Drummond Coal: A Trail of Shame From Alabama to Colombia

Gustavo Soler, Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita are dead because they wanted better food and safer conditions for coal miners in Colombia. I have borrowed from numerous newspaper, wire and radio reports to write about the trail of shame that began in Alabama and ended with three dead.

Alabama-based Drummond Coal Company is in a U.S. court this week, accused of hiring paramilitaries in Colombia to kill the three union organizers at its operation in northeastern Cesar province. Drummond, a powerful utility company with enormous political clout in Alabama, is being sued by the families of the men slain near Drummond's La Loma mines.

This is the first time a U.S. company has gone to trial for alleged abuses overseas, under the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act.

The trail of shame from Alabama to Colombia's mines appears clearly marked. Two of the chief witnesses against the coal mining giant were paramilitary fighters employed by Drummond to break union activists. Drummond exported more than 25 million tons of coal last year from Colombia to the U.S. and Europe.

At the time they were murdered, Soler, Locarno and Orcasita were pushing for two quite ordinary things: better food for the coal miners at the Drummond cafeteria and better mine safety. The union accused the company of unsafe conditions that contributed to 13 accidental deaths since 1995, and of forcing injured employees to work.

The United Mine Workers of America have been holding coal companies accountable for decades over basic mine safety standards. Drummond mines in Alabama, like other coal mines in the state and elsewhere, have had their share of cave-ins, fires and other safety problems. But the company's Colombian mines, opened in 1996, were supposed to be free of pesky union and safety requirements.

In my view, the shame of Drummond's activities doesn't end there. According to witnesses and trial affidavits, the company for decades has been supporting some violent paramilitary groups in Colombia, groups that have killed area peasants, stolen their lands and fought government efforts to bring paramilitarism under control.

Interestingly, labor lawyers representing the Colombian families in this civil suit against Drummond are using a 218-year-old labor law as a basis for the claims. The Alien Tort Claims Act is supposed to make mulitnational corporations accountable for serious human rights abuses in other countries and give injured parties the right to sue in U.S. courts.

The law is actually a war crimes act. So for the Colombians to win, they must show that the use of paramilitary groups and the slayings amounted to war crimes sanctioned by the state. According to various press reports, the plaintiffs lawyers will try to show that union activists have been systematically slaughtered in Colombia.

Colombian witnesses also have said that Drummond paid paramilitaries to guard the 25,000-acre coal mine and coal-carrying trains against "leftist rebel sabotage." The mercenaries allegedly were supplied with Drummond pickup trucks, motorcycles and food.

Two paramilitary members, now in hiding outside Colombia, offered testimony to U.S. authorities about the murders and about Drummond's relationship to paramilitary soldiers. They are Edwin Guzman, a former army sergeant-turned-mercenary, and Isnardo Ropero, the former bodyguard for a top Drummond executive.

The trial is now before a federal jury in Birmingham, Ala. The union this week presented affidavits from two people who say they were present when Drummond's chief executive in Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handed over money to the local paramilitary warlord and that the money was for the 2001 killings of union local president Locarno and Orcasita.

Drummond is denying the accusations and challenging the witness' reliability. The company has said that "Some (of the witnesses) are being paid and/or offered assistance by the United Steelworkers Union."

How widespread is the use of paramilitary/militia gangs by U.S. corporations abroad? An Associated Press report this week states that the U.S. Justice Department this year has fined Chiquita Brands (bananas) International Inc. $25 million for giving $1.7 million to militias from 1997-2004.

According to one AP story, Colombia's chief prosecutor, Mario Iguaran, is pursuing criminal investigations into both the Drummond and Chiquita cases. In June, 144 people were killed by paramilitaries on land where Chiquita harvested bananas.

My tears fall tonight for all the people who have died facing down big corporations in the struggle to organize and make a better workplace for themselves and their families.

I pray that the jury of my fellow Alabamians will vote in favor of the Colombian families. That would sound a warning to exploitative multinationals everywhere.

Gita M. Smith is a journalist living in Alabama. Her blog may be seen at http://www.Myspace.com/gitahandley

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