Pubdate: Thu, 01 Nov 2001
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, The (US)
Copyright: 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Contact:  http://chronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/84
Author: MICHAEL EASTERBROOK

MURDERS AND THREATS PLAGUE COLOMBIA'S UNIVERSITIES

The image that flashes through many peoples' minds when they recall Hugo 
Iguaran is of the agronomics professor lying face down in a pool of his own 
blood.

Last year, Mr. Iguaran, 53, barely survived one assassination attempt in 
which a gunman shot him seven times.Four months later, when his wounds were 
still healing, he went to a meeting inside the home of the rector of the 
University of Cordoba, Victor Hernandez. Six men burst inside and shot him 
18 times. A photograph of his brightly lit, bloodied corpse appeared the 
next day on the front page of the local newspaper.

On that muggy evening in September 2000, Mr. Iguaran joined a growing list 
of Colombian scholars who are being murdered under mysterious circumstances 
- -- some say by a surging right-wing paramilitary army. The violence is 
choking off classroom debate, stifling scholarship, and forcing countless 
students and professors into hiding and exile. The South American nation, 
which already leads the world in kidnapping and cocaine production, has now 
become the leading killer of academics.

"As far as a systemwide problem of violence or the threat of violence 
against academics, Colombia is the worst at the moment," says Robert Quinn, 
director of the University of Chicago-based Scholars at Risk, a group that 
promotes academic freedom and defends the rights of scholars worldwide.

Since the beginning of 1999, at least 27 professors, students, and 
university administrators have been the victims of political murders in 
Colombia, according to the National Union of University Workers and Employees.

Even though two separate government investigations at 6 of the nation's 27 
public universities are incomplete, authorities blame most of the mayhem on 
a brutal war against the left being waged by the paramilitary army, known 
as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is 
officially illegal, but many here believe it is tolerated by the 
government, whose troops it fights alongside in a 37-year civil war against 
leftist guerrillas who claim to be leading a popular struggle to redress 
such problems as poverty, inequality, and government corruption. The 
conflict kills some 3,500 people every year, mostly civilians caught in the 
crossfire. A day before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, 
the U.S. State Department placed the 8,000-strong AUC on its list of 
worldwide terrorist organizations.

"The paramilitaries have taken the conflict to the universities," says 
Pedro Diaz, former director of the attorney general's human-rights 
division, who recently fled Colombia for the United States for fear of 
becoming a victim of the AUC. "They believe that since many students and 
professors are on the left, they must be sympathetic to the guerrillas and 
are therefore targets."

Academics, of course, are not the only victims of the paramilitary 
fighters. Authorities also blame them for three-quarters of the massacres 
committed in Colombia since last year and for the deaths of most of the 142 
labor activists who have been assassinated during the same period.

In one of the bloodiest attacks in recent memory, paramilitary fighters 
stormed the southwestern village of Buga on the morning of October 10 in 
search of men suspected of aiding leftist guerrillas. After pulling dozens 
of unarmed peasants from buses and their homes, the gunmen separated out 24 
victims and executed them with a bullet to the head. Authorities expect to 
find more bodies related to that massacre.

While academics on at least five campuses report that the AUC is 
terrorizing them, no university has been hit as hard as the University of 
Cordoba in the northern city of Monteria, set in a sweltering-hot 
cattle-ranching region that helped foster the paramilitary group's growth 
and remains its primary locus of support.

One of the latest people to feel the strength of the AUC's control over the 
area was Havid Barrera, then director of the department of basic sciences 
at the university and a candidate for rector in last year's violence-marred 
university elections. One morning last December, Mr. Barrera was sitting 
behind his desk inside one of the crumbling, concrete buildings on the 
37-year-old campus when an acquaintance entered and said that he and three 
other professors had been summoned to meet with paramilitary commanders. 
"They called it a 'cordial invitation,'" recalls Mr. Barrera, forcing a smile.

After a long journey by car along dirt roads, Mr. Barrera and the three 
other professors arrived at a clandestine mountain camp, where they were 
greeted by several commanders. Dozens of paramilitary fighters dressed in 
military garb and armed with assault rifles looked on. During a tense 
conversation, the commanders explained that the recently installed 
university administration had a new "vision" for the institution, and that 
the professors would soon receive calls requesting their resignations. No 
further explanation was given. Mr. Barrera refuses to speculate on why he 
was singled out.

"The only thing they told us was that they were on the side of God, their 
enemies were on the side of the devil, and that everyone in between should 
choose their sides quickly," says Mr. Barrera, speaking guardedly from his 
home in Monteria.

In August, Mr. Barrera left the university after receiving death threats 
and more direct calls for his resignation. "I hope my resignation will 
allow me to live here in peace," he says.

