"Late US coal tycoon personally ordered union killings in Colombia"

[Judi Lynn]

1. As you can learn, Drummonds hired the AUC paramilitary death squad, as did Chiquita Banana (massacres)

The open-pit Pribbenow coal mine in northeastern Colombia is operated by Alabama-based Drummond Co.




Ken Silverstein, Joshua Collins
/
November 30, 2023
Comeuppance
The Colombian Murder Case That Refuses to Die
Twenty-two years ago, three union leaders for mine workers employed by an American company were killed.

The murders have gone unsolved. But now the Colombian government is prosecuting two company executives for financing the paramilitary group responsible for the killings.

Photographs by Stephen Ferry/Redux

Three enormous open-pit mines owned by Drummond Co. in northern Colombia dwarf the nearby town of La Loma, which sprang up after the U.S. company began extracting coal in 1995 and has grown to some 10,000 residents. Life in La Loma revolves around the mines. Packed company buses flood the town every 12 hours, at the 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. shift changes. After workers who have just completed their shifts empty out, the buses fill right back up with fresh replacements waiting to be taken to the mines to begin theirs.

Alabama-based Drummond has earned billions from its local operations, and most of the surrounding area in Cesar province has paved roads, a result of the development the mining industry has brought to the region. Near La Loma’s idyllic town square, which boasts a colonial-style church and half a dozen restaurants, a health clinic has erected a plaque thanking the company for the contributions that made even rudimentary medical care possible.

On a brutally hot, dry morning in September, dust filled the air with every breeze as a Drummond guard patrolled the area around El Descanso, the largest of the company’s mines, just north of town. He walked slowly along a railroad line that transports coal from Drummond’s mines to a coastal port it owns on the Caribbean Sea 120 miles away. The guard was friendly and casual, but when a New Republic reporter raised his camera to take a photo of a passing railcar, he waved and shouted warnings to stop.

His concern over a reporter snapping a photograph of the train line may seem overly dramatic, but it was understandable given the backstory. In 2001, three union leaders representing workers at the mines were assassinated by marauding thugs. Their murders have never been fully solved more than two decades later. The quiet scene on that September day belied the violent events that unfolded at the time, when the army and allied right-wing paramilitaries largely controlled Cesar province during the peak of Colombia’s 52-year civil war. Much of the violence and “social cleansings” they committed took place in towns that lay along the tracks.

. . .



From left: former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, longtime Drummond Co. president Garry Drummond (now deceased), and ex-Drummond Ltd. official Augusto Jimenez.

More:
https://newrepublic.com/article/176808/colombian-murder-case-refuses-die