According to Reuters, "Violence has eased under conservative President Alvaro Uribe thanks to his U.S.-backed crackdown on the rebels and a paramilitary peace deal under which thousands of fighters have turned in their guns since 2003."  However, violence against unionists is still very much an issue.  Last week, two labor leaders were killed, marking more than two dozen union members this year, and still there has been no prosecution.  

According to that report, "against this diplomatically sensitive backdrop, Jairo Giraldo of the national fruit-workers union and Leonidas Silva of a teachers' union were murdered in separate incidents. The killers have not been caught."

So Hillary has rejected this deal, despite the so-called progress Uribe has made on the "drug war" front.  This has caught the consternation of Uribe.  According to ABC News, "Uribe has lobbied hard to show his government deserves a free-trade deal for curbing violence from a 4-decade-old conflict, but Clinton joined other Democrats in citing the continued killings of labor leaders for rejecting a deal.""This is very serious, very serious, it's an unforgivable misunderstanding of Colombia," Uribe told reporters in Chile where he was participating in a regional summit."

Ok, I guess Hillary misunderstood that killing union members is what, part of the culture, and that somehow extending trade to a country that doesn't prosecute the murderers of union members is a mistake.  Gotcha, Uribe. So will Hilary's opposition to this trade agreement mean anything?  It could.  According to Reuters, "Her opposition to the Colombia and Panama agreements could make it much harder for the Bush administration to persuade Democrats to vote for those accords, particularly if she holds onto her lead in the race for the Democratic nomination."

Now, for my part, I'm a fair trader.  That means different things to different people, I know.  But I believe the global market will ultimately enable us to be more interconnected and will do more to lift people out of poverty than closed economies ever can.  But, I don't think we should extend trade agreements to countries that take a lax stand on prosecuting labor murderers.  

This thing with Uribe, his playing the "drug war" card got me thinking.  Politically this is the sort of thing the Republicans, save Huckabee, are going to throw at us.  "These Dem's don't want trade with our friends in the war on drugs/terror", that sort of thing.  It's an interesting conundrum.  

I stand with Hillary and the Columbian union members.  Imagine being murdered over your affiliation with a labor union; Unbelievable.

Articles cited:
http://www.reuters.com/article/americasC risis/idUSN07311316
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS tory?id=3846131
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id =7062542