A five month long mobilisation against BP in the Casanare region of Colombia has escalated after the Colombian army entered the BP installations with force this week and confronted workers who have been peacefully occupying BP installations since May 23 to protest BP´s failure to conclude negotiations with the workers and community.
The circle is closing on the Presidential Palace in Colombia, where the headquarters of a “criminal enterprise” involving Colombia’s secret services (DAS), function under the direct orders of President Alvaro Uribe and his advisors. This latest report provides evidence, not only of involvement, but direction, orders and full control from the Presidential Palace and the President’s closest friends and advisors of illegal and criminal operations. TThe testimonies and documents provided and exposed in this report (and added to the already abundant existing proof) are conclusive.
Colombia has long held the title of trade union murder capital of the world. With increasing threats against workers and an estimated 4,000 trade unionists killed in the last three decades, the practices of multinational corporations operating in the Andean Nation are beginning to be more vigilantly scrutinized. A new film shines the spotlight on Atlanta-based Coca-Cola.
During his visit to Bogotá last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced: “Colombia’s success against terrorists and narco-traffickers does offer a lot of opportunities for them to share their expertise. We certainly would like to see . . . other countries take advantage of Colombia’s strengths.”
A car bomb exploded in Colombia’s port city of Buenaventura last month, killing nine people and leaving 60 others injured. The U.S. plans on utilizing this port as a major point of export and import should the US-Colombia free trade agreement pass in the future. This incident underscores the insecurity faced by civilians – the majority of whom are Afro-descendants – in this area known for drug smuggling and high homicide rates.
On the shores of the Magdalena River, in a lush green valley dotted with cattle ranches and farms, sits the Palanquero military base, an outpost equipped with Colombia’s longest runway, housing for 2,000 troops, a theater, a supermarket, and a casino. Palanquero is at the heart of a ten-year, renewable military agreement signed between the United States and Colombia on October 30, 2009, which gives Washington access to seven military bases in the country.
The Conservatives tabled the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Parliament yesterday, reviving a deal many thought better left for dead. Renewed interest in the deal comes weeks after an Amnesty International report found Indigenous peoples in Colombia are at risk of being exterminated by state forces, right wing paramilitary groups and guerrilla organizations.
In her latest pro bono public relations initiative on behalf of right-wing Latin American regimes, The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady interviews a former commander of the 5th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—Daniel Sierra Martínez, alias “Samir”— who deserted the organization in 2008 and is now serving as a primary accomplice in Colombian government efforts to prove campesinos are terrorists. […]
Activists from the U.S. and Colombia are targeting the World of Coca-Cola museum, located near its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, accusing the company of "union busting", paying its workers "poverty wages", and engaging in environmentally destructive practices. […]
Last fall, Colombia’s social and popular movements captured the world’s attention. Emerging initially from the indigenous territories in Northern Cauca and expanding to unite diverse sectors, the Social and Community Minga burst onto the national and international scene with a popular agenda for radical change, a “country of the peoples without owners” A year later, the Minga appears to have arrived at a crossroads, where a once powerful popular agenda risks being manipulated in favour of a narrow and domesticating one. […]
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