ecn_ngo_letter_051404.pdf
In the first six months of 2003, the Salem Harbor Power Station received 76,574 tonnes of coal from the Cerrej?n Zona Norte mine in northern Colombia, and 51,122 tonnes from the La Loma mine, operated by the Drummond Company. In the first half of 2004, it received 42,504 tonnes from Cerrej?n Zona Norte, and 46,210 tonnes from Drummond.
Like other U.S. coal-fired power plant operators, PG&E Energy Trading Company and US-Gen New England Power turned to Colombian coal in the 1980s and 1990s for a combination of reasons: the high-quality, low-sulfur coal from Colombia's mines burned cleaner, allowing power plants to comply with environmental standards without investing in costly equipment, the price was low, and consumers didn't know or care where their coal came from.
Some U.S. coal mining companies, like Exxon and Drummond, were closing their U.S. mines to move production to Colombia where they could pay lower wages and taxes, enjoy profit repatriation and lax environmental standards--and rely on paramilitary death squads to keep their workers and local villagers from protesting poor working conditions, environmental destruction, and forced displacement.
Cerrej?n Zona Norte, the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, began as a joint venture between Exxon and the Colombian government in the 1980s; in the early 2000s it was sold to a consortium of three multinational mining companies: BHP Billiton (British/Australian), Anglo-American (South African), and Glencore, S.A. (Swiss). In 1995, El Cerrej?n's workers were earning about $3.32 per hour, and 14 workers were killed due to unsafe conditions in the mine during its first 11 years of operations. A representative of the indigenous Wayuu people who inhabited the area surrounding the mine visited Salem in the spring of 2002 and told us that the coal burned in our power plant "has its origins in violence. Our communities have suffered greatly. Their human rights have been violated, their territory has been usurped, their houses destroyed and demolished, and they have had to shed their blood in order for this coal to arrive in Salem."
The story of the Drummond mine in Colombia is no better. Union miners in Alabama earn approximately $3000 a month; in Colombia, Drummond pays between $500 and $1000 a month to its workers. Clearly, it was more cost-effective for the family-owned Drummond Company to close its Alabama mines and shift production to Colombia, particularly because paramilitary troops controlled the region around the mine. In 2000, union leaders requested permission to sleep in the mine facility between their shifts because of increasing threats from the paramilitaries who were emboldened by Company flyers equating the union with left-wing guerrilla groups. The mine owners refused, and in February 2001 paramilitary troops stopped a company bus taking workers out of the mine, shot and killed the union president, and dragged the vice president away. His body was found a day later with clear signs of torture. They went to the home of the secretary-treasurer, Francisco Ruiz, and finding him not there, killed his younger brother. Ruiz fled the country; he also came to Salem to tell his story to citizens who were unknowingly consuming Drummond's Colombian coal in the fall of 2003.
All of the union and community leaders who have come from Colombia's coal mines to Salem have brought a similar message. They are not against foreign investment, and they are not against coal mining. But they want foreign investment, and coal mining, to respect human rights and the environment. The companies that buy their coal, and the citizens that benefit from it, need to demand that these conditions be met.
Witness for Peace Action Alert: Say No to Free Trade with Colombia while Violence and Impunity continue! January 10th, 2005
Please act now- we have an extension on this important letter circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives. This action relates directly to both the WFP campaign on Economic Justice and our work on stopping U.S. Military Aid to Colombia. It is important that you ask your member of Congress to sign this letter to end unfair trade with Colombia in the midst of severe violence against those seeking fair wages and decent working conditions. Call today- our time is limited! Thank you for your continued work towards peace and justice in Latin America,
Holly Miller: National Grassroots Organizer / Economic Justice Janna Bowman : National Grassroots Organizer / Military Aid - Colombia Joanne Ranney: New England Regional Coordinator
Note: Apologies for duplicate mailings, but if you do not receive this message twice we have not received your contact information for updating our WFP database. In order to be more effective in our organizing efforts we would greatly appreciate receiving your updated contact information (name, address, phone, email address). Thanks in advance.
