Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia linked to paramilitary death squads that murdered union leaders

On December 5, 1996, union leader Isidro Gil was shot dead outside a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia. Witnesses reported that armed paramilitaries had delivered a chilling message to union activists beforehand: quit the union or die. This wasn't an isolated incident—it was part of a documented pattern of violence that would eventually force a reckoning with one of the world's most recognizable corporations.

For decades, Coca-Cola Company officials denied any connection to the violence. The company maintained that bottling operations in Colombia were independent franchises beyond their direct control, and that they bore no responsibility for what paramilitaries did in the surrounding region. When union organizers from Sinaltrainal—Colombia's largest beverage industry union—began reporting systematic intimidation and murders of their members at Coca-Cola plants, the company's response was consistent: these were local security matters, not corporate accountability issues.

But court documents and investigative reporting told a different story. Between 1986 and the late 1990s, over 3,800 trade unionists were assassinated across Colombia, with workers at Coca-Cola bottling plants specifically targeted by right-wing paramilitary squads belonging to the AUC, or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. The pattern was unmistakable: paramilitaries would appear at plant gates, threaten union organizers, and when unionists refused to abandon their efforts, people died.

The violence against Sinaltrainal members wasn't random gang activity—it was coordinated intimidation designed to break union organizing at Coca-Cola facilities. The paramilitaries' message was explicit and terrifying: comply with management's wishes or face execution. Union leaders like Isidro Gil became martyrs to this campaign, murdered in broad daylight at locations where security should have been tightest.

In response to mounting evidence, a $500 million lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a legal provision that allows foreign nationals to sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law. The case—Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Co.—represented an attempt to hold the company accountable through American courts when Colombian institutions proved unable or unwilling to protect workers. The lawsuit documented not just the murders, but the company's alleged knowledge of and complicity in creating conditions that enabled the violence.