Ever Luis Marín Rolong was a regional leader of SINALTRACEBA, a brewery workers’ union. He joined Bavaria Brewery –maker of the popular Cerveza Águila– at the age of 20. He worked there uninterruptedly until one afternoon he was killed while waiting for the bus to go to work. Unknown gunmen fired six times at him.
Though no suspects have been captured or positively identified by police, his death fits a pattern of targeted killings of union activists in the region.
Marín had recently participated in all of the union actions that had resulted in a collective bargaining agreement signed a month earlier. And, one day after his death, during the union’s General Assembly, the president of SINALTRACEBA, Rafael Maldonado, received death threats over the phone from someone who stated that they had already taken the life of Ever Luis and that he would be next.
The killing took place a Saturday afternoon in front of the Church El Divino Niño, El Parque in the in the northern Colombian city of Soledad.
In a press release, the Central Única de Trabajadores, CUT, blames Marín’s death on the multiple paramilitary groups that operate in the Colombian department of Atlantic.