Say No to Free Trade with Colombia while Violence and Impunity continue! Action needed by Jan. 12th
Contact your House Representative before Wednesday January 12th, asking him/her to sign-on to a Congressional letter to the U.S. Trade Representative asking for an end to the violence against Colombian trade unionists before the U.S. considers a free trade agreement with the Andean region.
The most basic worker right, the right to life, has been denied to thousands of trade unionists in Colombia. Over 50 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated in 2004, bringing the total to well over 2,000 Colombian trade unionists murdered since 1991. In Colombia impunity has remained near total for those who murder trade unionists, with only a handle of these cases ever making it to the courts.
Despite the horrific levels of violence against Colombian trade unionists, the U.S. initiated negotiations for a free trade agreement with Colombia (and other Andean countries) earlier this year. The proposed free trade agreement would weaken current U.S. protections for worker rights and accelerate the race to the bottom for labor standards.
We ask that you take a moment today to contact your House Representative, asking her/him to sign-on to the Evans-Lynch Congressional letter to the U.S. Trade Representative, sending the message that the U.S. should not enter into free trade agreements with governments that fail to address violence against workers.
To call your member of Congress call: 202-224-3121 and ask for the foreign policy aide. To find your member of Congress visit: www.house.gov See below for the full text of the Congressional sign-on letter.
Here's a sample message:
"My name is ___________ and I'm calling from ___________.
"I'm calling today to ask Representative ___________ to sign a Dear Colleague letter being circulated by Representatives Evans and Lynch on the continuing violence and impunity in Colombia.
"This letter will be sent to the U.S. Trade Representative asking him to use the Andean Free Trade Agreement negotiations as an opportunity to urge Colombia to protect its union leaders and end impunity.
"Colombia continues to be the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist, with over 2,000 trade unionists assassinated since 1991. The Colombian government has permitted this violence to continue by failing to prosecute over 99% of these murders.
"I'd like to urge Representative __________ to sign on to this Dear Colleague letter, sending the strong message that the U.S. should not enter into free trade agreements with countries that fail to address violence against workers.
"For more information or to sign the letter, please contact Stephanie Krenich in Representative Evan's office at 5-5905 by close of business on Wednesday January 12th. Thank you."
Tell U.S. Trade Representative: No Free Trade with Colombia Until Violence and Impunity End "As union activists have fallen by the hundreds here, making Colombia the world's most dangerous country for union organizers, their families and those who have dodged assassins' bullets have had little recourse. Practically all killings of union leaders have gone unsolved." --from "Assassination is an Issue in Trade Talks" by Juan Forero in the New York Times, 11/18/04
Dear Colleague: Last week, the United States, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru wrapped up their sixth round of negotiations for the Andean Free Trade Agreement, a new set of bilateral trade agreements. We urge you to join us in sending a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick asking him to use the negotiations between the United States and the Andean countries as an opportunity to compel Colombia to protect its union leaders, prosecute those who attack unionists, and reform the labor code to bring it into compliance with international standards.
Colombia continues to be the most dangerous place in the world for union leaders; in the last 13 years, over 2,000 Colombian trade unionists were murdered, and thousands more were threatened, displaced, or forced to relocate. Most of this violence has been attributed to the country's right-wing paramilitaries, who have been embroiled in a 40-year civil war with leftist guerillas.
According to the State Department's Colombia Country Report on Human Rights Practices released in February 2004, "impunity remained at the core of the country's human rights problem." The report testifies that "freedom of association was limited in practice by threats and acts of violence committed by illegal armed groups against labor unions and NGOs." Further, "paramilitaries threatened--and sometimes killed--union members who refused to renounce collective bargaining agreements." The U.S. should not enter into free trade agreements with countries that foster an atmosphere of fear and repression.
