Puerto Morazán short film

Here is a short film in two parts, about Bristol's twin town in Nicaragua. Check it HERE on the maker's site for an introduction.

19th June - Cuba and Young People - La Ruca

'Aspire' Cuba Project and Bristol Cuba Solidarity present a fundraising evening on Friday 19th June at La Ruca, 89 Gloucester Rd, Bristol BS7 8AS. A meal will be served at 7pm (cost £8), followed by an open debate at 8.30 on 'Cuba and Young People', with guest speaker Lenia Lopez from the Cuban International Friendship Institute, Havana. There will also be a rolling slideshow of a recent solidarity brigade. Aspire is a Bristol based youth project aiming to take a small group of young people from Easton/St Pauls for a life changing visit to Cuba - see www.aspire-bristol.org.uk. Please reserve your place by emailing Yvonne at ywilkin@btinternet.com or calling Cecile on 07858284069.

LIVE VIDEO FEED FROM LAF 2009!

Free TV : Ustream

4th Bristol Latin America Forum: 25th April 2009

Following the unquestioned success of the Bristol Latin American Forum in previous years we are pleased to announce that the 4th Bristol Latin American Forum 2009 will take place on Saturday 25th April, 10am – 5pm at the University of Bristol Faculty of Arts, 3-5 Woodland Road.

With keynote speakers, talks, workshops, and discussions on issues across Latin America, this event will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Further details to follow in due course.

The Legendary Afterparty!

For this year's afterparty and fundraiser we are teaming up with London based collective Movimientos and featuring bands and djs from far and wide to to finish off the day.



WHEN? - Saturday 25th April, 2009, 9pm - 2am

WHERE? - Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, Easton, Bristol, BS5 6AW

COST: Advance purchase tickets will be available at the Latin America Forum for £5. Otherwise it will be £7 on the door.


THE LINE-UP:

• SONIDO CALLEJERO - “THE UK’S FINEST URBAN LATIN CREW”

MC Magico (Colombia), MC Floiran (Cuba) and DJ Snatch (Argentina) fuse live percussion with concious latin hip-hop drawing inspiration from old-skool salsa to Latin Jazz, Salsa, Bachata, Reggaeton, Bashment to create a new Latin sound that will smash up the dancefloor.

• KOGUIWA - “CUMBIA SHAKE, AFRO-COLOMBIAN GROOVE”

Cumbia rhythms, soaring Afro-Colombian melodies, drums and dances. Koguiwa is a group of inspiring young musicians who bring a fresh twist to the rhythms, dances and melodies from the Caribbean coast of Colombia. With the sounds of Tambores, voices, flutes and guitars that have been passed down through the generations, in keeping with the roots of the music, a mixture of African, Indigenous Indian and European influences. Their vibrant on stage performance includes a special dances is guaranteed to get people dancing and singing along.

• COMPADRES - "EXPLOSION OF BRAZILIAN RHYTHMS SALSA, HIP-HOP AND FUNK"

Compadres are a Bristol based 7 piece Latin-Funk band that bring together an eclectic mix of rhythms and styles through salsa, rumba, Brazilian beats, reggae, funk, jazz, flamenco and hip hop to created an explosive live experience. The artists come from Bristol, London, Spain, Uruguay, Colombia and have atravelled widely and played in diverse bands in of their own inimitable style.

• MOVIMIENTOS DJS

Movimientos have revitalised the UK Latin scene, they host regular jam-packed nights at London’s Notting Hill Arts Club & The Salmon and Compass in London, have made their mark at several UK festivals and recently hosted a Manu Chao & Radio Bemba show for a secret benefit gig in Brixton that turned into one of the most talked about underground shows of 2008.

Movimientos DJs Cal Jader & Clem George represent with the sounds of the global Latin alternative. From folkloric to electronic they mix up Revolutionary Salsa, Clandestine Cumbia, Cuban Hip Hop, Dub-Reggae, Reggaeton & Merengue with Samba, Funk Carioca, Latin House, Spanish Mestizo flavours & Tropical Rave. This is Música Latina Clandestina!!!

