Violence in Colombia
Lesley Gill
Critique of Anthropology 2007 27: 235
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X07080354
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Article
‘Right There with You’
Coca-Cola, Labor Restructuring and Political
Violence in Colombia
Lesley Gill
American University, Washington, DC
Abstract ■ The article examines how state terrorism operates alongside neoliberal capitalism and has reconfigured labor relations and generated new forms of oppositional politics. Focusing on the struggles of Colombian Coca-Cola workers, the article first considers how neoliberal restructuring and political violence have fragmented social relationships and aggravated inequalities among workers and between them and the Coca-Cola Company. This is a process that is based on widespread impunity. The article then examines how trade unionists have struggled against the degradation of work and the violation of their human rights by internationalizing their struggle against Coca-Cola and building broad alliances that extend beyond the workplace. Finally, it considers the problems, possibilities and new tensions that emerge from the union’s internationalism. Keywords ■ human rights ■ impunity ■ neoliberalism
As the tentacles of the Coca-Cola Company stretched around the world in the 20th century,
Citations: http://coa.sagepub.com/content/27/3/235.refs.html >> Version of Record - Sep 10, 2007 What is This? Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com at UNIV REGINA LIBRARY on November 20, 2014 distributed Coca-Cola during festivities that once used cane alcohol in ceremonies dedicated to the gods (Nash, 2006) Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com at UNIV REGINA LIBRARY on November 20, 2014 236 not to drink it (Levenson-Estrada, 1994: 202). reshaping the terrain of political struggle (see, for example, Collins, 2003; Kasmir, 2005; Nash, 1989) credit and debt (Harvey, 2003: 137–82). Harvey argues that accumulation by dispossession is a continuous process of ‘enclosing the commons’ that has accelerated under neoliberalism (Harvey, 2003, 2005; see also DeAngelis, 1999) Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com at UNIV REGINA LIBRARY on November 20, 2014 237