Coca Cola And The Paramilitaries In Colombia

Coca Cola is the world’s best selling non alcoholic drink. Its white lettering on red background is the world symbol of the American Way of Life and capitalist success. However, Coca Cola’s expansion throughout the world is only made possible, by the company’s aggressive policy of imposing the drinks consumption above and beyond any cultural habits and preferences that the people of the world may have. From advertising campaigns perversely aimed at children, to a commercial policy that has never shied from crime and terror as instruments to impede and limit trade union organisation among their workers, Coca Cola has arrived in every country of the world, multiplying its sales and profits.

A clear example of this heartless and inhuman expansion, is Coke’s response to the creation of a trade union in their Guatemalan bottling plants during the 70s and 80s. Management employed paramilitary death squads to assassinate 6 trade union leaders and disappear 4 others. Despite international denunciations from the Guatemalan trade union, Coca Cola only intervened when pressured to act by an international boycott.

Another example is Coca Cola’s current behaviour in Colombia, where there are 20 Coca Cola bottling plants. The workers in these plants are affiliated to SINALTRAINAL, the national food and drinks workers union. On 22 July 1986, Hector Daniel Useche Beron, a Nestle worker and SINALTRAINAL leader was assassinated in Bugalagrande. From this day on, terror and violence have been the principle tool that the food and drink multinationals, supported by the Colombian state, have used to destroy the trade union.

As a result of this terror, SINALTRAINAL have seen their membership figures plummet to 2,300. 14 of their leaders have been assassinated, 7 of which were Coca Cola workers, 3 of whom were murdered inside their workplaces. 48 more activists have been forcibly displaced by death threats, 2 have fled the country, 2 have been disappeared and many more have been imprisoned. Workplaces have been militarised, and in one plant, paramilitaries were allowed free access for a whole week, while they forced trade unionists to renounce their membership at gun point. Neither Coca Cola nor the Colombian authorities did anything.

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https://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/2008/09/coca-cola-and-the-paramilitaries-in-colombia