While these conditions are tragic for Colombian workers, they also affect workers in the United States. We have already seen the loss of many manufacturing and other jobs as companies move jobs to nations where labor is the cheapest and labor rights are not enforced. Colombia's failure to protect union leaders and enforce labor standards encourages businesses to relocate there, furthering an already widespread "race to the bottom." As we have seen with NAFTA, this will deteriorate, not improve, the employment situation for workers in the United States and throughout the Americas. According to the Trade Promotion Act of 2002, the U.S. is required to negotiate language that ensures that a party "does not fail to effectively enforce its own labor laws." Please join us in relaying our concerns about conditions in Colombia to Ambassador Zoellick. This letter asks him to ensure that progress is made on these issues before the U.S. enters into a free trade agreement with the Andean region, and to include enforceable labor rights provisions in the agreement itself.
For more information or to sign onto the letter, please contact Stephanie Krenrich in Rep. Evans' office via email or at 5-5905. Sincerely, LANE EVANS STEPHEN F. LYNCH Member of Congress Member of Congress Witness for Peace 707 8th Street SE Washington DC 20003 Phone 202.547.6112 Fax 202.547.6103
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Joanne Ranney, Coord.
Witness For Peace, New England Region
Phone: 802-434-2980
www.witnessforpeace.org/newengland
Dan Kovalik (of the United Steelworkers and the International Labor Rights Fund), who is working on the Drummond, Occidental Petroleum, and Coca Cola lawsuits here in the U.S., asked me to URGENTLY collect signatures on the following petition asking for the release of one of the witnesses in a case being brought against Occidental Petroleum for the bombing of the village of Santo Domingo near their oil pipeline. Dr. Pena has been unjustly detained because his autopsy report confirmed that the villagers were killed by cluster bombs.
Avi ChomskyPlease "reply" to me via email, with your complete name and affiliation as you'd like it to appear on the petition. I will send all of the names to Dan, and he will fax them to the relevant parties in the U.S. and Colombia.
Thanks!
Avi
December 13, 2004
Via Facsimile Transmission (011 57 1 570-2022)
Dr. Luis Camilo Osorio
Fiscal General de la Naci?n
Fiscal?a General de la Naci?n
Diagonal 22B 52-01 (Ciudad Salite)
Bogot?, Colombia
Re: Dr. Ciro Alejandro Pe?a Lopez
Estimado Dr. Osorio:
I am writing on behalf of Dr. Ciro Pe?a who has wrongfully been placed under house arrest and is now awaiting criminal trial. As we all know, despite other scurrilous charges being brought by the Colombian state, the only real offense for which Dr. Pe?a is being charged is his truthfully reporting upon the cause of the deaths of the bombing victims of Santo Domingo in 1998. And, it should be noted that Dr. Pe?a's autopsy report on these victims -- a report which shows that they were indeed killed by a cluster bomb dropped upon the village -- was later corroborated by the U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I just learned that his trial has now been postponed, seemingly indefinitely, most likely because the Colombian state has absolutely no credible evidence of any wrongdoing on his part. The detention of Dr. Pe?a remains an affront to justice, to the medical community, and to those concerned with human rights world-wide.
I hereby demand the immediate release of Dr. Pe?a, the dropping of all charges against him and the public exoneration of Dr. Pe?a by the Colombian state.
cc: Presidente Dr. Alvaro Uribe Velez
c/o Embassy of Colombia (By Fax (202) 232-8643)
Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State (By Fax 202 647-1722)
Hon. William Wood, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia (By Fax 011 57 1 315 2163)
Craig Conway, U.S. Embassy (By Fax 011 57 1 315 2163)
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Avi
http://www.cbc.ca/maritimenoon/
Nova Scotia imports Columbian coal to generate Nova Scotia's electricity.
