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What are the reasons behind The National Farmers' Strike (Colombia) (The experts speak.)
The Free Trade Agreement is affecting us all...
the mining sector, the transportation sector, milk farmers and growers.
So, now potatoes are being brought in from everywhere...
and the people here don´t know how to work...
It´s not that they don´t know how to work,
The farmers are still working but at a loss.
The problem in Colombia is price regulation.
That's what's affecting us.
If the price of raw materials goes down,
why does the price of dairy products go up?
An easier example using milk.
If a litre of raw milk is sold by farmers for $400 pesos,
why is the bottle of milk in the stores still sold for $1700-$2000 pesos?
We can produce milk here...
but other countries are sending us milk products.
That's what's contaminating us.
So, what's happening?
The price of milk was fairly good at $900 pesos.
And now a litre of milk is at 400 pesos per litre...
and they're not even bothering to collect it.
We are rich in everything in Colombia.
In gemstones,
in minerals,
in everything, precious stones.
And we don't have anything.
Multinationals are taking everything from us.
Thanks to the middleman and others, the price of coal is the lowest it has ever been.
Right now and because of high production costs we can't pay the workers.
We are forced by the government to pay social security,
taxes, royalties, everything that the law demands.
And now because of the (low) buying price, there isn't enough to pay anyone.
I'll say one thing...
If we have milk, here in Colombia,
and agriculture,
and minerals,
petoleum,
there's everything.
So why, due to the free trade agreements,
are we bringing in things from other countries that are produced here.
What we have to do is export, not import from other places.
And we don´t even have an idea of who came up with these laws.
We don´t know if it was the Senate.
No one knows who made them.
But now they come to prosecute us...
to take the few tools we have.
We're going to show this government...
that we are neither bandits nor terrorist,
nothing like that at all.
Instead, please show us respect.
Because really,
we're a bit angry.
The transport sector has three fundamental issues:
Road tolls, fuel
and freight rates, which are at a lower rate than they should be in this country.
And everything is rising day by day.
Colombia is one of the most expensive places...
... for fuels in the world,
and it's not fair that it keeps going up each month.
Where are we going to end up? You can't even move.
The truth...
is that the government...
doing the same thing it did with the cement industry...
...when the multi-nationals arrived from Mexico and other places.
Colombian concrete companies went bankrupt.
What could they do?
They came here and set the price at 5000 pesos per bag.
Colombian companies couldn´t compete,
And so,
they bought all the shares from the Colombians
now the price of a bag is 25000 pesos.
And that is what they are aiming to do with us,
the farmers and miners.
The only thing the government wants to do now...
is bring in more multinationals to set up big companies...
and set up everything in this country
and then destroy the small farmers,
finish them.
We are just a target for destruction, nothing else.
Just as ESMAD (the anti-riot police) are now doing.
They are already saying that we are terrorist...
but we have never been terrorists.
We are humble people,
we are honest people,
so please respect us.
In this area we don´t have any congressmen
nor political representatives, nothing.
Where are they?
But when there are elections they come here
and take us like cattle in the field
to go and vote for them.
But no,no no. They have to respect us.
We chose this government and it was a bad choice.
We trusted them.
We, the farmers trusted them.
On election day we went to vote and for what?
To be let down like this?
To be put down, and stepped on?
And now the president is looking to be re-elected.
Who's going to re-elect him?
Us farmers, in the next elections...
we're not going to vote for anyone.
They're encouraging us to fight with everybody.
They're confronting us.
ESMAD, the police.
They are making us kill each other.
If the people who work for ESMAD
are young people from rural areas,
why are they are fighting their own people?
What can a "campesino" do in a city?
Become a beggar, starve.
A "campesino" is marginalized in the city
People see you walking past and they think you are homeless.
They don´t know what it's like being hungry, nor or what´s happening to you on the inside.
But it doesn´t matter if during this strike..
the police or ESMAD kill us.
We know our children are learning,
and they are going to keep moving forward!
Infiltrators?
You are my land