It’s August here in Washington during a presidential election year. Not much is getting accomplished. Zip, nada.
However, quivering in the empty halls of Congress is the Colombia-U.S. Free trade Agreement, full of hope for passage, its anxious parents in Bogota and Washington twisting arms like an angry mom at a kids soccer game. “Let him play coach. Let him play!” But Johnny, or perhaps we should call him Juanito, has been a very bad boy. Like the kid who plays too rough on the field, tripping other players, going out of bounds and denying any foul, Colombia wants to play but certainly doesn’t deserve the opportunity.
Unlike a soccer game that ends in an hour, the Colombia FTA and its supporters in the U.S. and South America can continue to whine endlessly about letting little Juanito onto the field. The uncles (in this case, Sam) aunts, cousins and parents have invested so much in little Juanito – billions actually. It would be wasted if the child didn’t get his way despite his many indiscretions.
In the real world, the danger in granting Colombia free trade status effectively sanctions the continued killing of union members and their leaders and creating an environment for business in Colombia to run roughshod over working people, exploiting them and killing them without any risk of punishment. Unless and until there is solid improvement in conditions on the ground, the proposed free trade agreement would only bolster continued killings and will likely plunge the country into further violence. This will likely lead to a deterioration in this fragile democracy and revive insurgencies currently on the wane.
The FTA Will Promote Violence & Instability in an Already Bad Environment
Colombia’s President Uribe has tried to curb paramilitary violence since the push was made to secure the free trade agreement with the U.S. Trade union killings dropped from an astounding 377 in 2006 to a mere 77 in 2007. This was touted as a great victory for working people and offered as proof to the U.S. Senate that the Uribe government was dealing with this thorny problem. Flogging my soccer analogy once more, Colombia wanted in the game. But the greatest problem facing the current government is the continued political instability created by the FARC, paramilitary forces and cocaine traffickers. While considerable progress has been made on all three fronts, the institutions of violence remain largely in place for those in power to maintain their control. If the Free Trade Agreement is ratified by the U.S. Senate, I predict that there will be a rapid increase in human rights abuses including increased killings of workers, torture and a marked increase on deplorable economic conditions for many of Colombia’s manual workers.
Over the last ten years, Colombia has seen very little improvement in measures assessing its political stability and absence of violence. The World Bank Institute has tracked governance indicators for ten years. When looking at Colombia’s efforts at improving its political stability and absence of violence for that period, there has actually been a slight decrease in that measure of governance.
As noted in the chart below, Colombia plugs the hole in the bottom of the Political Stability bucket and has done so for over a decade.
There is little indication that this trend will reverse itself despite attempts by the Uribe government to force the numbers in another direction. Evidence continues to pour in that workers and their leaders continue to be murdered by paramilitary forces associated with the Colombian government and virtually nobody has been brought to justice for the thousands of killings committed so far.
Rewarding this ongoing trend is both bad foreign policy and economic policy and it should not be allowed. In other words, little Juanito should not be allowed to play and his parents should be banned from the playing field. Like little Juanito, the FTA is bad. Very very bad indeed.
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