By Stephen Collins '74

Oak Fellow Hector Mondragon

Hector Hernan Mondragon Baez says he always ignored death threats and "kept working." His commitment to the rights of indigenous tribes, peasants, the urban poor and laborers in his native Colombia was stronger than any fear for his own safety, even after he was tied to a tree and tortured for nine days in 1977. When his children were threatened, though, he finally took heed and left Colombia for Spain in 1998. But only briefly.

Mondragon, who is on campus as the 2000 fellow of Colby's Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights, had returned to his country last FALL to carry on his work. Soon friends showed him hit lists published in Bogotá–20 names including his own. Another list surfaced this April and he was one of 60 people targeted by what he calls "the regime," a term he uses to describe corrupt government officials and the ruling landed class which he says are interested in protecting and expanding its own power and wealth.

"In Colombia in the last days, my work is not easy," Mondragon said while decompressing in a Lovejoy office a week after arriving in Maine. "I can't live in one place–change lodgings day to day. I can't drive myself. If they see me, I'd be murdered." As a result he had asked that any announcement of his selection as the 2000 Oak Human Rights Fellow be delayed until he was safely out of the country.

Taking a break from his work at Colby–preparations for a one-credit hour course he's teaching titled "Human Rights in Global Perspective"–his hands shook as he explained his situation. "When you called I am nervous on the telephone, but I realize I can talk here," he said.

The son of a chemistry professor and a pediatrician, Mondragon was 12 years old when his church group visited the shantytown neighborhoods in his hometown of Bogotá and saw what he calls the "precarious lodgings." The experience set his compass, which has not been deflected by discouragement, threats or even physical abuse. "In these houses I decided this was my life," he said.

Trained as an economist, he has worked for more than 30 years to secure the environmental, economic and cultural survival of dispossessed Colombians. "Colombia is the most dangerous place on earth–for the peasants. Last year there were 420 massacres," he said, defining a massacre as at least six people killed, sometimes many more. "Indians, peasants, workers, children. The rural sector is the worst."

At issue are land and resources. Large landowners, oil and mineral companies and hydroelectric developers want the land. In the last 15 years, he says, 1.5 million peasants have been displaced. "Twelve million acres are lost to land speculators, the political class, party leaders and corrupt government officials," he said. "I call this bureaucratic capitalism . . . class domination."

Mondragon worked as an advisor to the Indian National Organization of Colombia and the Peasant National Council. He also advised the World Bank, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the International Labor Organization on their projects in Colombia and tried to protect indigenous people and their territories and peasants and their lands. In 1991 he spent six months living with the Nukak, a recently contacted indigenous group, and helped them to secure one of the largest areas of protected reserve lands in Colombia. He recently worked with the Embera Katío tribe to resist a hydroelectric development project that threatens the tribe's ancestral lands.

"I have supporters within the regime, but the regime runs an efficient system of elimination," Mondragon said, citing the murders of numerous opposition leaders, including five presidential candidates in the last 15 years. "In 1998 they threatened my son and daughter because I supported the Embera Katíos against the Urra hydroelectric project." His wife and son, Daniel, came to Maine with him, and Daniel enrolled as a student at Colby this fall.

The Oak fellowship was created to provide a semester's respite to front-line human rights practitioners who come to Colby for rest, reflection, study and writing. Mondragon is the third Oak Human Rights Fellow. He follows Zafaryab Ahmed, a Pakistani crusader against child labor, and Didier Kamundu Batundi, a peace and human rights activist from the Republic of Congo.