Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is visiting Columbia this week in order to work on eliminating trade barriers between Bogota and Washington over fierce Democratic opposition. The top three Democrats running for president, as well as much of the Democratic Congress, opposes a free trade deal with Columbia, believing that President Alvaro Uribe hasn't done enough to curb violence against trade unionists. According to the Associated Press, “more than 700 union members have been killed in Colombia since 2001, according to the government, at a rate that regularly exceeds the total number murdered annually in the rest of the world combined.” The Bush administration believes that a free trade deal with Columbia will solidify the Democratic progress that the nation has made in recent years. Thomas Shannon, a U.S. diplomat in Latin America, told the AP that “We see the free trade agreement not just as a trade policy with Colombia. We see it as part of a broader social and economic development policy and as necessary for consolidating the democratic gains that Colombia has made.”
