The timing of Tuesday’s summit in Madrid between the European Union and Latin American countries was determined by the Spanish government’s drive to host the event before its presidency of the European Union ends in June.
Spanish big business has massive commercial interests in Latin America and its representatives have been pushing for key trade agreements to be signed at this meeting.
In its relations with the countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean region, the establishment of the EU likes to portray itself as a major benefactor whose primary interest is to assist their development. In fact the EU drives a ruthless economic agenda in the interests of its major transnational corporations, and working people, peasants and the poor are the victims.
Away back in 1848 Karl Marx wrote about capitalism: “It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
Fast forward to today and these are exactly the charges levelled against the EU in its economic dealings with Latin America by organisations representing workers, small producers, landless people and indigenous communities. They have experienced the results of massively lopsided trade agreements between their countries and the EU as well as the exploitative activities of EU based corporations in their region.
The agreements being signed in Madrid are a Free Trade Agreement with Columbia and Peru and an Association Agreement with Central America.
These proposed agreements are hugely controversial. For the concessions being granted to the countries concerned, the EU extracts a massive price demanding the opening up of their raw materials to exploitation by EU based multinationals and forcing them to open their public services also to European companies. We will return to the impact of these policies in the future but will concentrate here on the major objections to signing any agreement with the right wing government of Colombia.
Colombia is a massively unequal society with 61% of the land owned by 0.4% of the population. There is major poverty in both rural and urban areas. Big business interests and ranchers controlling vast land tracts ruthlessly defend their own economic interests. And it is primarily these interests that the Colombian government represents. This is at the root of along drawn out conflict between the government and various guerilla group especially the FARC.
Under cover of this conflict, a vicious campaign is waged against any individual or groups who dare oppose current policies or demand a more just society. Over the past few years hundreds of trade unionists have been murdered by death squads. Those who courageously try to defend human rights in Colombia are heavily targeted. A UN Special Rapporteur stated that human rights defenders had been subjected to being “killed, tortured, ill treated, disappeared, threatened, arbitrarily arrested and detained, judicially harassed, under surveillance, forcibly displaced, forced into exile, or their office had been raided and their files stolen” for standing up for human rights and freedoms.
Trade unionists as well as community and human rights activists who are not members of guerilla groups are routinely accused of being linked to “terrorism” as a means of justifying action against them.
Just a few months ago a huge, unmarked grave was discovered beside an army base near the town of La Macarena. The army claims that they buried some guerrillas there who were killed in clashes with its soldiers. However, all the evidence points to a major crime.
The Colombian Attorney General’s office estimates that there may be up to 2,000 bodies buried with no record of who they are. Recently, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights and her Special Representative accused the Colombian army of being involved with the systematic killing of civilians. No doubt many of the murdered are buried here in this newly discovered grave.
FARC, often wrongly described in the media as “Marxist” is also accused of arbitrary killing and repression in areas it controls.
Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, attended the Summit and gave his full support to the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia and Peru. Having presided over the sell out to multinational corporations of natural resources of oil and gas off the west coast of Ireland, we could expect nothing different as far as the economic aspect of the deal went. But it is particularly reprehensible that the Irish government is prepared to give a seal of approval to the Colombian government in view of its record. The fact that the Green Party is equally compliant is further testament as how far it has degenerated from what it once claimed as ideals.
CHECK OUT OTHER RELATED ARTICLES:
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