COLOMBIA—Buenaventura is a city on the shores of the Pacific Ocean with 400,000 inhabitants, of which 90% are Afro Colombians, 82% are in poverty (according to DANE data) and 42% in misery. It is the most important port in the country that generated in 2020, 14,356 million dollars of income. It is through this port that 70% of Colombia’s exports leave the country.
Before 1957, when this port belonged to the state, it had more than 10,000 dock workers, most of them Black workers. It is worth mentioning that in turn, in most of the coal mines on the Atlantic coast, in the salt mines throughout the country and in the sugar cane plantations, 100% of their workers are Black. After the privatization of the port, there are no more than 5,000 workers, despite the fact that the port terminals have been increased from one to thirteen. Through this port, all kinds of merchandise are imported and exported, from cocaine, arms, bananas and coffee, to trafficking displaced workers and children from different parts of the world.
Despite the fact that Buenaventura is irrigated by many rivers and is on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, more than 42% do not have drinking water. The paramilitary gangs and drug traffickers fight over the land, the landowners want to plant African palm and coca, and the owners of the ports say that “as long as the merchandise leaves and enters the port smoothly, the Black [workers] are worth nothing.” The mega cultivation of palm has become an alarming problem not only for Buenaventura but also for the rest of the Colombian territory. These mega-palm crops, apart from being cultivated by workers under terrible working conditions, imply the loss of tropical forests and their richness in biodiversity. They create large forest fires such as those generated in Indonesia in 1997. In addition, palm cultivation turns the territory into a “green desert”, drying up natural water tributaries and wetlands. Previous deforestation, together with the massive use of fertilizers and insecticides, cause serious pollution and a huge loss of biodiversity. Faced with this situation, workers in different cities have protested, denounced and boycotted companies that promote this criminal practice.
Capitalist try to strangle workers fightback with racist terror
Port workers had social benefits, health, pensions, study aid and vacations. Today they do not have any indefinite term contracts. They are paid for services, that is, they do not have any of the benefits they previously had. In Buenaventura, Black workers are deeply mistreated, murdered and disappeared, making this area one where displacement is daily. The workers have to go with their families to Cali, another nearby city where wealth is disputed between paramilitaries and arms and coca smugglers.
The dock workers have been an example of struggle and have inspired the rest of the social movement in the country. The last strikes that occurred in 2017, 2019, 2020 and the latter in 2021 (which was one of the longest and most massive) have been led by Black and indigenous workers. Despite more than 680 disappearances and the countless dismembered bodies that appear daily down the Cauca River, these workers continue to fight. Their enthusiasm will be lost if we do not organize them with the ideas of the Progressive Labor Party.
If we do not intertwine and understand the importance of Black workers in the working class and how they have been the basis for capitalist exploitation and oppression, we will continue to suffer these atrocities as we carry out struggles that will not offer us true liberation.
Black and indigenous workers are the ones who have suffered the consequences in the most stark and open way, since they are the ones who have the greatest disappearances and murders. Systematic racism is seen both in the United States and in Colombia and although mestizos also suffer the consequences of capitalism, it is Black workers who have fewer opportunities for study, work, and lower life rates compared to white Colombian workers.
We must fight to emphasize our political line by leading and bringing the CHALLENGE, organizing and offering the only possible hope for Black workers, indigenous, and the workers of the world. There may be a lot of struggle but as long as we do not organize with our line for the communist revolution, we will be delaying the struggle of the workers.