Labor Information Agency

- The assassination of Juan Carlos Perez, Sintrainagro union leader at the La Cabaa sugar mill -

Requiem and rage at the death of a sugar cane cutter

(Chronicle by Ricardo Aricapa)

Corinto, Cauca. (Special report by the Labor Information Agency). At 4:50 a.m.,

in the early morning hours of January 28, Juan Carlos Perez Muoz stood on the terrace of his house and saw two men standing at the corner with their motorcycles. These were the two men who, fifteen minutes later, would assassinate him. He saw them while he finished his coffee, the coffee that he always drank before getting on the bus headed to the La Cabaa sugar mill where he worked as a sugar cane cutter. His drank his coffee with sugar, thats how he liked it. But at that moment he couldnt have suspected that those men were there to assassinate him, although their presence at that particular place and at that time did seem strange to him. Thats what he said to his wife, Luz Aide Secua,

who, like every other day, got up an hour before him in order to prepare and pack his breakfast and fill his water jug. They must be good-for-nothings, she remembers him saying; it seemed to bother him. So much so that he took another route to the bus stop in order to avoid walking by them. It was a useless precaution because they caught up with him at the bus stop and then shot him eight times, seven times in the head. Luz Aide says that she heard the shots (the bus stop is a block from their house) but it didnt cross her mind that her husband was the target, in part because he was a good-natured person who didnt have problems with anyone (or at least that is what she thought) and in part because he hadnt told her about having received any threats. On two occasions he had expressed fear about the risks he was taking by trying to convince his co-workers to join the Sintrainagro union and to fight for the reinstatement of almost one hundred workers fired by the company, a task that he worked very hard on during the last two months of his life. I sincerely did not believe that the risk was so great, confessed Luz Aide, a short and stout woman of copper complexion with round shoulders and an impenetrable gaze, characteristics of her indigenous ancestry. And yes, in Colombia there are many risks that come with starting a union, especially in a region that is as hot as Northern Cauca, where anyone
Luz Aide Secua (center) with family members at the burial.

could be the shooter and there are many people who do not look favorably on the growth of a union like Sintrainagro. The FARC has some control in this region and there are other groups that operate outside the law. If this werent enough, the La Cabaa sugar mill has always strongly opposed workers claims about labor rights violations and has opposed, with all its strength, the presence of a union. This then is the challenge facing the State Prosecutor: to uncover from this tangle the motives for and authors of the crime committed against Juan Carlos. This will be possible only if this case does not become part of the long list of cases of unionists who have been assassinated with impunity in Colombia. A sugar processing plant with no love for unionists Every day at La Cabaa seven thousand tons of cane are converted into sugar; compared with the other twelve mills located in the Cauca valley, it a medium sized mill. It employs 2,500 people, 1,500 of who are directly employed by the mill and the rest are hired via three employment agencies. All of the sugar cane

cutters live in the string of villages between Santander de Quilichao and Florida, Valle. With regards to working conditions and unions, the La Cabaa sugar mill is a loose cog in the gears of the sugar industry. On both counts, it is significantly different from the other mills in the region. La Cabaa and the Maria Luisa mill (which also fired 24 unionized cutters) would not agree to participate in the process of formalizing contracts by directly employing its workers, as per the agreements that arose from the Obama-Santos Action Plan for the approval of the FTA with the United States. Perhaps this is because the owners, the Seinjet family is not originally from the Cauca Valley and was unwilling to cooperate; they are a Jewish family and are not Colombian and they have a different way of looking at things. The most visible board member and, according to the union, the person who is most harmful to the interests of the workers is Oscar Mora, the head of labor relations; he is the companys strong man. He is a person that Mauricio Ramos, president of the union local, describes as aggressive and rough in his treatment of people, allergic to anything related to unions and workplace complaints. People jokingly say of him that he cant even look at a unionist because it gives him heartburn. I think that he created this image of the tough guy so that people would be afraid of him and wouldnt protest. He has done a good job because the cutters are all afraid of him, adds Mauricio Ramos, who remembers that, following a long and arduous struggle of the Cauca Valley cutters in 2008, the associated work cooperates were dissolved and most sugar mills adopted a policy of directly employing their cutters, thereby guaranteeing them stability and shifts that ended by 4 p.m., freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, and other benefits above and beyond those established by law. But these changes were not implemented at La Cabaa, which continues to use
Mauricio Ramos

subcontracting agencies to hire its workers and which employs working conditions that are considerably more precarious than those found in other mills. The company also has much tighter security than that found at other mills in the area: it has its own security guards plus security that is provided by the national army; on the mills property there has been, for some time, a military detachment housing soldiers who are there because of the existing conflicts in Cauca but also, says the union, in order to discourage worker protests.

