paramilitaries. Weak unions pose less resistance to job cuts,lowered wages, reduced benefits, and flexible contracts that are promoted by multinationalcorporations and that are emblematic of the new, neoliberal economic order. Yet in some casesmultinationals do more than benefit from extra-judicial violence: they actually organize it. Such isthe case with the Coca-Cola Company, according to Sinaltrainal (Sindicato Nacional deTrabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos), the food and beverage workers union that representsCoca-Cola workers in Colombia. On July 21, 200l, Sinaltrainal filed suit against the Coca-ColaCompany and two of its Colombian bottlers in U.S. Federal District Court in Miami, charging thatthey collaborated with paramilitaries to murder and terrorize workers.This report explores the experience of Colombian Coca-Cola workers and their chargesagainst the company and its bottlers. It is based on interviews conducted by the author with unionleaders, Coca-Cola employees, and their family members in Bogota, Barrancabermeja,Bucaramanga, Barranquilla, and Cartegena between May 23 and June 5, 2004. It also draws onconversations with members of other labor unions and lawyers associated with the Coca-Colacase, as well as secondary documentation provided by Sinaltrainal. It concludes that Coca-Colabears more responsibility for the campaign of terror directed against its workers than the companyis willing to admit and suggests steps that the American Anthropological Association can take topressure Coca-Cola to change its business practices.Violence and Neoliberalism in ColombiaOne hundred and eighty Coca-Cola employees have suffered major human rightsviolations over the last fifteen years; nine have been murdered. Family members have alsoexperienced threats, abductions, torture, and murder and, in several cases, survivors continue tosuffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Sinaltrainal has lost nearly half of its membershipbecause of the violence and threats directed against its affiliates. Membership currently stands atabout 1,400 individuals and includes laborers in Nestle, Nabisco, and nine other companies of thefood and beverage industry. The majority of workers in the industry are not unionized and workfor low wages under a variety of temporary arrangements. Union membership nationwide hasfallen from 12 percent of the work force in the mid-1990s to 3.2 percent today, while officialunemployment has nearly doubled from 10.5 percent in 1990 to 19.7 percent today.2The economic roots of the crisis affecting Colombian workers lie in a series of neoliberalstructural adjustment reforms implemented by the government to satisfy the lendingrequirements of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These reforms harmeddomestic industry and agriculture by making them more vulnerable to competition from powerfulglobal corporations, and they wiped out tens of thousands of jobs. New labor legislation erodedworkers right to collective bargaining, opened the door to more flexible labor arrangements inviolation of International Labor Organization standards, and made unionizing a growing numberof temporary workers nearly impossible. Then, in 2003, a series of anti-terrorist statutes furthercurtailed labor and civil rights by allowing the armed forces to arrest and detain people without judicial warrant, thus legitimizing a de facto policy long practiced by the security forces againstunionists and others alleged to threaten the status quo. Between August 2002 and July 2003, thesecurity forces detained over one hundred thousand Colombians but never charged them with acrime.3Unwarranted detentions may last for months and even years