But a Columbian union leader wants the province to stop because human
rights violations associated with the industry in his country. Maritime Noon's
Steve Sutherland brings us this report. Click here to play RealAudio file (runs7.35)
Photographs by Scott Dalton for The New York Times Francisco Ramirez, top, a union leader in Colombia, prayed in a small chapel at the Bogota airport before boarding a flight to Miami, where he will seek temporary exile. Sixta Tulia Rojas with a poster of her husband and nine other union leaders, all killed.
Assassination Is an Issue in Trade Talks
By JUAN FORERO
Published: November 18, 2004
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Photographs by Scott Dalton for The New York Times Francisco Ramirez, top, a union leader in Colombia, prayed in a small chapel at the Bogota airport before boarding a flight to Miami, where he will seek temporary exile. Sixta Tulia Rojas with a poster of her husband and nine other union leaders, all killed.
BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 17 - With tears in her eyes, 80-year-old Mercedes Cuellar wrapped her arms around her son, one of Colombia's top union leaders, and said goodbye as he boarded a flight to Miami and temporary exile from the country's long conflict.
As the secretary general of the union that represents energy sector workers, Francisco Ramirez had survived seven assassination attempts, including one on Oct. 10. He was still alive, but hundreds of his compatriots, victims of the political assassinations that have been a scourge in this Andean country, have not been so lucky.
"I was so afraid for him that I wanted to see him go to another country," Ms. Cuellar said, dabbing tears as Mr. Ramirez prepared to go through customs on a recent afternoon. "I'm much calmer that he's not here."
As union activists have fallen by the hundreds here, making Colombia the world's most dangerous country for union organizers, their families and those who have dodged assassins' bullets have had little recourse. Practically all killings of union leaders have gone unsolved.
Now, labor rights groups and some members of the United States Congress have promised to do something about the violence and the impunity, using free trade negotiations between Colombia and the Bush administration to prod the government of President Alvaro Uribe to do more to protect union activists and prosecute the killers.
The idea, say labor activists from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and senior Congressional aides, is to make the issue of violence and impunity as important a component in trade talks as the struggle over agriculture tariffs and intellectual property rights. Its failure to protect union members, the argument goes, gives Colombia an unfair edge over countries that do, like the United States.
"A country should not achieve an unfair comparative advantage by willful omission or noncompliance of labor standards," said Stan Gacek, assistant director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s international affairs department, which works with unions in other countries. "The issue of rights is not an obstruction to trade, it is absolutely essential to the success of trade."
An American trade official, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous, says that Colombia is obligated to enforce its own labor laws, which guarantee freedom of association and other labor standards.
"And how do I know someone is denied freedom of association?" he said. The murder of trade unionists, the official said, is a violation of freedom of association. "So clearly violence against trade unionists or impunity for killers is an issue with Colombia, and we've told them that."
The pressure is already having an effect.
Trying to mitigate the damage, Vice President Francisco Santos in September traveled to the United States to meet with a bipartisan Congressional group and John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "The government has a right to defend its record and that is the reason for my visit, and surely I'll return several times," Mr. Santos said in an interview.
Mr. Santos says that Mr. Uribe's government, which is widely credited with reducing violence since taking office in 2002, has made the country considerably safer for unionists. While 94 were slain last year, 58 had been assassinated as of Tuesday, according to the National Union School, a research and educational center in Medellin. The numbers are still staggering, Mr. Santos acknowledged, but they do represent a marked drop from 1996, when 222 were killed.
The vice president attributes the improvements to a new emphasis on prosecutions and a protection program that has received budget increases of 45 percent, to $13.8 million, since 2001.
Some rights officials, even those long critical of the Colombian government, said that the government had become more responsive to complaints from unionists fearful of being killed.
"I don't think this is a government where you have to make hundreds of phone calls and lobby them to make a serious case," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, who oversees the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, the rights monitoring organization based in New York.
But Mr. Vivanco, other rights leaders and the unionists say that impunity continues largely unabated, despite the government's assurances.
