Guto Pryce and Gruff Rhys in Colombia
Fizzy Logic
Following the Super Furry Animals 'vacuous' six week tour of north America, two of the band members flew onto Colombia. Singer songwriter Gruff Rhys and bassist Guto Pryce spent a week learning about labour rights, privatisation and the might of Coca Cola. Here we present Gruff's diary.
Day 1: 3pm.
I’m sitting at the back of a CACTUS (an NGO representing Colombian flower cutters) meeting in a down town Bogota hotel suite. I’m listening to the testimony of a flower cutting supervisor who’s just quit her post at one of the enormous polythene covered greenhouses on the outskirts of the city - you can see a belt of them from the air when you are flying in to the city. She’s sick of supervising fragile women working 23 hour shifts, tired of hiding faint colleagues in the undergrowth so they can have a 10 minute power nap while nobody’s looking.
CACTUS is representing people at the prickly arse end of globalisation, the one covered up by the shiny pants of the corporations. I, on the other hand, can waltz into the fully exposed face of my local enormostore, pick up a bunch of great looking flowers and marvel at their fine aroma thousands of miles away from the polythene sweat boxes, arse comfortable on shiny sofa.
Day 1: later
Last night me and the bassist Guto Pryce flew in from Mexico City following a great if vacuous six week tour of North America. We hadn’t slept for 36 hours. We were taken by the charity War on Want to the heavily armed Colombian Congress to meet Cali-based Congressman Alexander Lopez.
Last night he and his fellow Democratic Pole left wing minority coalition managed to coax Congress to reject a bill by President Uribe to privatise Colombian rivers. It was late evening and the majority of the right wing members had gone home or were canvassing forthcoming elections in distant regions. Whilst Lopez secured his victory, we were in his office being briefed on Colombia’s political situation by his assistant. This was truly a baptism of fire.
Back at the CACTUS meeting, the mostly female delegates wait their turn to testify on more nightmarish working conditions and I’m pondering the day so far.
This morning we visited the very un-feminine Oil Workers Union (USO) and the food and drink workers union Sinantrainal. Security was tight at USO HQ. Portraits of Chavez and Castro adorned the walls.
Over a shot of sweetened Colombian coffee in a plastic cup delivered by a maid, union leaders joked about living under constant death threats, their errant home lives and how they must sleep in a different safe house every night to avoid assassination by right wing paramilitaries.
However, pragmatism not revolutionary rhetoric was their tone: they seemed happy to co-operate with multinational companies and welcomed the much needed work, but longed to be afforded the same rights to form unions as workers in developed countries, and make companies assume moral responsibility over the atrocities of right wing paramilitary militias on their pay-roll.
I’m sitting at the back of a CACTUS (an NGO representing Colombian flower cutters) meeting in a down town Bogota hotel suite. I’m listening to the testimony of a flower cutting supervisor who’s just quit her post at one of the enormous polythene covered greenhouses on the outskirts of the city - you can see a belt of them from the air when you are flying in to the city. She’s sick of supervising fragile women working 23 hour shifts, tired of hiding faint colleagues in the undergrowth so they can have a 10 minute power nap while nobody’s looking.
CACTUS is representing people at the prickly arse end of globalisation, the one covered up by the shiny pants of the corporations. I, on the other hand, can waltz into the fully exposed face of my local enormostore, pick up a bunch of great looking flowers and marvel at their fine aroma thousands of miles away from the polythene sweat boxes, arse comfortable on shiny sofa.
Day 1: later
Last night me and the bassist Guto Pryce flew in from Mexico City following a great if vacuous six week tour of North America. We hadn’t slept for 36 hours. We were taken by the charity War on Want to the heavily armed Colombian Congress to meet Cali-based Congressman Alexander Lopez.
Last night he and his fellow Democratic Pole left wing minority coalition managed to coax Congress to reject a bill by President Uribe to privatise Colombian rivers. It was late evening and the majority of the right wing members had gone home or were canvassing forthcoming elections in distant regions. Whilst Lopez secured his victory, we were in his office being briefed on Colombia’s political situation by his assistant. This was truly a baptism of fire.
Back at the CACTUS meeting, the mostly female delegates wait their turn to testify on more nightmarish working conditions and I’m pondering the day so far.
This morning we visited the very un-feminine Oil Workers Union (USO) and the food and drink workers union Sinantrainal. Security was tight at USO HQ. Portraits of Chavez and Castro adorned the walls.
Over a shot of sweetened Colombian coffee in a plastic cup delivered by a maid, union leaders joked about living under constant death threats, their errant home lives and how they must sleep in a different safe house every night to avoid assassination by right wing paramilitaries.
However, pragmatism not revolutionary rhetoric was their tone: they seemed happy to co-operate with multinational companies and welcomed the much needed work, but longed to be afforded the same rights to form unions as workers in developed countries, and make companies assume moral responsibility over the atrocities of right wing paramilitary militias on their pay-roll.
