Milwaukee, WI – Colombia Action Network organizer Tom Burke came here Oct. 28 to speak about U.S. intervention in Colombia. Burke, who was served a Grand Jury subpoena in the FBI activist raids in late September, made strong observations on people’s movements both in the U.S. and Colombia.

Erika Zurawski of Fight Back! interviews two Colombian trade unionists who are in the U.S. through the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. Jhonny Meneses is a union leader from SINCONSTASCAR (a union of taxi drivers in Cartegena) and an outspoken opponent of U.S. free trade and economic policy in Latin America. Nelson Quijano is a union leader from USO (Oil Workers Union). USO is a leading social force in Colombia. In the spring of 2004, USO went on strike for several months to successfully fight the privatization of the national oil company.

Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. On average, right-wing paramilitary death squads or the military murder three Colombian trade unionists a week. Many more are threatened each day. At the same time the U.S. has given more than $3 billion in military aid, which funds both the military and paramilitary war on Colombian trade unionists, human rights workers and campesinos (peasants).

For two weeks in July, a solidarity delegation of the Colombia Action Network (CAN) traveled in Colombia, meeting with leading trade unionists, peasant leaders and other participants in that country’s powerful movement for justice and liberation. The CAN delegation was made up of anti-war and student activists from Illinois, Minnesota and Connecticut. The delegation investigated the impact of U.S. military aid through Plan Colombia and extended solidarity to the struggle of the Colombian people against U.S. imperialism.

A Colombia Action Network delegation is currently touring in Colombia, hosted by the Oil Workers’ Union and REINICIAR, an important human rights organization that reports to the United Nations. The Colombia Action Network delegation departed from the U.S. in late June. They will hear firsthand about the successful strike by the Oil Workers Union against the national oil company ECOPETROL to stop privatization. The Oil Workers Union (USO) is the most important union in Colombia. Oil is one of the main reasons the Pentagon has 1200 U.S. military advisors and Special Forces fighting in Colombia, and is spending $98 million to guard Occidental Petroleum’s pipeline.

Barrancabermeja, Colombia – It is 6:00 a.m. and one thousand oil workers surround the leaders of their union, USO (Union Sindical Obrero de la Industria del Petrolero). At the entrance to Ecopetrol, the national oil company, Jose Fernando Ramirez, the human rights director for USO, starts chanting, “Long live the oil workers union!” and then “Down with Plan Colombia!” Workers thunder their response.