Colombian union organizers speak out against Coke
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Truth, justice and reparation. This is what the Colombian union organizers who came to Earlham on April 3 want from the Coca-Cola Corporation. At noon, over fifty Earlhamites attended the Earlham Progressive Union (EPU) event to listen to the organizers’ stories and examine the implications of Earlham’s relationship with the soda company.
The two activists’ expertise harmonized well. Camilo A. Romero spoke from experience as a Colombian-born social organizer who has traveled internationally, speaking out against the human rights abuses alleged against Coke. During the lunch discussion, he translated for Luis A. Cardona, who shared his personal testimony of having been an employee of Coke and a union organizer who was witness to the murder of a fellow organizer and was himself threatened on account of his union activities.
Cardona’s fall out with Coke began in 1996. A member of SINAL TRINAL, the Columbian national food product workers’ union, he had begun working to improve labor rights at the bottling plant where he worked on the border of Panama. The union had already had a few successes in this endeavor, but Cardona reports that they had also begun to feel pressure from the paramilitaries hired by the Coke Corporation to cease their union activities.
Cardona and his coworker Isidro Gil had been working with others in an effort to renegotiate their plant’s union contract with the Coke Corporation.
One day, Cardona said that a group of paramilitaries drove up to the plant on their motorcycles. Cardona was working on his forklift when he heard the shot. Cardona believes that Gil had had been assassinated in retaliation for his union activities. Cardona rushed over to his friend, failing to notice that he had been shot in the forehead until Gil’s blood and brains seeped into his hands. Gil’s family was summoned; Cardona remembers how Gil’s widow and two young daughters flung themselves at his body and beseeched him not to leave them.
Cardona recalls that, three hours after Gil’s death, the paramilitaries returned, and asked Cardona to meet with their chief. That evening he met them at their cantina, and as he waited for the chief, a car pulled up. Cardona said that he instantly recognized the driver as the paramilitary man who drove people to the river, where they could be disposed of after he tortured them. With nothing to lose, Cardona took off running, shouting “Catch me if you can!” as he weaved through townspeople and sought shelter at the local police station.
To this day, Cardona believes that if he had not made himself so visible that evening, the police would have returned him to the paramilitaries working for Coke.
“They haven’t killed me yet, but they have certainly killed my way of life,” said Cardona of the paramilitaries. Shortly thereafter, Cadona said that the paramilitaries burned the union hall to the ground and forced the organizers to sign letters of resignation (both from their jobs and from the union) on Coke letterhead on pain of death. Cardona remembers being told, “You lose your union or you lose your life.” Those fired, Cardona says, were replaced by workers paid one-third the salary that their predecessors used to make.
In 2001, Cardona says that he was declared a paramilitary objective and thus was able to escape Colombia for the United States through a protection program initiated by the AFL-CIO for Colombian trade unionists. Since in Cardona’s experience the Colombian government turned a deaf ear to the union’s allegations against Coke, he and his fellow organizers began to seek justice internationally; eventually, with the aid of the United Steelworkers of America, the case was taken up by a court in southern Florida. Today, Cardona carries a United Steelworkers business card identifying him as an “International Organizer,” and he spends his days traveling the country speaking out against Coke’s exploitation of its workers and the ways it has worked to suppress union activity in Colombia.
“We’re against all multi-national corporations that through violence seek to hurt and or eliminate movements for social justice, for peace and equality. We’re very aware that perhaps the most vicious of these has been the Coca-Cola Company, using direct and indirect violence through the paramilitaries,” said Cardona of his work with unions and Romero specifically.
The activists’ brief visit to Earlham was part of a larger initiative to help build awareness and bolster the on-the-ground campaign to hold Coke responsible for its past and present actions. Romero says that the initiative has gone from the meager effort of a bloodied union to an internationally recognized campaign.
Cardona said that young people are one of Coke’s most important consumers, because they can become long-term customers and ensure the company’s future success. He sees college campaigns against the wrongdoings of the Coke Corporation as very important, because young people can influence their peers into looking beyond the glossy ad campaigns and truly examining the moral implications of Coke’s actions as a company. Coke’s greatest asset, Cardona insists, is their image; he encourages activists to subvert that image and make the Coke name synonymous with “Killer Coke” in their minds.
“So long as people enjoy the ‘Coke side of life’, our lives our expendable,” Cardona said, referring to a recent add campaign.
By Laura Gleason.
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