Montevideo, April 29, 2012
Alfonso Viafara
President of SINALCORTEROS
Municipality of Florida
Valle del Cauca
Colombia
Dear Alfonso,
Through this letter we wish to express our
deepest solidarity and most heartfelt
condolences for the vile murder of our fellow
unionist and general secretary of your Union,
DANIEL AGUIRRE PIEDRAHITA, committed on
April 27.
We had the privilege of meeting DANIEL in
the heat of the battle as SINALCORTEROS
staged a 58-day-long strike, which began in late
2008 and ended in February 2009.
There we saw him in action, supporting workers
and their families with his solidarity and
passionate and class-based message.
DANIEL
was murdered at a time when union actions are
moving forward and succeeding in the struggle
against outsourcing and Associated Work
Cooperatives and as SINTRAINAGRO amended
its bylaws to include sugar laborers members of
your Union.
We understand that the best way to honor
DANIEL AGUIRRE’s life and dedication to the
cause is to continue and further his struggle to
dignify rural work and promote political and
food sovereignty in Colombia.
From IUF Latin America we will contribute
to your efforts to see that this horrible
homicide is properly investigated and that the
perpetrators, both direct and indirect, are
brought to justice.
Dear Alfonso, please receive our warmest
sympathies, which we extend to DANIEL’s
family and our other fellow unionists at
SINALCORTEROS.
With solidarity,
Ron Oswald
IUF General Secretary
Norberto Latorre
President of the Latin American Executive
Committee of the IUF
Luis Alejandro Pedraza
Vice President of the Latin American Executive
Committee of the IUF
President of the Global Professional Group of
Agricultural Workers of the IUF
Guillermo Rivera Zapata
Latin American Executive Committee of the IUF
Artur Bueno de Camargo
President of the Latin American Federation of
Sugar Workers
Gerardo Iglesias
IUF Latin American Regional Secretary
cc: President of Colombia; Vice
President of Colombia; Ministry of the Interior;
Ministry of Labor; United Workers Federation
(CUT); Amnesty International; Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights; Justice and Human
Rights Movement of Porto Alegre (BRAZIL);
Global Labour Institute (GLI); SINTRAINAGRO;
National Agro-Food Union of Colombia (UNAC);
Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (CSA);
International Labour Organisation (ILO);
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC);
Comisiones Obreras - Spain (CCOO); and General
Workers’ Confederation - Spain (UGT).
