Dilara Yarbrough ‘05
guest column
So Coke tastes pretty yummy. It has a delightfully fizzy texture, and is loaded with sugar and caffeine. Perfect for late night reading. So why don’t I drink it anymore? Hint: I’m not on a diet. I’ve given up healthier Minute Maid juices, Powerade and Dasani water as well.
Oh… I must be one of those students boycotting Coca-Cola products because it’s fashionable to comply with those “The Grinnell Student Body Has Voted to Boycott Coca-Cola Products” signs in the dining hall. Don’t I know that Coke’s contract with Grinnell doesn’t expire until 2007?
Anyway, those boycott-happy hippies are such hypocrites. They jump from one cause to the next, and underneath their recycled clothing, they are probably wearing underwear made in sweatshops. On second thought, they’re probably not wearing any underwear at all. That’s cool. So what’s wrong with me sipping a Cherry Coke at midnight while I read about Latin American labor movements for my history class?
These arguments ran through my mind as I took my seat at the Feb 8, 2005 almost-secret meeting with Coca-Cola executives in the basement of Grinnell College’s John Chrystal Center. The purpose of the meeting? For Coke executives, including Juan Carlos Dominguez, legal director for Coca-Cola FEMSA of Colombia, to refute allegations that the Coca-Cola Corporation has been complicit in 179 human rights violations in Colombia, including abduction, torture, and nine murders.
Five Coke executives came all the way to tiny Grinnell, Iowa to try to convince 11 students, a professor and administrators that the Grinnell boycott was misguided. Student activists’ request that this meeting be an open forum for all Grinnell community members was denied. Warren Buffet, a Grinnell trustee heavily invested in Coca-Cola, was conspicuously absent.
I became interested in the nature of the relationship between Coca-Cola and human rights abuses last year, when Luis Adolfo Cardona, a Colombian Trade Unionist at Coca-Cola, came to speak at Grinnell College. Cardona told an audience of students and faculty that he was kidnapped by Colombian paramilitaries who planned to murder him.
In this year’s meeting at Grinnell, Dominguez said that murder was a sad daily reality of Colombia. He claimed that the murders of unionists did not involve the Coca-Cola Corporation but stemmed solely from paramilitary perception of unionists as leftist sympathizers. This claim by the legal director for Coca-Cola FEMSA is contradicted by the testimony of other parties whose credibility is not marred by responsibility for the legal protection of the Coca-Cola Corporation.
Well-documented evidence points to Coke’s complicity in anti-union violence. The New York City Fact-Finding Delegation on Coca-Cola in Colombia traveled to Colombia in January 2004 to collect data and assess labor unionists’ claims of human rights abuses by the Coca-Cola Corporation. They noted a suspicious concurrence between labor negotiations and heightened extralegal violence against workers.
Transcripts of interviews with victims and family members indicate that paramilitaries told victims that they would continue abuse them unless they stopped interfering with the interests of Coca-Cola.
Union workers shared eyewitness accounts of plant managers and directors talking to and drinking with paramilitaries. The delegation heard multiple testimonies of local coke managers paying paramilitaries.
Additional eyewitness accounts demonstrate that paramilitaries had unrestricted access to Coca-Cola plants. In fact, in 1996 union leader Isidro Gil was murdered inside the Coca-Cola bottling plant, shot seven times. Only two days after this murder, paramilitaries came back to the plant with letters of resignation printed on Coca-Cola’s computers. Union leaders were forced to resign union membership under threat of death.
During the meeting at Grinnell, Dominguez admitted to the existence of some problems in Colombian bottling plants. He said that he personally visited each facility involved in complaints and interviewed each worker involved in allegations against Coke. Dominguez’s failure to uncover the true problems with Coca-Cola using these tactics is unremarkable.
In fact, a student union organizer attending the meeting countered that such tactics as personal meetings with company representatives were often used to intimidate unionists. In light of continual intimidation and terrorism of Coca-Cola workers in Colombia, Dominguez should not be surprised that he, perhaps inadvertently, may have intimidated unionists to the point that they view media as a more effective way to voice concerns.
Dominguez acted unaware of the way his conflict of interest might hinder a personal investigation. Perhaps the reason that legal director for Coca-Cola FEMSA did not obtain the same interview results as the New York City Delegation has to do with Coke’s pattern of suing activists and unionists for speaking out against the company.
Coke executives at the Grinnell meeting were unconvincing. It is alarming that Coca-Cola still refuses to cooperate with independent fact-finding committees wishing to conduct investigations in Colombia. Coca-Cola must take responsibility for the safety of its workers in Colombia. It is the responsibility of multi-national corporations not to condone violence for economic benefit.
Similarly, informed consumers all over the world have the power to pressure corporations to respect human rights. Even informed consumers in tiny Grinnell, Iowa, at tiny Grinnell College with an exclusive beverage contract that does not expire until 2007.
Boycotts are controversial methods of resistance and Dominguez argued they can end up hurting workers more than corporate human rights violators. But in the case of Coca-Cola, it is the Colombian workers themselves who are calling for an international boycott. Until Coke starts providing the rights and security workers demand, unless Colombian labor unions call off this boycott, I refuse to drink Coke while reading history or otherwise.
The political significance of my underwear remains a mystery to the world. But hopefully the solidarity of students in the United States with Colombian labor unionists will serve as a warning to all multinational corporations.
The less Coca-Cola we drink, the less Grinnell College buys from Coca-Cola until the contract expires. And the more leverage we, a student body that voted overwhelmingly to boycott Coke, have to veto Coca-Cola when the contract comes up for renewal. Maybe we can do what Carleton College, Lake Forest College, and Bard College have already done: kick Coke off campus.
*I am happy to share my audiotape and photos of the February 8, 2005 meeting. Information about Coca-Cola’s human rights record, including the delegation report, newspaper articles, and a legal brief, can be obtained through the Latin American Solidarity Group. [americas]
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