger, which Sinaltrainal launched at the forum after the food and agriculture hearing, although we managed to have some fun too at a goodbye party for a couple of friends who have got grants from the Cuban government to go to medical school in Havana and at a meeting with Sinaltrainal which deteriorated into beer-drinking session (I have to put this in because my dad seems to be worried that I’m being too well behaved – which is only because I don’t offer up information on my bad behaviour for public consumption of course). Penance followed the parties though and I spent the entire weekend in supplication to the god of PhD’s finishing off a rough draft of a chapter and lamenting Colombia’s lack of Cadbury’s buttons Easter Eggs – I mean, struggles for food sovereignty are all very well and I know Cadburys are a big mean company, but I do like the way they engrave little bunnies in the chocolate.