The incident apparently was not the first time the AUC has sown terror at 
the university. Since 1998, five professors and four students from the 
university have been killed, and authorities blame most of the deaths on 
the AUC. Authorities vaguely attribute other deaths to "power struggles 
within the university." The most grisly killing was the assassination of 
Mr. Iguaran, the agronomics professor and a candidate for rector. Mr. 
Iguaran had accused the previous administration of stealing public money.

"The University of Cordoba has fallen into the hands of the 
paramilitaries," says Jorge Rojas, director of a Bogota-based human-rights 
group known as CODHES. "There is not one dissident voice left," he says, 
because they have all been killed.

The carnage has rattled students and professors at the university. The few 
people brave enough to talk to a reporter about the violence spoke in 
nervous whispers, looking around warily to see if others were listening. 
Following Mr. Barrera's resignation in August, most of the university's 420 
professors went on strike to demand better protection from the 
administration. Many claim that administration officials are members of the 
paramilitary army.

The rector, Mr. Hernandez, says the rumors are lies, spread by enemies 
seeking control of the university and its $21-million annual budget. But 
his denials haven't lessened the fear. Professors at the university say 
that he has done a poor job of protecting those who are at risk.

"We talk with a lot of care," says Carlos Reales, a mathematics student at 
the university. "You can lose more than you can gain by speaking out."

The violence not only is silencing Colombian academics, it is forcing 
countless others into exile and crippling scholarship. One professor who 
has written about the issue is Eduardo Pizarro, now a visiting fellow at 
Princeton University.

One December morning in 1999, Mr. Pizarro, then director of the department 
of political studies and international relations at Bogota's National 
University of Colombia, was walking to work when two men riding on a 
motorcycle raced up beside him and started shooting at him.

Mr. Pizarro tried to run but was cut down when bullets hit one of his legs 
and an arm. As the gunmen sped off, Mr. Pizarro was left lying on the 
sidewalk, watching his clothes turn red with blood. Moments later he was 
helped into a taxi by strangers and rushed to a local hospital. He left for 
the United States one month later.

Speaking by phone from the United  States, Mr. Pizarro still doesn't know 
if the assassins were sent by the paramilitary AUC or its archenemy, the 
leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The 
16,000-soldier FARC, as the hemisphere's largest rebel force is known, is 
also on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist groups. Mr. Pizarro's 
popular newspaper columns were unsparingly critical of all sides in the war.

Mr. Pizarro's shooting came at the end of a violent year for Colombian 
scholars. In May, gunmen shot to death Hernan Henao, an anthropologist at 
the University of Antioquia. Later, authorities found the mutilated body of 
Dario Betancourt, director of the social-sciences department at the 
National Pedagogical University in Bogota, who had been missing for weeks. 
Then in September, a masked gunmen strolled into the economics department 
at the National University and put a bullet through the forehead of Jesus 
Bejarano, an economics professor, a former government peace envoy to the 
guerrillas, and a former ambassador to Guatemala.

Despite the dangers of Bogota, many professors and students who feel 
threatened in provincial capitals flee to Bogota to hide out. There, they 
stay in cheap hotels while struggling to survive on the pittance provided 
them through a government protection program. The number of published 
academic papers is plummeting, and at some conferences, participants have 
spoken with hoods over their faces.

Mr. Pizarro says many of the nation's most influential voices have either 
been silenced or forced out of the country. Those who have chosen to remain 
prefer to work on issues that won't attract political attention and 
threaten their safety.

"The climate for critical and creative thought is lost, and what you find 
in its place is fear and distrust," says Mr. Pizarro. "The only way to 
survive as an academic in Colombia is to abandon your newspaper columns, 
abandon any public role, and dedicate yourself to studying the 19th century."

Despite the deadly climate, many say that important research is still being 
done and that not all voices have been muzzled. Education Minister 
Francisco Lloreda says the nation's private universities, dominated by 
wealthy students who are less likely to participate in leftist 
organizations and are therefore less likely to become targets of the AUC, 
have been relatively untouched by the violence. Mr. Lloreda also insists 
that despite what has been said, most of the public universities are safe. 
"Unfortunately, at a few universities, students and professors should be 
careful, because the violent factors are so complex, and the level of 
intolerance is so high, that they could be put at risk," says Mr. Lloreda.

The government has also had to respond to accusations that state security 
forces are working with the AUC to assassinate scholars seen as 
sympathizing with the guerrillas. Many of these charges come from 
professors and students at one of the nation's finest state universities, 
the University of Atlantico in the northern city of Barranquilla.

Since January 2000, eight professors and students from the university have 
been killed, many of them gunned down near their homes after denouncing 
corruption within the administration.

