Second Guatemalan Unionist Murdered

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Despite labor protection in the Central American Free Trade Agreement, violence against Guatemalan unionists continues to escalate. Guatemalan union leader Marco Tulio Ramirez Portela was murdered September 23 outside his home. Ramirez was the secretary of sport and culture for SITRABI, a banana workers union that is organizing workers at Del Monte.

Ramirez’s slaying is the latest in a flurry of violence against unionists in Guatemala that includes the murder in January of port workers’ union leader Pedro Zamora.

SITRABI met with the Ministry of Defense in mid-September to complain about intimidation from the Guatemalan army, which forcibly entered the union’s headquarters in July in a search for information on union members. After the army intervened against a planned SITRABI strike in 1999, the relationship between the union and army has been fractious.

At the Ministry of Defense meeting, the union was promised an internal investigation. Five days later, Ramirez was killed by masked gunmen at 5:45 a.m. while leaving for work. Noe Ramirez, his brother and the secretary general of SITRABI, says suspicious cars have been following union members.

Help bring Ramirez’s killers to justice by writing a letter to the government of President Oscar Jose Rafael Berger Perdomo calling for an independent, full-scale investigation into the murder and harassment of SITRABI leaders.

Send your letters to: Sergio Fernando Morales Alvarado, Procurador de los Derechos Humanos, 12 ave. 12-72 zona 1, Guatemala, Guatemala. For more information go to IUF, or email .