The Horrific Costs of the US-Colombia Trade Agreement
The Horrific Costs of the US-Colombia Trade Agreement
Peace talks with the FARC rebels are slowly progressing. But the agreement threatens to exacerbate already obscene levels of violence in rural areas.
Michael Norby and Brian Fitzpatrick
May 31, 2013
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A young refugee at the 13 de Mayo settlement, Villavicencio, Meta. At 5.4 million,
Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world.
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This is what many activists and rights groups believe will be the real legacy of both men: the advancement of a blueprint drawn up decades ago to not only obliterate the insurgency but destroy organized labor and drive huge numbers of rural Colombians from their homes and farms, many of which sit on some of the richest land in the world.
Agricultural provisions within the trade agreement force Colombian farmers to compete against heavily subsidized US products that can now flood the market unhindered. The results are forecast to be devastating. An Oxfam report estimates that the average income of 1.8 million grossly under-protected small farmers will fall by 16 percent.
The study concludes that 400,000 farmers who now live below the minimum wage will see their incomes drop by up to 70 percent and will thus be forced out of their livelihoods. The alternatives open to them will only add to the misery and violence that continue to grow in rural Colombia: Oxfam’s findings mirror what the Colombian government, years before the agreement passed, feared would transpire should the CTPA be signed without addressing its many shortcomings.
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New CODHES figures appear to corroborate these findings, with their most recent report showing that mass displacements jumped an incredible 83 percent in 2012, mostly in areas affected by the CTPA.
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Buenaventura is under the control of paramilitary groups. An upsurge of violence has accompanied a massive port expansion project to facilitate the CTPA.
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Despite the danger, community leaders have produced reports, made trips abroad and are constantly reaching out to politicians and rights groups in the United States. Death threats come by text, e-mail or via a note under the door, but they feel they have no option. They believe action will only come with outside pressure.
Congressman Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, voted against the CTPA and is a member of the Congressional Monitoring Group on Labor Rights in Colombia. He has hosted delegations from affected communities. “They are so courageous, they will even come to America and meet with congressional representatives,” he says. “They know that when they go back, the people who are hurting them know that they have been here.”
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The barrio of La Playita in Buenaventura is scheduled to be demolished, making way for a tourism project. The tree line across the bay is a suspected mass cemetery, filled with bodies of locals.
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More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/174589/horrific-costs-us-colombia-trade-agreement#ixzz2VAm072oY
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