Cinema Klandestino bring Movimiento Cinemachete to the Cube. Thursday 19th March. 7pm.

Cinema Klandestino and Cinemachete @ the Cube

Thursday March 19th. 7pm

Cinema Klandestino presents a night of screenings and performance in collaboration with Movimiento Cinemachete.

Cinemachete is a radical, international filmmaking movement, born in 2007 in the underground cafes, bars and art cinemas of Bogota, Colombia. Influenced by the revolutionary 'Third Cinema' movement that exploded all over Latin America in the 1960s, they are working to revive and reinvent political filmmaking for the 21st century.



Order of Events:

1. Cinemachete. Presentation of movement and the night's events. (5mins)

2. Trailer: Bathed by the Tiger (Banados por el Tigre) (10mins)

A chance to see a preview of this film that follows the lives of a family in Colombia who were displaced by paramilitaries 10 years ago. It shows the incredible strength, dignity and intelligence of one illiterate peasant and his family as they fight escape the city slums and build a new community in a land still haunted by violence.

3. Oury Jalloh (20mins)

Winner of the UNESCO/Amnesty International "German Human Rights Film Prize" this film is a powerful reflection on the life of an immigrant from Sierra Leone who was burnt alive in a German police cell in 2003. The film was written and acted by his friends.

4. Enoch's Voyage (15mins)

A performance in displacement (Dance, Sound and Visuals)

5. Cuatro Movimientos Por el Cuerpo Humano (Four Movements for the Human Body) (50mins)

Banned in Colombia, this fast paced film fuses documentary with music video aesthetics as it tells the experiences of four dancers from the world renowned 'Colegio del Cuerpo' dance company who use the art of movement to escape the violence of everyday life.

6. Retreat to Bar!

Performance and Films starts at 8pm, doors at 7pm.
Followed by music and discussion.

Door: 6/5 (bring da badge)

Directions to the Cube:
http://microplex.cubecinema.com/cubewebsite/directions.html


http://www.cinemaklandestino.org
http://www.cinemachete.net/
http://bristollaf.blogspot.com/

International Women's Day

Bristol Link with Nicaragua and Bristol Action for Southern Africa present a celebration of

International Women´s Day '09
Sunday 8th March

Colston Hall Bar, Colston Hall, Colston St., Bristol BS1

12pm - 1pm lunch - Hot food served and included in ticket price
12.45pm - 4pm - speakers direct from Zimbabwe and Nicaragua plus films and live music

Advance tickets 6 pounds (5 concessions and BLINC and BACTSA members)
Women and men welcome

Los compañeros by Marco Antonio Flores

Aflame Books and the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol

Cordially invite you to celebrate the launch of Comrades a masterful translation by Leona Nickless of the classic Guatemalan novel Los compañeros by Marco Antonio Flores on Wednesday 18 March at 5.30pm Room G79, School of Modern Languages, 17 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TE

Refreshments will be served. Comrades will be available at a discounted price.

Gavin O'Toole
www.aflamebooks.com

From Bristol to Bogota

Knowlson Trust Award Travel Report- August 2008
Ben Pearson

From Bristol to Bogota

Thanks to a £200 grant from the Knowlson Trust I was able to make up the money to buy a ticket to Colombia this August. Further donations from Colombia Solidarity Campaign enabled me to stay for a month, and carry out voluntary work all across the country. This was grass roots, solidarity work – the kind I see as the most effective way for people from West/North/Developed World to invest their money and time into helping those affected by our nations’ imperialism and exploitation of other peoples’ land.

The route of NGOs, governmental aid organisations and the like, appears to me to be hindered by bureaucracy and political manoeuvring. These restrictions ultimately serve to limit a person’s ability to collaborate, participate and help; it also could potentially harm the situation of communities and individuals through this external/foreign influence.

In this sense the work I carried out was unimpeded by these potential pitfalls. Grass roots solidarity work in the context of the situation in Colombia means working with communities (afro-Colombian, indigenous, campesino, workers, students etc.) in a horizontally organised, participatory capacity. This means that you do not arrive as a Westerner imbued with superior knowledge ‘coming to save the day’, but rather as an equal. You are a participant in social struggle, whose voice is heard, yet is there primarily to listen, learn and assist using any skills s/he might have that will be useful to the community.

