The Profits of Extermination: Big Mining in Colombia

"The Profits of Extermination" by Francisco Ramirez Cuellar discusses struggles for justice in Colombia. The book focuses on the strategic importance of Colombia's mining and energy sectors to explain how powerful interests have conspired to wreak havoc on the lives of workers and the environment. In the Introduction, Aviva Chomsky contends that intervention by the U.S. into Colombia's affairs is driven by the need to secure corporate profits by preserving social inequality. We learn how Colombia's corrupt ruling class has partnered with major transnational corporations to exploit its labor and resources largely for the benefit of the few. The Prologue by Javier Giraldo is a passionate indictment of the violence inflicted upon Colombian human rights and labor activists by the Colombian military and private paramilitaries. Mr. Giraldo paints a damning portrait of an entire nation that appears to have lost its moral compass through its wholesale servitude to the interests of capital. Mr. Cuellar's description of how native peoples have been dispossessed of their lands is reminiscent of the movie "The Rundown". Multinational corporations have been granted privileges by the Colombian state within specially-designated economic zones where civil liberties have been suspended and rule is enforced by paramilitary force. Through such arrangements, international investors and corporations such as Conquistador Mines, Exxon-Mobil and Harken Energy have been allowed to extract Colombia's wealth at criminally low tax rates. Mr. Cuellar urgently requests support from the international community to help end the violence in his country. The author notes that U.S. military aid has been mainly directed to the mining and energy economic zones, suggesting that the so-called Drug War is in actuality a front for the repression of human rights. As the President of Sintraminercol, a union representing workers in Colombia's mining industry, Mr. Cuellar provides many pages of footnotes, documentation and statistics to help support his claims and lends credibility to the story.