Colombian society raised its voice in indignation against the national soccer team manager who admitted to beating a woman in a bar. A high-ranking officer of SABMiller-Bavaria, one of the team’s sponsors, was one of the loudest voices expressing the public’s contempt. This evidences a supreme cynicism, coming as it does from a representative of a transnational corporation that is a national champion in antiunion practices and worker exploitation, two vile forms of social and economic violence.

Hernán Darío “Bolillo” Gómez, the coach of Colombia’s national soccer team, publicly confessed to having physically attacked a woman he was having drinks with last Saturday, August 6.

Bolillo admitted the seriousness of his actions, and considering what he represents for Colombian sports and the country’s image and the example he sets for the country’s youth, he turned in his resignation as coach and apologized for his shameful behavior to the woman he attacked, his mother, his wife and children and to the country in general.

I wouldn’t even be writing this article, as enough has been said by national and international press, but I don’t want to let the hypocritical statements made on behalf of his company by Fernando Jaramillo, corporate vice president o SABMiller–Bavaria, sponsor of Colombia’s national team.

Jaramillo told the media, “Someone with this kind of behavior cannot be coaching Colombia’s national team.” This means that SABMiller is capable of perceiving the wrongful behavior of those who, like Bolillo, violate moral and ethical standards, and moreover condemns such behavior.

Like so many other hypocrites, Jaramillo fails to see the beam in his own eye, a beam that is frightfully large as thousands of Colombian homes are suffering the consequences of unemployment and poverty to which they have been condemned by SABMiller’s collective layoff policy, the destruction of the collective bargaining agreement and the undermining of the trade union, SINALTRABAVARIA.

In addition, through the imposition of its “Code of Ethics,” the transnational corporation has transformed its brewery plants into ghettos of extreme exploitation, governed by associated work cooperatives.

This deplorable policy implemented by SABMiller has yielded enormous profits for the company, scandalously cutting wages and social benefits and doing away with major labor gains that were protected in the collective bargaining agreement.

Today, any mention of unionization at SABMiller–Bavaria is tantamount to losing your job and being ostracized in the workplace.

The company’s criminal labor policy and antiunion practices are utterly despicable in their violation of collective rights and constitute an abominable economic and social form of violence that must be eradicated and unanimously condemned by Colombian society.