In this way my abilities as a documentary filmmaker and photographer, my fluency in both Spanish and French, and my experience of operating within horizontally organised structures where utilised by various communities and organisations to witness, document and communicate internationally their situations and ideas.

Human Rights Abuse and State Repression in Colombia

The president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, has been in power since 2001. With him has come the reinforcement and enhancement of EU and US backed neo-liberal reforms to the country’s social and economic structure. As seen across many Latin American countries since the 1970s, the imperialist influence of Northern nations on their social and economic policies – ensuring deregulation and privatisation of public land, resources, utilities and companies – has brought with it military repression, the exploitation of both humans and nature, and massive human rights abuses.

Colombia is probably the best example of this situation in the present-day. The use of paramilitary and military forces to repress and control populations and communities, linked with the criminalisation of dissent or opposition, has ensured that Colombians now live under a quasi-dictatorship, or democradura (democratic dictatorship). These tactics lay the country open to the entrance of multinational companies that – with law reforms, deregulation, and corruption – have an easy time exploiting cheap labour, extracting rich natural resources, and securitising territory for profit.

It is with this in mind that I travelled around the country living with and attempting to understand communities affected by the presence of EU and US multinational companies. These ranged from British Petroleum that, at the moment, are dynamiting indigenous territory in Casanare in order to explore for more oil; SABMiller a beer conglomerate who, at present, are attempting to secure and privatise water resources; Anglo-American and BHPbillinton who own the largest open face coal mine in South America: El Cerrejon – a mine that has displaced both indigenous and afro-Colombian communities, while other indigenous communities remain subsisting on the bare minimum, surrounded by privatised land that once were their hunting and fishing grounds.

The links between multinational activity and paramilitary and military abuses is very high, and is basically formulaic: A multinational arrives, with the aid of economic and legal reforms from the Colombian state; any resistance to their burgeoning influence in the area is met with death threats, co-option and pay offs; all this leads to assassination, displacement, the destruction of communities, and exploitation of workforces.

Something has to be done and the resistance has been working hard for many years. That is why, as part of a European network, I worked for a month taking testimonies, translating into and out of Spanish and English, and communicating my findings with the international community. I continue here in Bristol doing the same. A pertinent example of this fight would be of a product that is synonymous with aggressive global capitalism and whose label can probably be seen at this moment by anyone reading this text. Coca Cola.


Coca Cola’s Crimes in Colombia

The Coca Cola Company’s products include: all manner of Coca Cola drinks, Fanta, Schweppes, Sprite and Oasis among thousands of other beverages. The conditions of Coca Cola workers in Colombia remain extremely precarious. Around 480 Coca Cola workers are unionised, with 300 belonging to SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian food and beverages union. For 5 years the union has been conversing with the Coca Cola Company, about the wealth of disappearances, tortures, threats and assassinations of their members at the hands of paramilitaries. The union will not be silenced nor forget their dead comrades, neither will they allow the misdeeds of the Coca Cola Company to be covered up by bribes.

I had the great honour of meeting Javier Correa, a Coca Cola worker at the Bucaramanga bottling plant, and president of SINALTRAINAL. Working with these very brave men and women was a tremendous inspiration as they confirmed the continuation of the boycott of Coca Cola products, a difficult decision to make in the face of death threats and worsening labour conditions implemented by the company. Javier called for greater unity between Colombian social movements against multinational companies, and appealed for continued international solidarity with the resistance. This is where grass roots solidarity workers step in, returning to the UK with first hand experience of the social struggle, armed with information and up-to-date news ready to campaign and create awareness of the nefarious, corrupt actions of Western multinationals.

80% of Coca Cola workers are sub-contracted and therefore labour legislation does not apply to them, making it impossible to become part of a trade union and thus fight for their rights. SINALTRAINAL have attempted to organise sub-contracted workers, but this has resulted in the lay off of “conspiring” sub-contracted workers.

