The men might have foreseen their deaths, their bodies pale and drained, their blood mixing with the dirt. In the end, they were beaten nearly lifeless in front of their friends, finished off by a bullet and dumped on a muddy roadside, or prodded toward death with a barrel at their backs, tortured and left as carrion. Gustavo Soler, Victor Orcasita and Valmore Locarno were only coal miners and union leaders. But it is Colombia, after all, where union leaders can often expect a violent extinction, even when working for a U.S. company like Drummond Co., a privately held coal mining firm based in Birmingham.

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