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1 May, 2012
Daniel Aguirre Piedrahita, the General Secretary of SINALCORTEROS, Colombia’s Nation Union of Sugar Cane Cutters, was assassinated last Friday night, 27 April, as he accompanied his wife, Helena, to make a telephone call in their Casilda neighbourhood of Florida municipality, Valle del Cauca department in west-central Colombia.
He was shot twice in the head by a cowardly assassin only 70 metres from his home. In a statement, SINALCORTEROS said the cold-blooded murder occurs in a continued context of violence and intolerance of trade union work in Colombia. It urged members and activists not to let this “reprehensibly violent action torpedo our union” and derail activities, but rather to “reaffirm our actions and our mission.”
The government of Colombia did put out a statement yesterday condemning the killing. Deputy Minister of Labour David Luna Sanchez said the ministry supports the Interior Ministry’s Protection Unit director’s call for an investigation to determine if the killing was related to union activity.
Aguirre, 35, was a stalwart leader of sugar cane cutters and their fight to bust the chains of servitude inflicted by sugar mill employers who considered them self-employed independent contractors.
He was instrumental in 2005 in forming SINALCORTEROS, now an affiliate of the International Food and Agricultural Workers’ Association (IUF), through strikes. He also led strikes of 18,000 sugar cane cutters in 2008 in both Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments that two years later resulted in collective agreements, labour pacts he instituted that in part made recruitment less cumbersome.
More recently, he had been advocating revisions to Colombia’s labour statutes to bring them up to ILO standards and he was a fierce opponent of the Free Trade Agreement with the US, something he felt would lead to exploitation of workers and the product that they harvested.
Daniel Aguirre becomes the seventh Colombian trade unionist killed this year, and the 61stsince Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office in August 2010. He is survived by his wife and three daughters, ages 14, 10 and 4.
A letter of condolence (in Spanish) from the IUF to SINALCORTEROS President Alfonso Viafara can be viewed here.