When John McCain and Barack Obama met for their final presidential debate on October 15, McCain accused Obama of being ignorant of the positive aspects of signing the proposed U.S.- Colombia Free Trade Agreement (USTR).

“Senator Obama, who has never traveled south of our border,” McCain said, “opposes the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The same country that’s helping us try to stop the flow of drugs into our country that’s killing young Americans. And also the country that just freed three Americans and that will help us create jobs in America because they will be a market for our goods and products without having to pay the billion dollars and more that we’ve already paid.

“Free trade with Colombia is something that’s a no-brainer,” McCain claimed, “But maybe you ought to travel down there and visit them and maybe you could understand it a lot better.”

Obama countered that he understood the situation in Colombia “pretty well. The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions...I think that the important point is we’ve got to have a president who understands the benefits of free trade but also is going to not enforce unfair trade agreements and is going to stand up to other countries.”

Local labor union representatives and Colombians who also understand what this trade proposal means came out to speak against the USTR in New York City just weeks earlier, on Wednesday, October 1.

During a panel held by the group Trade Unionists In Solidarity With Colombia at the SEIU’s Local 32BJ headquarters, speakers talked about how the passage of the U.S.-Colombia FTA would affect human and labor rights policies in that South American country.

Panelists for “The Colombian Free Trade Agreement, Displacement of Afro- Colombians, and Violence against Trade Unionists” focused on how the trade policy would help perpetuate racial inequalities in Colombia.

Carlos Rosero, a founding member of Colombia’s Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, or Black Communities Process), explained that Afro-Colombian activists have made numerous visits to Washington, D.C., and even sent letters begging U.S. representatives not to pass the USTR.

Recent policies enacted between the United States and Colombia – in particular, “Plan Colombia” – have led to Black Colombians being forced from their lands. Those who don’t leave their homes are faced with poverty and neglect. And government-sponsored fumigations of land areas where they believe coca plants are being grown have led to widespread illnesses and displacement.

Passage of the USTR would mean more funding for the African palm oil (APO) industry in Colombia. The U.S. Office on Colombia and the Washington Office on Latin America claim that Colombia’s APO industry is supported by $80 million in alternative development funds from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The APO industry has been crucial in leading to displacement of Afro-Colombians as community lands are taken away for the harvesting of palm oil.

Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people in the Western hemisphere, and its displaced population is only second in the world to that of Sudan. Last year, in 2007, more than 230,000 people were forcibly displaced in Colombia; today, some 30 percent of Colombia’s displaced populations are people of African descent.

“The theme of racism has been absent from progressive movements in Latin America,” noted Panamanian-born Humberto Brown, who is a member of the Global Afro Latino &Caribbean Initiative. “But today’s relationship between races and classes is defined by how colonialism began in Latin America.”

Brown explained that the emphasis on the importance of assimilation throughout Latin America led to a denial of ethnicities that were not somehow connected to Europe. But the leaders of today’s most progressive Latin American movements come from those locations where people of indigenous and African descent live, he said.

“Trade union leadership is often silent about these issues,” noted Faye Moore, the president of SSEU Local 371. “For instance, during the antiapartheid movement, many union members were coalescing around this issue long before our unions decided to join the movement.

“But we don’t have time to wait for them now. What is happening in Colombia, we just can’t allow that to happen to our Afro-Colombian brothers and sisters. Sometimes we fail to realize that what happens to our fellow humans in other parts of the world affects us, too. Labor unions are supposed to stand up for those people who can’t stand up for themselves... It is the union’s responsibility to put our face and our dollars behind this and stand up for our Afro-Colombian brothers and sisters.