Belching Out the Devil (5 page)

 

 

T
he lighting in the hotel lobby is dim and so is the porter. The lift is tiny, room enough to fit one person and a bag. I go to get the lift. But I don't. The porter takes the lift. I take the stairs. He leaves the bag. I take the bag. He takes the tip. Hmmm. They must have a different definition of dim around here…

 

The city of Bogota is situated on a plateau approximately 8660 feet above sea level, thus making its altitude the second-most likely thing to give you a nosebleed in Colombia. It is not uncommon for travellers to suffer from altitude sickness, which for me takes the form of being tired and clumsy, not to mention tipping dim people who turn out to be clever.

 

The room is two floors up on the corner of the building overlooking the police station. Its stone frontage is picked
out of the night by lamps around the arched doorway, under which a young man in uniform stands, stamping his feet wearily against the chill. Drawing the curtains forces my attention back to my immediate surroundings, a cold, small room with dark wood panelling and a reinforced doorframe. The reinforcement is only vaguely reassuring as it looks as though someone has tried to prise open the door with a large screwdriver, so I am glad to have company. Watching me slowly unpack are Emilio and Jess. Emilio is a Spaniard by birth and a Colombian by marriage; this will be the second trip to Colombia where he has translated for me. Jess, a London photographer doing a feature on firefighters, has stayed on past her assignment to photograph some of the people I hope to meet. The altitude sickness has given me the mental agility of an ex-boxer who has turned his talents to sports commentating. So I am currently holding my toothpaste in my hand while looking frantically round the room for it.

 

Emilio notices the teddy bear in a US Marines outfit propped up on the bedside table.

‘Wha' the fuck is that?'

‘That is a kitsch
memento mori
.'

‘A wha?'

‘A reminder of death.
Memento mori
, it's Latin, for reminder of death,' I say, cheerfully spotting the toothpaste in my hand.

Emilio furrows his brow and says, ‘I don' think you need that here in Colombia, no?'

 

Which is true. More than forty years of conflict between governments, paramilitaries, drug cartels and left-wing guerillas has left the country with a well-deserved reputation for violence. It is the most dangerous place on earth for trade unionists caught between employers eager to be rid of them
and barbaric paramilitaries who are quite capable of doing just that.

 

Across the world trade unions have traditionally been at the forefront of the great battles for democracy, education and decent working conditions and as trade union membership has gone down since the start of the Nineties, it is worth remembering that the right to belong to a trade union is a fundamental human right, enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

 

In Colombia, the attacks on human rights are not limited to labour rights violations. 2004 saw 1440 people kidnapped in Colombia:
¹
one person every six hours. That was the year I first visited Bogota with Emilio, accompanied by another friend called Sam, who was a good two stone heavier than me. And this weight difference is significant because before arriving in Bogota I took the precaution of learning key Spanish phrases from Emilio, the most important of which was
Dispara el gordo primero
: shoot the fat one first. Fortunately I only needed to use it once. This is what happened.

 

The dub sound-system night took place in a club that inhabited the top two rooms of a building accessed by knocking on the door nicely and ascending some long and narrow stairs. What the place lacked in fire exits it made up for in atmosphere and the friendly squatter-chic decor, though without the chic. The club was full of swaying bodies and a small serving hatch produced cans of beer from a mountain of trays visible over the shoulder of the barman.

 

Leaning against a wall wet with condensation was a tall chap wearing a brown leather coat and, with what I now know to be a chemically assisted smile. Turning to face me he said, ‘Your first time in Colombia?' in impeccable English.

‘Yes.'

‘How do you like it?'

‘Great, people are very friendly here,' I shouted over the bass lines rattling from the speaker.

‘Very friendly…' the decibels increased. ‘Yes, friendly!' he yelled, then he nodded to his hand, which had not left his side, ‘Would you like?' He was holding a glass bullet-sized chamber with a plastic nozzle, full of cocaine.

‘No thanks,' I said.

‘No?' He seemed flabbergasted.

 

Perhaps it was his reaction which prompted me to forcefully add: ‘I have just spent the day listening to trade union leaders talking about the hundreds of their members that get killed by paramilitaries - who are funded by cocaine. I don't buy Nestlé products because of their baby milk, so I'm certainly not going for that.' I shouted over the music jerking my thumb at his container.

‘No, no, no, this is okay,' he said, genuinely upset, ‘This Is FARC cocaine - left-wing cocaine. Not paramilitary. This is fine.' A smile crept up one side of his face, and his eyes glinted.

Sneeringly I declared, ‘Sure it's fine, it's probably Fairtrade, right.'

And as quick as it came the smile left his face, in fact he looked quite cross and started to lean towards me. At that point it dawned on me that it may be unwise to pick an argument in a Bogota nightclub with a drug dealer. With hindsight I think a polite ‘no' would have sufficed.

‘Your first visit,' he shouted over the music, with a blank menace. ‘First time, right?'

Sam suddenly loomed from the dance floor, sweaty and clutching a can of beer. He slouched on to the wall with a bump and a smile, ‘All right?'