The vice president's figures show that the number of successful prosecutions of assassins - 19 - represents a small fraction of all the cases involving murders of union organizers. Nearly 2,100 union members have been slain since 1991, according to the National Union School.
Union advocates in the United States attribute the decline in violence to a cease-fire that Colombia's main paramilitary coalition, the United Self-Defense Forces, declared in December 2002 before embarking on disarmament talks with the government. The cease-fire has been violated numerous times.
Those paramilitary groups - right-wing, antiguerrilla militias financed by landowners and the cocaine trade - have long targeted unions, accusing their members of being rebels or working with Colombia's two leftist insurgent groups.
Asked about the murders of unionists, Rodrigo Tovar, one of the group's most feared leaders, was adamant about the need to ferret out guerrillas from unions.
"We have always acted against guerrillas, armed or not armed," Mr. Tovar, who commands 5,000 fighters, said last week in an interview on a ranch in northern Colombia. "Our war has been against the subversives, against communist guerrillas, however they are dressed."
Mr. Tovar denied that paramilitaries had worked with companies to eliminate union organizers. But few in Colombia dispute that union leaders have made enemies in the country's highly stratified society, both for their leftist declarations and for their harsh criticism of fiscally conservative governments bent on privatizing industries and holding down labor costs.
Indeed, Mr. Tovar, who was a wealthy landowner and businessman before joining the paramilitaries, could not contain his disdain for unions. He said that they had been "a disaster in Colombia for business" and that union activists were "the ones who sabotage, who hurt companies."
The deaths of union members here, particularly those who work for big foreign multinational companies, has become a thorny international problem for Colombia's establishment and the Bush administration.
Five lawsuits have been filed in American courts accusing companies like Drummond, a coal producer based in Birmingham, Ala., and two bottlers affiliated with Coca-Cola of using paramilitary gunmen to eliminate union organizers. The companies strenuously deny the allegations.
But the lawsuits, filed in American courts under a 215-year-old statute, have put an unwanted spotlight on Colombia's problems and irritated the Bush administration, which argues that they interfere with foreign policy and open multinational companies to sometimes frivolous grievances.
It is just the kind of pressure that union advocates in the United States want to increase, using the trade talks as a way of further prodding the two governments.
"They're looking for levers of pressure," said Michael Shifter, a senior policy analyst who closely follows Colombia for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington group. "And it's not surprising as the United States begins negotiations with Colombia on a free trade deal that they're going to explore the possibility of using this as a way of increasing pressure."
Several recent incidents in Colombia have energized union activists in the United States.
In September, the attorney general's office charged three soldiers with having murdered three union activists, an account that sharply contrasted with the army's earlier claim that the unionists were guerrillas killed in a firefight. And earlier this month, an army major escaped - apparently with the help of other military officials - from a military prison where he was serving a 27-year term for the attempted assassination of a union leader.
Mr. Santos, the vice president, said the arrests of the soldiers showed that the government was serious about pursuing the killers of union organizers. The government also quickly fired four military officers at the prison from which the convicted major escaped.
But inaction, union advocates say, is mostly the norm when it comes to the murders of union organizers like Luis Obdulio Camacho, who once headed a cement workers' local in Antioquia province.
Mr. Camacho had lost a son, also a union member, to paramilitary gunmen in 1991. Then, in 1998, he himself was slain; two gunmen shot him in front of several witnesses.
Today, Mr. Camacho's widow, Sixta Tulia Rojas, 69, lives in a small house in Bogota, where she fled to escape her husband's fate. She yearns for justice, but long ago gave up on the government ever making an arrest in the case.
