Of "Lungos" And "Senoritos" A Colombian View Of Venezuela, by Hector Mondragon, ZNet, January 1, 2003 "At the petroleum refinery of Barrancabermeja the workers who are consigned to hard manual labour are called 'lungos'. There are a lot of them and they earn very little. They are almost all temporary labourers and they live in the poor neighbourhoods. When the 'lungos' go on strike, technology guarantees that production doesn't totally stop-so even when the majority of the workers are united in protest, if they can't actually stop the plant from functioning, the engineers, supervisors, and managers can keep the refinery going under 'contingency plans'. Right now the oil-workers union of Colombia, USO (Union Sindical Obrera), is getting ready to go on strike in response to the Uribe government's offensive. That offensive is headed by Isaac Yanovich, a businessman from the private banking sector who has been named president of the state oil company. The workers, who struggled and won the creation of a national oil company (Ecopetrol), have resisted its privatization for the past 25 years. They have paid a terrible price for their resistance: 100 union leaders and activists assassinated (4 during 2002, which saw 160 Colombian unionists killed), 2 disappeared, 10 kidnapped, 31 imprisoned (6 of whom are still in prison), and 250 fired (11 of whom were fired just a few days ago). It is in such difficult conditions that the Colombian oil-workers are preparing their strike for the beginning of 2003. The victory of their movement will depend on their ability to halt production."