And for some reason the next words I said were, ‘
Dispara el gordo primero
.'

There was a pause, the man looked at Sam, Sam looked at me, I looked at the man, the man stared back, Sam looked at the man, the man turned to Sam, Sam turned to me, then turned to the man and with an innocent grin yelled, ‘All right?'

The man in the jacket shook his head and walked away.

N
early four years and one good night's sleep later Emilio guides Jess and I on our walk through the rundown side streets, Downtown Bogota may proclaim itself a modern city with skyscrapers and a financial centre, but the world of international commerce seems far away as we pass old men selling cigarettes from trays. There are no smart suits and briefcases as we wander by the small and cramped shops, where stock spills out of the doorways and hangs into the street. Half in and half out, overflowing packs of chewing gum on cardboard strips, sweet tubes of mints, boxes of matches, plastic toys and plasters. Here glass cabinets perch on stands, full of brown glazed buns, small dumplings, primped and crusty, cornbreads,
arepas
with melted cheese filings that sit drying on the heated racks. The coffee shacks have radios that tinnily grate out songs while groups of men smoke in doorways and sip coffee from little white plastic cups, that bulge out of shape with the heat of the drink. Carefully we pick a thread through the potholes that litter the roads like concrete acne and dodge the rasping roar of trail bikes and the nasal splutter of mopeds that scythe the thoroughfare.

 

In minutes we have moved from the morning havoc of the back streets into Teusaquillo, an area where the roads are slightly wider and the craters fewer. Trees periodically dot the
pavement and white walls and grilles harbour little gardens of yuccas and palms. The terracotta roof tiles give each home an air of stability, while the buildings themselves are set back a little from the road. The well-to-do used to live here but they moved on long ago, leaving it inhabited by human rights lawyers, civic groups and non-government organisations.

 

We stop at a house with a low brick wall. The front garden consists of one patch of grass, one patch of concrete and two oil stains. It is the kind of place that back home in England would have a disused caravan parked in one corner. Here the front doors of the building are large, wooden and nondescript, and give little clue as to the identity of the occupants. Especially since the old graffiti that used to read ‘Death to trade unionists!' has been painted over. Now there is nothing to announce that this ordinary house is home to Sinaltrainal (
Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos
-

The National Union of Food Workers). They are the biggest trade union in the ‘Coca-Cola system' in Colombia, representing over half the organised Coke workers, though after over a decade of attacks and intimidations the membership isn't as big as it was. In fact, with a current membership in the Coca Cola plants of only 350 it is fair to say they have been decimated, but (and the but in this case is enormous) this is the group that started Coca-Cola's current woes. This is the union that has seen its members and leaders murdered. This is also the union that took on one of the biggest companies in the world. These two things are not coincidental.

 

This building is where we meet two men, Giraldo and Manco. They arrive on different days and subsequently give their testimonies separately but they tell the same story and they both tell it from an old table in the middle of a union office covered in campaign posters. The propaganda slogans demand
boycotts and justice. The images are of handguns painted in the company colours of red and white. The names and pictures of dead trade unionists are everywhere. Giraldo and Manco knew these men, they were friends and relatives, and now they sit under the watch of the dead as they speak of how they died.

O
n a Saturday morning Oscar Alberto Giraldo Arango (Giraldo) walks into this office. He is forty-two but he carries a few more years on his shoulders. His shirt is as thin as his face, worn and frayed too, his cheeks look like they are down to the last layer of skin. Hunched and with an old black cap on his head ready to be pulled down, he sits looking out of big dark eyes, void but for an impassive watery stare.

 

The first time I met the men at Sinaltrainal they told me, ‘To be a trade unionist in Colombia is to walk with a gravestone on your back.' I initially took this as a reference to the fact that Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists: since 1986 2,500 trade unionists have been killed, that averages two a week. But the men I met looked weary - as if they had physically borne their stone.

 

Giraldo sits down, looks up, takes off his cap, stiffly rubs the top of his head with his hand and begins. He was born and breed in Carepa, Urabá , in the north-west of the Colombian countryside near the Panama boarder. He started work for Coca-Cola in 1984 at the Bebidas y Alimentos de Urabá bottling plant - which translates as Drinks and Foods of Urabá. When he told his friends of his new employers they congratulated him, ‘Well done, that's great! You got such a good job!' and it was too. The union had done well for the men, securing bonuses, overtime and health benefits. But this was not to last. Graffiti announced the paramilitaries' arrival
in Carepa in 1994. ‘We are here!' it declared. Shortly after the graffiti arrived so did the bodies. The first Coca-Cola worker and trade unionist in Carepa to be assassinated was José Eleazar Manco in April 1994. The second was killed days later on the 20 April. He was Giraldo's brother, Enrique.

 

In the mornings Enrique travelled to work on the back of a friend's motorbike. There is only one road to the bottling plant and that morning three men emerge from the side of it. They stand in the middle of the road and aim guns at the bike forcing it to stop. Enrique is dragged from the publicly exposed lane, into the trees and bushes with the armed men. As the paras disappear they shout to the driver -‘Go!'