They were also ashamed of the way the Colombian Government were selling off Colombia’s natural assets to the highest bidder.
Whilst the Oil workers could laugh off their obvious troubles nothing could prepare us for our late morning meeting at the more run down run down Sinaltrinal office down the street.
The real thing
A downbeat meeting of Coca Cola workers was taking place downstairs. We were taken to an upstairs office to wait. A memorial banner depicting the faces of three recently shot union members hung above a desk.
An unassuming man in his late twenties came in to work the word processor. He wore trainers and had a similar scruffy haircut to me and Guto, and seemed to fit in our demographic.
His reality, however, couldn’t be more different from ours: our host explained that recently he had survived an assassination attempt upon where he was shot seven times. He shrugged it off and sat down and switched on the computer under the banner of his fallen friends.
A knock on the door and Limberto Carranza, a union rep in his fifties, was ushered in. His quiet testimony moved us like no other. He had worked for Coca Cola for over 25 years, and as conditions worsened he joined the Sinaltrinal trade union.
From that day onwards he was targeted by paramilitary groups employed by the manager of the bottling plant. All his family were targeted; his 15 year old son was beaten close to death and thrown in a river, having been falsely told that his parents were already dead. He was forced to send his psychologically scarred children to live with relatives far away from home and now barely sees them. At this point Limberto bursts into tears, much to his own embarrassment. He couldn’t apologise enough afterwards in this the most macho of countries.
He was supportive of a boycott of Coca Cola products. His wishes are simple: that Coca Cola centrally in the US assume responsibility over the violent actions of their international franchises, and work actively to assume workers internationally the same rights as their US counterparts.
From now until then Coca Cola will leave a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.
An unassuming man in his late twenties came in to work the word processor. He wore trainers and had a similar scruffy haircut to me and Guto, and seemed to fit in our demographic.
His reality, however, couldn’t be more different from ours: our host explained that recently he had survived an assassination attempt upon where he was shot seven times. He shrugged it off and sat down and switched on the computer under the banner of his fallen friends.
A knock on the door and Limberto Carranza, a union rep in his fifties, was ushered in. His quiet testimony moved us like no other. He had worked for Coca Cola for over 25 years, and as conditions worsened he joined the Sinaltrinal trade union.
From that day onwards he was targeted by paramilitary groups employed by the manager of the bottling plant. All his family were targeted; his 15 year old son was beaten close to death and thrown in a river, having been falsely told that his parents were already dead. He was forced to send his psychologically scarred children to live with relatives far away from home and now barely sees them. At this point Limberto bursts into tears, much to his own embarrassment. He couldn’t apologise enough afterwards in this the most macho of countries.
He was supportive of a boycott of Coca Cola products. His wishes are simple: that Coca Cola centrally in the US assume responsibility over the violent actions of their international franchises, and work actively to assume workers internationally the same rights as their US counterparts.
From now until then Coca Cola will leave a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.
The voice of obesity
Last year the Super Furry Animals were approached and turned down a seven figure offer by an advertising agency for use of a song ‘Hello Sunshine’ in a Coca Cola commercial.
We thought long and hard. We have never been a big selling band, but when it came to the crunch, we felt we couldn’t justify endorsing a product that may have had a part in violently suppressing some of its workers.
For a moment, sitting in the Sinaltrinal office, I thought that we could have done the advert and donated them the money for their campaign for justice. Yet the thought of having to hear our song used to sell anything that exploits anyone for the worse turns my stomach. I never started out in ‘pop’ music to become the voice of global obesity.
Back at the CACTUS meeting it’s time for us to leave. The debate is becoming heated: a spokeswoman for a flower company storms out after an extreme speech in which she condemns the union, its workers and War on Want for spreading ‘nasty lies’ about her company internationally. She locks eyes with us on her way out, and flashes us a menacing look! I’d probably be scared were it not such a pathetic, comic gesture.
We thought long and hard. We have never been a big selling band, but when it came to the crunch, we felt we couldn’t justify endorsing a product that may have had a part in violently suppressing some of its workers.
For a moment, sitting in the Sinaltrinal office, I thought that we could have done the advert and donated them the money for their campaign for justice. Yet the thought of having to hear our song used to sell anything that exploits anyone for the worse turns my stomach. I never started out in ‘pop’ music to become the voice of global obesity.
Back at the CACTUS meeting it’s time for us to leave. The debate is becoming heated: a spokeswoman for a flower company storms out after an extreme speech in which she condemns the union, its workers and War on Want for spreading ‘nasty lies’ about her company internationally. She locks eyes with us on her way out, and flashes us a menacing look! I’d probably be scared were it not such a pathetic, comic gesture.
Time for a gig
Click here for the rest of the week where Gruff and Guto play a music festival in Cali, meet Berenice, a union rep on an assassination hit list and speak to some of those affected by the ongoing narco wars.
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