COLOMBIA, September 16 — For the past two weeks, thousands of farmers, truckers, miners and students have been on strike to protest sharp drops in their living conditions due to the “free trade” agreement between the U.S. and Colombia. The agreement, an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was signed a year ago. It forces small farmers in Colombia to compete with huge U.S. agro-conglomerates.
The government is trying to end the strike, which has blocked 30 roads around the country, by promising negotiations and millions in investments — promises they have repeatedly broken in the past. No one should be surprised by the crisis the trade agreement has caused. For years, both farmers and social organizations predicted the effects it would have on the impoverished rural majority in Colombia. Farm family incomes, already the lowest in the country, are down 70 percent. That amounts to a death penalty for peasants.
When the agreement was signed, former Vice President Francisco Santos acknowledged there would be “losers,” but that didn’t concern him. With visible excitement, he stated there would also be “winners.” He must have been referring to the big agribusiness companies and the local capitalists who work with them! One year later, they have increased subsidized rice imports to Colombia by an astronomical 2,000 percent. The small local farmers cannot compete with the artificially low price of imported rice.
It was no exaggeration when the archbishop of Tunja, Luis Augusto Castro, called the trade agreement a “betrayal.” As Karl Marx said, the state is the office from which the capitalist class runs its business. In Colombia, the state is a transnational office run by people who despise Colombian workers and are closer to New York than to Ciudad Bolivar.
In reaction to workers’ anger, the bosses have committed huge violations of human rights. They have used the Safety Act to criminalize social protest and the military to repress “the internal enemy” — protesting workers and farmers. These arrogant bosses want passive workers who will just vote and support the rulers’ parties.
Arbitrary arrests have led to the imprisonment of more than 300 leaders on charges of “rebellion.” They have also exposed the vaunted Colombian democracy as a class dictatorship, which we in Progressive Labor Party know we must destroy.
Militant friends and readers of CHALLENGE have been at these demonstrations with our literature and slogans. They bring our message of internationalist struggle against nationalism.  While participating in immediate reform struggles, they also make it clear that only communist revolution can fundamentally change the system we live under. Only communism can end imperialism, nationalism, racism, sexism and the lethal profit system.