For the past five years, Colombia's abysmal labor rights record
has led congressional Democrats to freeze the proposed
U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA). And for good
reason: The agreement would, in part, benefit large-scale
monocropping plantations and other economic projects -- many of
whose owners utilize the "security" services of paramilitary
groups to intimidate, assassinate, and displace not only trade
unionists, but also Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders and
families viewed as getting in the way of economic operations’
owners. In April, President Obama and Colombian President Juan
Manuel Santos defrosted the trade agreement, announcing a "Labor
Action Plan" that details steps Colombia has committed to take
in the coming months. Based on these promises, the TPA is likely
to come up for a vote in the U.S. Congress before the end of
2011. But the plan -- according to U.S. and Colombian trade
unions, human rights groups, Afro-Colombians, indigenous
Colombians, and rural farmer associations