"No one saw anything and that's what's so terrible - the silence," Ms. Rojas said. Pointing to a framed poster of 10 union leaders, including her husband, she said: "Look at that photo. All of them were killed and no one was arrested."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Children's Protest
Against Sweatshops
Sunday December 5th 2:00-3:00pm
Wal-Mart, 780 Lynnway in Lynn, MA
FACT: Today, the country's largest employer is Wal-Mart. In 2000, Wal-Mart's assets totaled more than the GDP of 155 of the 192 countries in the world, with annual sales of more than 137.6 billion. The Walton family is worth about $102 billion. Yet they produce more goods in sweatshops than any company in the world.
FACT: The National Labor Committee reports, "In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst." Some of the abuses in foreign factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include: forced overtime, locked bathrooms, starvation wages, and forced pregnancy tests.
Sponsors: Mass AFL-CIO, Mass Jobs With Justice, Mass NOW, North Shore Labor Council, Neighbor 2 Neighbor Lynn, IUE-CWA 201, UFCW 1445, Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), New England Jewish Labor Committee, Dorshei Tsedek Jewish Labor Committee
Bring Your Kids Out To Show Them Democracy,
Bring Them To The Wal-Mart Protest!!!
Dear Friends:
Frida Berrigan, recent graduate of Oberlin College and daughter of Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister (distinguished Catholic Worker and Plowshare 8 activists) now works for the Arms Trade Resource Center in New York City. She recently wrote a newsletter article about Colombia, and, while it's a story indeed familiar to us, I thought you might like to see it. Best wishes, Hope Benne
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COLOMBIA'S OIL, OUR WEAPONS
Frida Berrigan
Mario Murillo, the host and producer of Wake Up Call Fridays on WBAI radio in New York City, says that if you really want to know what's going on, you have to read the "World Business" section of the New YorkTimes. He sure is right.
On Friday, October 22, on the front page of the "World Business": section, sandwiched between "Arts and Leisure" and "Real Estate" the following blaring headline is buried: "Safeguarding Colombia's Oil."
If the New York Times wanted to engage in real truth telling, it should actually read "Safeguarding America's Oil," because, as the article goes on to explicate, that is how the United States is treating Colombia's oil.
With a dateline: Puerto Vega, Colombia, reporter Juan Forero writes:
"In the biggest, most ambitious army offensive in Colombia's 40-year rebel war, 18,000 counterinsurgency troops have since January fanned out across four isolated southern states, a lawless swath that for years functioned as a de facto republic for Marxist rebels.
"Aided by American helicopters, planning and surveillance, Colombian forces have the stated goal of penetrating the historic heart of Colombia's largest rebel group to "strike a decisive blow to narco-terrorists," as Gen. James Hill, the commander of United States forces in Latin America, put it earlier this year.
"The Bush administration, meanwhile, reversed American policy and dispatched Special Forces trainers from Fort Bragg, NC to train Colombian soldiers to protect a 500 mile pipeline used by Occidental Petroleum."
The article goes on to talk about how this level of American intervention is helping Colombia attract new investment in its oil production: ExxonMobil has moved in, ChevronTexaco has extended contracts, Harken Energy Company, Bush's former company, has signed a new exploration contract.
As Major Pedro Sanchez, who is the second in command of the battalion protecting oil installations, says, "there's a feeling of safety, that we are keeping the peace. We provide confidence so companies can explore here."
But what about the Colombian people? Do they enjoy a feeling of safety? Do they have any confidence?
According to the Washington Office on Latin American, Colombia suffers the most dire human rights situation in the Western Hemisphere. Leftist guerrillas fight the state and officially outlawed right-wing paramilitary organizations, which are often allied with sectors of the Colombian armed forces. Civilians caught between the warring groups suffer the majority of the casualties, and 2.7 million Colombians live as internal refugees. The State Department's annual human rights report 2003, found that the Colombian military continued to collaborate with illegal paramilitary groups, and impunity remained a core problem
COLOMBIA RESOURCES: The Arms Trade Resource Center is tracking this issue carefully as we put the "finishing touches" on our long awaited WEAPONS AT WAR report, documenting U.S. weapons sales and military aid to regions of conflict. We will let you know when this report is available.
