October 2011 - intervention of the USO president Rodolfo Vecino at the congress "Tierras, Territorios y Soberania". In the video, Rodolfo Vecino, president of the Colombian raw oil union USO, talks about the policies of the oil companies in Colombia.
Two months after this speach Vecino was dismissed and deposed from his position as union president. The USO had been successful in organizing thousands of temporary agency workers in the Colombia oil industry in the past few months.
The repression against the USO started in 1997 with the murder of Aury Sará M. who had fought against the privatization of the raffinery in Cartagena. After the workers had gone on strike for preserving the state-owned Ecepetrol, 248 of the unionized workers were dismissed. In March 2005, the assessor of USO, Rafael Cabracas, was assassinated. In the same year, unknown persons kidnapped Rodolfo Vecino's children. On November 25, 2006, Rodolfo Vecino's wife was assassinated.
The Colombian union federation CUT comments on the dismissal of Rodolfo Vecino in a statement from December 18, 2011: "This policy of extermination against the union is directed against the public critique this organization has published on the possible corruption in the companies Ecopetrol, Reficar and Propilco and on the cronyism of an elite of entrepreneurs in Cartagena. These families have pinched the state's money during the construction of a new raffinery in Cartagena that cost more than four million dollars. Today, the raffinery is lead by rentiers from Ecopetrol who have taken the posts as president, vice-president, superintendent and other high positions and keep others away from these posts.