In fact, the La Cabaa cutters were the only mill workers that did not participate in the historic strike of 2008. At that time, perhaps naively, they decided to support the company because, in exchange for their agreement not to strike, the company promised to give them the same benefits and guarantees that would be won by the workers participating in the strike. In other words, they would get the same benefits, but without a strike. So they decided not to strike, in part because the company set up camps inside the sugar mill where they lived, which quarantined them from other workers, and they worked without leaving the company property for the duration of the strike. This so that the other cutters would not mistreat them or, worse still, contaminate them with the protest virus. But in the end it meant nothing. The company did not live up to its promise and it continues to pay workers the same wages and maintain the same working conditions that they endured prior to 2008 without any guarantee of stability. The workers work shifts of 12 or more hours; there is no vacation pay, Sunday premiums, or overtime; they do not receive their full clothing bonus; andmost infuriatingthey are at the mercy of the company with regards to the weight of the sugar cane that they cut. The cutters work at a piece rate, which means that they earn their salaries based on the weight of the cane that they have cut and it is the mills themselves that certify this weight. But in La Cabaaaccording to the unionthe real weight of the sugar cane is manipulated in order to keep workers salaries low. If there are days that the workers cannot work because the company decides that they shouldnt cut that day or for reasons that are out of the cutters control, the workers are not paid anything that day. Nor are the workers guaranteed a minimum wage when they are cutting cane from a field that has some kind of problem and for which the weight of the cane is less, different than the practice at other mills. This explains why, at another mill, a skilled cutter can earn between 800,000 and 900,000 pesos a month while at La Cabaa it is difficult for the workers to earn 700,000 pesos, even though they work longer shifts. And if they protest this situation, they are fired. This series of abuses and the obvious inequality were the reasons that lead Juan Carlos Perez Muoz to join the newly formed union and to accept the specific task of organizing the cutters who were contracted by the same subcontracting agency that employed him. A union in turbulent waters The La Cabaa local union, which is part of Sintrainagro, was formed on November 28 and was clandestine because there was no other way to organize. Its founding members included Juan Carlos and it was an experience that baptized him into unionization because he had never had the opportunity to lead an organization and he did not know what a union was or what it was supposed to do. Joining this effort changed his life, says Luz Aide; after he joined he gave his heart and soul to the cause. He was always looking out for the union and

making sure to attend the meetings with his colleagues. He would come home, change his clothes, eat, and then he would leave again, she adds. It turned out that he had a natural ability for organizing people. His conviction to the justice of his cause together with his innate ability to find the exact words to clearly express his ideas in a way that could be understood allowed him to easily increase the union ranks. Without a leader like Juan Carlos, Sintrainagro would surely not have been able to get 560 cutters at La Cabaa to join its ranks in only one month. Amidst the clamor of this struggle, he was discovering his vocation as a unionist. But this only lasted for two months: he was assassinated on January 28. Sintrainagros presented a bargaining petition to the company on December 17 that included demands for working conditions found at other sugar mills. For Mr. Oscar Mora this list of demands was a hard pill to swallow. And, in fact, he did not swallow it. He made the announcement that he was not willing to negotiate because the mill did not directly employ the workers. And he went further still: he waited until the end of the year when the workers contracts expired and then he started to fire the unionized cutters. The details of the contract helped him they stipulated that both parties could unilaterally end the contract with one months notice, a legal loophole that, in practice, allows for employers to fire their workers and change the legal name of their business whenever they want to, which may occur as many as three or four times a year. For example, at the beginning of 2012, one of the subcontracting agencies was called Sociedad Agropecuaria Duque Botero. By the middle of the year it was known as Caacor SAS and as of January 1, 2013 it was known as Agricosechas SAS. This is done in order to free the company of its responsibilities to the workers, eliminate the workers seniority, and rid the companies of unions. Cutters who have worked at the mill for 15 or 20 years have to start from zero every four months because their documents reflect a different employer than the one they had before, even though it is actually the same employer. This is the legal loophole that the employment agencies used when, in January, they did not renew contracts and effectively fired 86 cutters, all of whom were unionized, including the entire leadership committee, many of whom had worked for the company for fifteen years or more. Who knows why Juan Carlos was not on the list of workers that were dismissed, maybe he was lucky. Nor was he on the list of another twelve workers that were fired later, some of whom were fired for having participated in a protest organized by cutters from different mills that was held on January 16 at the offices of Asocaa (Colombian Sugar Growers Association). A dilemma of conscience Mauricio Muoz faced a serious dilemma after the death of his colleague Juan Carlos. When I think about him, I am attacked by feelings of guilt, he says. If

we hadnt started the unionization process, he would still be alive. But as much pain and loss as I feel for our colleague, the process must continue because an injustice has been committed. 98 of us have been fired and we are surviving from what our friends and neighbors can give to us. 98 cutters that, because of the over supply of labor in the sugar cane industry, cannot easily find work elsewhere nor do they have the training or contacts to look for work in another field. It pains me that a legally-executed union process has to experience death in order to gather the attention of the public and the government, which until now has done nothing to pressure the company to negotiate the bargaining petition that we presented, adds Muoz; his face expresses better than his words the cross fire of emotions that he experiences as a result of his colleagues assassination. Asocaa should address this problem, he continues, because if it doesnt fix things, if our demands are not heard and they dont rehire the workers who have been fired, there may be a strike at La Cabaa. This strike could potentially extend to the other mills where Sintrainagro has a presence. There are more than four thousand affiliated cutters and the organization has announced its total support for the La Cabaa cutters. The tribulations of Luz Aide Overwhelmed by rage and pain that dont allow her to think, Luz Aide Secua doesnt know what to think about the death of her husband and doesnt dare to mention a possible motive or author. She tends to believe that he was assassinated because of his union activity because she can find no other explanation; she knew of no other problems that he might have had. His drinking, which was for a long time the greatest source of his problems, was a thing of the past. It had been a year since Juan Carlos had completely stopped drinking in order to fully dedicate himself to raising his and Luz son, Victor Alejo; Luz Aide has two other daughters from a former husband. I know that I have to accept this and keep going with my children, but it is going to be very difficult without Juan Carlos. The little bit of money that he would have earned during this pay period was already designated for the childrens school supplies because it is time for school to start. But that money is gone because we had to spend it on the burial, she adds. The only thing that her deceased husband left behind for Luz Aide and her son is a small plot of land that they have worked together to grow yucca and plantains on the days that he didnt have to go to cut sugar cane. He wasnt able to finish building the apartment that he was adding onto the second floor of his in-laws house. Its there, half finished, and there is no one to finish it, she says.