In the meantime, Center for International Policy, Latin America Working Group, and the Washington Office on Latin America have worked together on an important new report, "BLURRING THE LINES: Trends in U.S. Military Programs With Latin America," http://ciponline.org/facts/0410btl.pdf
In 2003, write the report's authors, U.S. military aid to Colombia
came to $860 million dollars, just short of the $921 million spent on
economic and humanitarian assistance in the same year. The report
warns that, if recent trends hold, military aid may actually exceed economic
assistance.
Campesina activist and leader in community development in El Regadio, Nicaragua
Collateral Damage Tour
Political, Economic and Social Fallout of the present Globalization Model and Prospects for Transformed U.S. Trade Relations
Thursday, October 21, 7:00 (come at 6:30 to enjoy a Dominican dinner!)
Heritage Room, Ellison Campus Center
Salem State College
* What is the "Collateral Damage" of globalization?
* What do we mean by the "cycles of military and economic violence"
* How does the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement threaten the livelihoods of rural communities in Central America
* What can you do to assure US policies are fair and sustainable for the "Seventh Generation"?
Witness for Peace speaker tour will host Mirian Olivas Jarquin a campesina activist and leader in community development in El Regadio, the farming community near Esteli, Nicaragua where she was born. She worked in the education system for 42 years, beginning teaching at age 15 in two rural, one-room schools. After going back to finish high school and teacher's college as a mother, she worked as the school's administrator. She also worked on the literacy campaign that attempted to eliminate illiteracy in Nicaragua in 1980. Despite IMF-forced cutbacks in education, she led the struggle to bring high school-level education to El Regadio, bringing new opportunities to the children of farming families.
Mirian has experienced many of the cycles of military and economic violence that have affected El Regadio. She participated in the Community Defense Committee during the insurrection that ended the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. And after the Sandinista government came into power, she watched as several of her children defended Nicaragua from US-back Contra rebels.
Mirian has never tired of working towards community development. During the 1980's she was a leader in the town council, and worked with national women's organizations to "get women out of the house and active in the community". Since 1990, she has worked on the community development board successfully bringing drinking water and electrification projects to El Regadio. After IMF-imposed reforms left small, family farmers "totally abandoned, without credit or access to technical assistence", she worked to organize local farmers into a cooperative to gain access to financing. Since 2000, the El Progreso "Progress" Cooperative has expanded from 120 to 274 members, including 145 women, and it serves 12 rural communities.
Now, the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement threatens the livelihoods of rural Nicaraguan communities. If ratified, CAFTA would increase competition between struggling Nicaraguan farmers and the farming industry in the United States, forcing even more Nicaraguans to leave the countryside for cities, or to leave Nicaragua altogether. New England WFP's Fall Speakers Tour 2004
For more information call 978-542-6389; leave a message! Or email achomsky@salemstate.edu.
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11:00a NORTH SHORE-COLOMBIA SOLIDARITY GROUP'S FIRST MEETING OF FALL 2004
AGENDA INCLUDES:
REPORT ON AVI CHOMSKY'S RECENT TRIP TO COLOMBIA DISCUSSION OF COKE CAMPAIGN ON CAMPUS DISCUSSION OF UPCOMING SPEAKERS
MONDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 20, 11 AM
SALEM STATE COLLEGE, SULLIVAN BUILDING, ROOM 105-A From: Hope Benne
Peter Knowlton of UE District 2 (who we have collaborated with in organizing events for our Colombian speakers in the past) and Raul Cisneros Porras, member of the Authentic Workers Front (FAT) and professor of adult basic education in Mexico, will be coming to our meeting to speak about grassroots challenges to Mexico's "official" unions, cross-border collalboration, and similarities and differences in the philosphy (pedagogy?) and goals of worker education programs in
Mexico and the US.