The Coca Cola Company, as a result of international awareness of the deaths and threats to its trade unionists in Colombia, have spent $4 billion attempting to clean up its international image, contracting PR and CSR gurus such as Ed Potter, Director of Global Labour Relations. This has not helped, for the persecution of trade unionists and their families continues. Living under hazardous conditions, speaking out against the politics of the Colombian government and the multinationals – within the discourse of the ‘war on terror’ to which the regime of Uribe has aligned itself, with its war policy of ‘Democratic Security’ – ensures that trade unionists are branded as terrorists. “The stigmatisation of trade unionists has grown deeper”, explains Javier, “28 have been killed so far in 2008”.

SINALTRAINAL want to show that the eyes of the international community, not just human rights organisations, are on the Coca Cola Company. Social movements, international groups, and governments need to pressurise the company to change its practices. “The fight has to be more global than ever before.”


The Resistance Continues

The resistance goes on, with the continued necessity for international solidarity. Under Uribe’s regime of terror these are vulnerable times for the workers and trade unionists of the Coca Cola Company. Students and workers, social and indigenous movements need to unite to fight against this company and the multitude of multinationals that are displacing and murdering Colombians for the extraction of natural resources, the exploitation of workers and the securitisation of territory. The wall of impunity that surrounds multinational and governmental actions must be broken down and so too the invisibilisation, by national and international mainstream media, of SINALTRAINAL’s work and the plight of Coca Cola workers.

My voluntary work here in Bristol has been helped immeasurably by my trip to Colombia. Having seen with my own eyes the effect that Western companies have there, means that I can speak with greater authority whilst relating the situations of the communities with which I have lived and worked. This could not have happened without the generous sponsorship of both the Colombia Solidarity campaign and the Knowlson Trust. Grass roots solidarity work relies on funding such as this to survive, and long may it continue. I hope my efforts will contribute towards social change that encompasses a just and sustainable peace in Colombia.

Request for Moral and Financial Support in Strike at the Drummond Coal Mine, Colombia

Request for Moral and Financial Support in Strike at the Drummond Coal Mine, Colombia

Please forward.

Operations at the Drummond open cast coal mine have stopped after the catering staff blocked the entrances this morning to the kitchens and laundries where they work. No food is being served or prepared and so the miners have stopped production.

The 400 workers are on strike demanding:

• Dignified working conditions
• An increase in the pittance salary they currently receive to reflect the damage to their bodies from daily contamination
• Direct contracts with Caves who has just renewed the catering contract with Drummond for three years instead of temporary precarious employment.

The workers currently have permanent contracts with Servicooptel, a supposed workers’ cooperative, common in Colombia as a tactic used by Companies to avoid meeting the necessary legal requirement for their employees. Caves plans to end the contract with Servicooptel on the 31st January, which would result in unemployment for all and an end to the union branch. This was the catalyst to go on strike but the workers had already had enough after months of being treated as slaves, humilliated and harassed. Catering for the Coal Industry documents their labour conditions.

Drummond exported 25 million tonnes of coal in 2007 to the US and Europe with profits of $1.15 billion. Yet, the kitchen staff are paid just £5 a day; half of which pays for accomodation, half on food and transport for their families. There are little personal savings, little money in the union branch (8 months old). Every day of the strike the 400 employees need to eat. Food for their children is also needed as the last paycheck won’t last indefinately.

"What we will need is economic and moral support during the strike. Economic so we can eat and moral to counter the psychological games that the company will pay"

Each day the strike lasts £500 is needed for food. The Drummond miners, and the Drummond union Sintraminetica are financially contributing as well as supporting the strike with protests at the entrance to the mine. Sinaltrainal nationally is contributing but more support is needed.

Please send letters of support in Spanish or English to espaciobristol@redcolombia.org

Please make financial contributions to:

Espacio Bristol Colombia
Sort Code 08-60-01
Account Number 20081876
Unity Trust Bank Plc, 9 Brindleyplace
4 Oozells Square, Birminhgam, B1 2HB,
The reference for the transfer is Espacio Bristol Colombia 51797

Please send an email to espaciobristol@redcolombia.org so we can pass the money on as quick as possible