May 10, 2011

The proposed "free trade" agreement with Colombia is a clone of NAFTA. This agreement would have a terrible impact on the average Colombian and the average American.

We ask that you contact your congressional representative asap via letter, fax or phone to ask her/him to oppose this FTA. Below are some summary points which reveal why this treaty would be a disaster for the people in both countries:

1) The FTA with Colombia will severely damage Colombia's agriculture as NAFTA did in Mexico, and impair Colombia's ability to feed its own people much as happened after a free trade agreement was signed with Haiti.

2) The FTA will lead to expansion of mining operations in sensitive environments, of timber exploitation which will rip up the Amazon, causing severe ecological damage to the tropical forests and virgin lands of Colombia.

3) The main U.S. beneficiaries of the FTA would be big agricultural companies which would be permitted to dump cheap, subsidized food stuffs into Colombia duty-free. This would result in farmers' impoverishment and land loss because small growers would not be able to compete with the low-cost American produce.

4) Colombia has the largest displaced population in the world. The FTA would only make matters worse and increase migration of displaced peasants to urban centers.

5) In Haiti and Mexico, domestic food production was wiped out by similar free trade agreements. It's likely that Colombia would follow the path of Mexico, where, as the ability to grow legitimate crops became economically impossible, farmers turned more and more to producing illicit drugs. Colombia already produces as much as 80 percent of the world's cocaine

6) This is what former President Bill Clinton said at a Senate hearing in 2010 regarding the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency. "It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

7) Colombia remains the most deadly nation in the world in which to be a member of a labor union. In the past 25 years, more than 2,850 labor activists have been murdered in Colombia. Last year alone, 51 were murdered, an *increase* over 2009. Six trade unionists have been murdered so far this year, including two in the past 2 weeks.

8) The daily experiences of Colombian workers from across the country are characterized by the degradation of working and living conditions, the anti-union practices and legislation that prevail in Colombia, the violence against union members, human rights defenders and union leaders.

9) The conviction rate for union murders and other violence is in the single digits, and even where prosecutions have occurred, many perpetrators have been charged in absentia and are still on the loose.

10) Much of the violence has also been directed at indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. In the last several years paramilitary vigilantes have murdered, threatened, internally displaced, forcibly disappeared and continue to extort numerous residents of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous ancestral lands.

11) American workers are hard-hit by unemployment and decreasing wage levels. As a result of this treaty American workers would be under pressure to accept even lower wages. They would be exposed to competition with a labor market that is notorious for its extensive labor and human rights violations.

12) This situation will not change because of unverifiable promises for change made by the Colombian government. For U.S. workers struggling for a living wage, the FTA with Colombia would be a setback in that struggle.