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You wouldn’t know it from the burly 41-year-old’s sanguine demeanor, but when William Mendoza returns home next week, he will face the threat of murder, torture and kidnapping at the hands of paramilitary agents opposed to the union activism that Mendoza and other union leaders have been engaged in for the last two decades. 

Before Mendoza arrived in the Bay Area on April 9 to begin his month-long tour of the United States, he was forced to walk around his hometown with two or three bodyguards, wear a bullet-proof vest most of the time, and frequently send his wife and three children into hiding to protect them from the men who would regularly call and threaten to kill them. 

Mendoza said neither he nor any member of his family has been physically harmed, but he still has reason to worry. Last June, his four-year-old daughter was the victim of a kidnapping attempt, and Mendoza continues to receive death threats on his cell phone even while traveling abroad. 

In a recent interview at the Plumbers Union Hall in San Francisco, minutes after giving a speech to a raucously enthusiastic crowd of unionists, Mendoza explained why he continues his activism in the face of such danger. “I believe it’s my duty as a worker and as a Colombian to denounce everything that’s going on in my country,” he said, speaking through a translator. “It’s better to act even if there’s fear than to not act at all.” 

Mendoza works for Bebidas y Alimentos, a Coca Cola bottling plant in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, and is president of SINALTRAINAL, the trade union that represents workers at several beverage and food companies in the country. Mendoza said he is one of 65 trade unionists in Colombia who have received death threats from paramilitary groups. Since 1989, 15 union activists from SINALTRAINAL have been killed by paramilitaries. Eight were workers at Coca Cola bottling plants. 

The murders of Coca Cola union leaders are the subject of a lawsuit filed in July 2001 by the United Steel Workers of America. The suit alleges that Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups acted as hired hands for Coca Cola, carrying out the intimidation and murder of union leaders with the aim of stamping out the movement for improved working conditions and wages for Coca Cola employees. The suit specifically targets two Florida-based Coca Cola bottlers, Panamerican Beverages and Bebidas y Alimentos, alleging that management at those two companies allowed and even orchestrated the assassination of trade unionists. 

Coca Cola denies all of the allegations. Rodrigo Calderon, spokesman for Coca Cola’s Latin American office, which is based in Mexico, said, “These allegations are false and we think they are being used for the shock value” and as “publicity stunts.” He added that Coca Cola has “extensive normal relations with labor unions in Colombia” and has provided workers threatened with violence by paramilitaries with a host of protections, including cell phones, personal bodyguards, armored vehicles, loans for securing their houses, job transfers and extensive life insurance. “We do everything possible to keep our workers safe,” Calderon said. 

Calderon added that the Colombian courts already have looked into allegations that Coca Cola was involved in the paramilitaries’ murders of unionists and concluded — once in 1997, and then in 2001 — that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the company. He also said Coca Cola’s own internal investigation exonerated the company. 

Mendoza is visiting four states to raise awareness about the lawsuit and to boost support for an upcoming worldwide boycott of Coca Cola products. Mendoza and his supporters, including the United Steelworkers Union, plan to launch the boycott campaign on July 22 — the day that commemorates the 1986 assassination of Hector Daniel Useche Beron, the first SINALTRAINAL union leader killed by paramilitary groups in Colombia. 

Local labor rights and fair trade activists are hoping the boycott will reinvigorate their own campaign to educate students about the plight of workers at Coca Cola’s Colombian bottling plants. Specifically, they want to convince the UC Berkeley administration, which is now in the second year of a 10-year contract with the multinational beverage company, to use their leverage to pressure Coca Cola to do more to prevent the abuse of Colombian Coca Cola workers. 

Camilo Ramero, a UC Berkeley senior and a Colombian-American, said students should actively oppose the university’s silence on the issue. “This indirectly affects UC Berkeley students because our university is engaged in a contract that endorses Coca Cola’s violation of human rights,” he said. 

Ramero is a member of the Colombian Support Network (CSN), a group of student activists who are encouraging students to write letters to Coca Cola demanding they stop the human rights violations in Colombia and protect union leaders. Ramero said if efforts to hold Coca Cola accountable and ensure the safety of Mendoza and others fail, they will step up their campaign and urge the university to sever their contract with the beverage company. 

When asked to respond to students’ concerns about Coca Cola and the possibility of a campaign to get the administration to end its contract with the company, UC Berkeley media relations director Marie Felde said she couldn’t comment because she didn’t have enough information. “This is the first time I heard of it. I haven’t even heard of the groups you’re speaking of,” she said, referring to CSN and Students Organizing for Justice in the Americas. 

Mendoza said the response he’s received in the United States has been “extremely positive,” but said the country’s geographical vastness will make it difficult to amass widespread support for the boycott. Mendoza will speak to fellow unionists at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union convention on Friday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown San Francisco. He returns to his war-wracked homeland — and would-be assassins — next week. 

For some local activists, failing to convince Coca Cola to protect its workers abroad now may mean more than losing another campaign — it also may mean losing a friend. Jeremy Rayner, an Oakland resident who helped organize Mendoza’s campus visit in early April, said, “To me it’s personal now that I’ve met William. I think about whether or not they will guarantee his safety once he returns. It’s really disturbing.” 

Meeting Set for Foundry 

At Strawberry Creek 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will hold a community discussion this week on their proposal to construct a six-story, 86,500-square-foot molecular foundry in Strawberry Canyon. 

The foundry will be primarily used to study nano technology. 

Opponents have raised concerns that LBNL’s plan to build such a large facility in Strawberry Canyon will upset the environmental balance in the canyon and create an eyesore.  

The lab is holding the discussion May 8 at the Strawberry Canyon Recreation Area in the Hass Club House’s Club Room on the second floor. The Club House is on Canyon Road above the UC Memorial Stadium. 

— John Geluardi