Belching Out the Devil by Mark Thomas

The only reason Coca-Cola negotiated according to him was, ‘because they don’t want us to keep reporting them [campaigning]…What the Company wanted was to buy the silence of the people involved. They give some money to the victims in order not to denounce the problem.’
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    The negotiations broke down in early 2008. Coke said ‘ no final resolution was possible. An impasse was reached and no further discussions are anticipated at this time.’ 11 Arguably, the impasse was the conditions of the settlement - Coke would pay millions of dollars but anyone working for Coca-Cola FEMSA and involved in the lawsuit had to leave their jobs, they could no longer work at Coke. But more than this they would be legally bound never to criticise Coca-Cola ever again. According to Edgar Paez this would apply ‘not only in Colombia but everywhere in the whole world. They wanted us to sign an agreement that no one would denounce Coca-Cola any more, for the rest of their lives.’ In effect, the agreement, if signed, would prevent them from campaigning against any multinational that Coca-Cola had business with. From the moment they signed until they day they died.
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    The end result of key members of the union leaving Coke and unable to criticise or organise against the company from the outside would effectively mean the union would be finished. Sinaltrainal would cease to exist in the Coca-Cola plants. That is, after all, what is meant by my phrase ‘you shut up, you go away’.
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    The money was on the table and all Sinaltrainal had to do was agree and take it. So the men and women who had fought for the right to be in a trade union would become
silent. Their right to free speech and freedom of association would be gone for ever. All they had to do was take the money and sign the paper. For men like Giraldo and Manco the prospect of compensation was money they literally could only dream of.
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    The union refused to sign. They refused to be silent. Leaving The Coca-Cola Company with an ‘old story’ that would not go away.

4
    â€˜CHILE’

    Bucaramanga, Colombia

    â€˜There are no threats or attempts by management to attack or intimidate workers for being affiliated with a union or for being a union organiser or for being a union official.’
    Neville Isdell, CEO, TCCC Annual Meeting 19 April 2005
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    T his is the story of the first time I stayed with a man called Chile, a Sinaltrainal member who lives inin the Bucaramanga, to the north of Bogota. The city sits in the basin of a plateau ringed by hills, a packed urban island sprawling over its convex foundations and is surrounded by terracotta soil and the ripe light green of the trees. It’s the seventh biggest city in Colombia - the English equivalent would be Leicester or Coventry.

    Given that most Catholic countries draw the line at evoking cooking spices at christenings it should come as no surprise that Chile is a nickname. Though the name derives from the spice, here folk spell it after the country. His real name is Luis Eduardo García, and he earned his moniker after a particularly heated argument with a manager at the local Coca-Cola bottling plant. I met Chile in 2004 on a fact-finding mission, which is how I came to be on a bus travelling through Bucaramanga with a crowd of trade unionists, leftists, Christians and human rights’ campaigners. Each day we would set off to visit displaced people, families of murder victims, NGOs and lawyers, listen to their stories and then head off to our next destination - a sort of human rights coach trip.
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    The bus is knackered. Very knackered. You may be familiar with the type of American bus that Evel Knievel used to jump over on his motorbike. Well, our bus looks like the one that he accidentally landed on. Inside it is incredibly hot: were we to be parked in England, someone would be checking the back seat to see if the dog was still alive. There is