The Guardian 6 December, 2006
Colombia: Blood on the coal
WT Whitney
LA GUAJIRA, Colombia: Cerrejón, the world's largest open pit coal mine, materialised 25
years ago in the midst of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous Wayuu peoples living in this
northeast corner of Colombia. The region is named after La Guajira peninsula, which juts
into the Caribbean Sea.
Since 1981, 363 million metric tonnes of coal has been taken out of La Guajira's
subsoil.
Despite this economic "success", the communities living here — situated on coal reserves estimated
at three billion tonnes — are slated for destruction by the company and government of President
Alvaro Uribe.
The unequal contest between giant multinational corporations and La Guajira's communities plays
out in an arid landscape marked by scrub-covered plains and distant mountains.
The forced exit of one community already, and the suffering of the remaining people living in half-
empty, decrepit villages, has outraged activists and labour unions worldwide. This is nowhere more
evident than in the countries that consume Cerrejón's coal. Solidarity actions with the peoples of La
Guajira are picking up.
A giant energy complex
Cerrejón, once the property of the Colombian state and Exxon, is now owned by multinationals
BHP Billiton, Anglo-American, and Glencore (Xstrata). It generated AU$1.5 billion in earnings last
year.
The companies operate a 145km-long railroad, a highway and their own seaport. The mine, 48km
long and 8km wide, sells 22 percent of its coal to North America, 59 percent to Europe and 19
percent elsewhere. Last year the mine exported 23 million tonnes of coal. (1 mile is approximately
1.855km.)
Solidarity
Leaders of Sintracarbón, the national union representing Cerrejón workers, have taken up the
cause of the beleaguered communities as they begin their own contract negotiations with the
company. The union has over 3100 members. Leaders of both the communities and the union are
counting on a boost, however, from international public opinion.
The power of international solidarity was apparent earlier this year when the nation of Denmark
banned coal from Alabama-based Drummond Company, a notorious anti-labour energy company,
pending a US court's decision about Drummond's possible complicity in the murder of three
Colombian labour leaders in 2001.
The Dutch power generating company Essent indicated recently that it, too, would not be signing
new coal supply contracts with Drummond, pending the court's decision.
"Blood coal" in Salem
History professor Aviva Chomsky learned that a power plant in Salem, Massachusetts, where she
lives, was using Cerrejón coal. She and other activists there and in Nova Scotia, Canada, another
consuming region, have turned Cerrejón into a symbol for "blood coal".
This year, Chomsky recruited labour and human rights activists, physicians and academicians from
Canada and the United States to visit La Guajira from October 29-November 3 to learn, carry out a
requested health survey and prepare for solidarity work on their return.
Sintracarbón and organisations representing Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities had invited
them to Colombia. When the delegation arrived, its members were greeted by union and
community leaders, who subsequently accompanied them on the tour. The present writer joined
the group's medical contingent.
A solemn declaration
Responding to the owners' plans for continued mine expansion, Sintracarbón leaders issued a
declaration on the communities timed for the visitors' departure. What it describes mirrors some of
the impressions they took back to North America.
The declaration notes, "These communities are being systematically besieged." The company has
denied them access to employment, grazing land and rivers. The communities "do not have even
the most minimal conditions necessary for survival", it said.
The document continues: "The multinational companies that exploit and loot our natural resources
in the Cerrejón mine are violating the human rights of these communities."
Sintracarbón, the union, aims to "help unify the affected communities, to participate in their
meetings, to take a stand with the local and national authorities ... to begin a dialogue with the
company."
Meeting with the communities
Interviewing residents of four communities, the North Americans learned that local schools and
health facilities are virtually non-existent. To secure food and work, Wayuu people have to trek over
mountains into nearby Venezuela. Harassment from company police and the national army is
rampant.
Government officials have denied indigenous and Afro-Colombian people rights guaranteed them
under the nation's 1991 constitution. They refuse the official certification that would place the
communities into protected categories.
Displaced former residents of the Afro-Colombian community Tabaco, living nearby in cruel
circumstances, recalled the bulldozers, soldiers and company police that on August 9, 2001,
evicted them, destroying their village. Neither Cerrejón nor neighbouring Hatonuevo municipality
has complied with a Supreme Court ruling May 2002 to provide homes for the victims.
Before and later, some residents did settle individually with Cerrejón. Others, members of "Tabaco
in Resistance" led by Jose Julio Perez, demand collective negotiations, collective resettlement, and
reparations for loss of livelihood and community integrity.
US and world solidarity
Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Leo Gerard, President of the United
Steelworkers, have called upon the company to honour labour and human rights. Gerard wrote the
mine's owners, "We applaud Sintracarbón union's courageous and unprecedented step in including
in its bargaining proposal demands that the collective rights of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous
communities affected by the mine are recognised and addressed."
Chomsky reports that solidarity groups are active in Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, London and
Switzerland. She and others have formed an international commission to monitor developments in
La Guajira, including union negotiations for a new contract.
For more information, visit www.colombiajournal.org
Following the delegation visit, Jairo Quiroz of the Sintracarbón union sent the visitors these
reflections:
"We are compañeros and friends who are forever united."
"This kind of experience is what brings us the strength and conviction that we need to continue our
struggle against the social inequalities in our country. Our experience with you allowed us to come
close to these uprooted and displaced communities that are suffering from desperation and
depression because of the way they are humiliated and assaulted by the strength of foreign capital,
with the blessing of the Colombian state.
"Their fundamental rights have been violated. Beginning now, we as a union are proposing that just
as the company has a social responsibility for the way it runs its business, our union, seeing the
destruction that the Guajira communities are suffering at the hands of Cerrejón, has a moral and
political responsibility.
"The company generates huge profits through the misery, poverty, and uprooting of these
populations. The communities have to pay a very high price for the company's profits.
"We are convinced that only the unity among the different peoples of the world can allow us to
confront these economically powerful and inhuman multinationals in the name of the communities
that have the misfortune to be located in the path of the mine's expansion."
Quiroz had been asked the meaning of compañero. He explained by quoting Che Guevara: "We
are not friends, we are not relatives, we don't even know each other. But if you, as I, are outraged
by any act of injustice committed in the world, then we are compañeros."
Quiroz adds, "We also now consider all of you to be our friends and our relatives. Forever
united."
Also read Building people-to-people solidarity by Aviva Chomsky,
People's Weekly World