A Democratic Plan Colombia

Hillary Clinton on the proposed US-Colombia trade deal:

I am disappointed that President Bush has decided to send the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to Congress. As I have said consistently for several months, I oppose signing any trade deal with Colombia while violence against trade unionists continues and the perpetrators are not brought to justice. The United States should be pursuing trade agreements that promote human rights and worker rights, not overlook egregious abuses.  I will vote against the President's Colombia trade agreement, and will urge my Senate colleagues to do the same.

No surprise there. No surprise either that Barack Obama is bound to vote against the deal himself. Well, that's the way the wind is blowing: in favour of economic nationalism and state-run racketeering. So be it. Theoretically this might just be campaign posturing but it seems as though it might be hard for a Democratic president to abandon this sort of rhetoric once in office. So there we have it: Democrats will rebuild links with the rest of the world by slapping friends and allies in the face. How brilliant.

And the fig-leaf given to justify this (relatively modest) trade deal? Ah yes, dead trade unionists. Well, I don't approve of murdering trade unionists and it would be grand if more of those responsible for killing union organisers were brought to trial. But all sorts of people are liable to be whacked in Colombia and many of those responsible are never brought to trial either.

Of course, much of Colombia's violence is exacerbated by the United States' lunatic and criminal drug policies, but last time I checked I didn't see any Democratic presidential candidate calling for the abandonment of Plan Colombia.

And how many trade unionists were murdered last year anyway? Fewer than 40. This chart shows you how, happily, it's safer to be a trade unionist in Colombia than to used to be. In 2002, by contrast, there were more than 30,000 murders in Colombia - or 78 per 100,000 Colombians. Many, perhaps even most, of those murders weren't solved either.

Chris Hayes complains that people would be paying attention to this if it were CEOs being killed rather than trade unionists. Well maybe. But of course plenty of Colombian business owners are murdered and, especially, kidnapped each year. That this is the case does little to dent or otherwise damage the case for or against a free trade deal.

Ezra Klein adds:

 

Sobering stuff. And something the United States should demand an end to long before we consider a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. Whatever you believe about the enforcability of labor standards enshrined in transnational trade legislation, they're obviously a joke if actual Colombians can't even survive efforts to create unions.

But what does he want an end to? What sort of clear-up rate does he want to see? Would a 50% conviction rate be sufficient. 60%? Or must the number of trade unionists murdered also fall by 66% or some other arbitrary, back-of-an-envelope figure? And look, clearly this is a problem but it's scarcely true to say that the deaths of trade unionists make it impossible to be a trade unionist in Colombia any more than it would be true to suppose that the murder of journalists in Colombia makes it impossible to survive efforts at reporting the news.

And the left's figures may not be accurate anyway. According to this NYT piece:

 

in 2000 the Colombian military and the judicial system began to reassert themselves. Prosecuting cases referred by the unions themselves, the attorney general’s office won its first conviction for the murder of a trade unionist in 2001. Last year, the office won nearly 40.

 

Of the 87 convictions won in union cases since 2001, almost all for murder, the ruling judges found that union activity was the motive in only 17. Even if you add the 16 cases in which motive was not established, the number doesn’t reach half of the cases. The judges found that 15 of the murders were related to common crime, 10 to crimes of passion and 13 to membership in a guerrilla organization.

There were more than 15,000 murders in Colombia last year, of which just 39 were trade unionists. That's not great by any means but is it really enough to justify rejecting a trade deal and, consequently, doing something to make it harder for working class Colombians and trade unionists to, well, earn a living?

Comments

[dearieme]

"I don't approve of murdering trade unionists": you would if you'd had to deal with some of the bastards in the '70s.