Five of the victims' families are being represented in a civil suit against 
the state by Jose Torres, a lawyer and a professor of constitutional law at 
a private university in Barranquilla. Mr. Torres says that the names of at 
least three victims and one other university student who recently fled the 
country because of death threats appear on intelligence reports maintained 
by the police and the army. On these reports, the victims are described as 
suspected members of the National Liberation Army, the nation's smaller 
leftist guerrilla faction. The victims were also well-known leftist 
activists. "In my opinion, they were political crimes committed with help 
from the state," says Mr. Torres.

It wouldn't be the first instance of the collaboration between Colombia's 
U.S.-backed security forces and the paramilitary AUC. Government troops in 
three Colombian army brigades freely mix with paramilitary fighters, 
according to a report released this month by New York-based Human Rights 
Watch. The report found that soldiers and paramilitary members coordinate 
military operations and share equipment and intelligence information -- 
including the names of suspected guerrilla collaborators. The report 
accused the Colombian government of ignoring the problem and urged 
Washington to stiffen controls on the military aid it is giving Colombia 
through a $1.3-billion aid package to fight drugs and poverty.

Government authorities say they are doing their best to rein in the 
paramilitary army and protect the country's scholars. Mr. Lloreda, the 
education minister, recently suspended elections for rector at the 
University of Atlantico, where corruption charges appear to be fueling the 
violence. Both the attorney general's office and the federal human-rights 
office have started investigations into the violence at several 
universities. The government is also providing bodyguards, armored cars, 
and other protection to dozens of threatened scholars while helping others 
flee the country. But demand for protection is outstripping available 
funds. Last year the government got 2,000 requests for government 
protection, but in the first half of this year, it received 4,000 requests, 
says Interior Minister Armando Estrada.

As the nation's armed conflict rages on, violence against Colombia's 
academics shows no sign of abating. Last month, gunmen assassinated Ivan 
Garnica, a former philosophy professor and rector at the University of 
Cordoba, while he was driving home from work. The 50-year-old professor had 
left the embattled university to teach at a local high school. "He was a 
beloved man," says Andres Lopez, a friend of Mr. Garnica's and the 
principal at the high school. "We're still asking ourselves why this happened."

DARIO BETANCOURT, 1952-99

Dario Betancourt could find time to drink a beer with his students on 
Friday afternoons, but it was Catalina and Paula, his two college-aged 
daughters, who came first in his life.

"He put his daughters before everything," said Crisanto Gomez, Mr. 
Betancourt's former assistant at the National Pedagogical University, where 
he headed the social-sciences department. "He wore a beeper that was 
exclusively for them. They were so close that his daughters were the first 
to suspect that something bad had happened to him."

Mr. Betancourt studied economics and history at several universities in 
Bogota and received his doctorate in sociology from the social-sciences 
school of the College of France, in Paris. Mr. Betancourt wrote seven books 
on the history of Colombia, including an influential and sharply critical 
book on the history of Colombia's narcotics industry: Contrabandists, 
Smugglers, and Mafiosos: A Social History of the Colombian Mafia, 1965-1992 
(Third World Editors, 1994).

Friends said it was his bond with his daughters that sustained the 
professor through a long and torturous separation from his wife. But if a 
pending divorce was straining Mr. Betancourt, he rarely let it show.

"He was very young at heart, very happy, and very extroverted," said Renan 
Vega, a friend since college. "He loved music, especially salsa. He was a 
great dancer."

Mr. Betancourt, 47, disappeared one Friday in April 1999. His dismembered 
body was found two months later.

LISANDRO VARGAS, 1943-2001

Lisandro Vargas taught math and physics at the University of Atlantico, and 
was one of the best chess players at the university. He was also one of its 
most well-known chatterboxes, one who could talk on any subject, often 
expertly, for as long as his audience was willing to listen.

"He was an energetic lecturer, and he loved to talk," says Angelica, one of 
his students, who would give only her first name.

Mr. Vargas knew the university inside and out. He was a professor there for 
25 years, and was also the president of the professors' union and served 
briefly as a vice rector. Perhaps it was this familiarity with the 
institution that led him to believe some authorities were using university 
funds to enrich themselves, a suspicion he spoke about frequently and loudly.

On February 23, 2001, a gunman shot the 57-year-old Mr. Vargas five times 
as he was leaving his house. He died immediately, as his wife and 
10-year-old son looked on.

JESUS BEJARANO, 1946-99

When Jesus Bejarano squeezed into the back of a taxi, the drivers would 
almost always ask for his opinion on Colombia's prospects for peace with 
the guerrillas. Mr. Bejarano, a professor of economics at the National 
University of Colombia, had served as a presidential envoy in peace talks 
with leftist guerrillas, and people recognized him wherever he went. "They 
always asked him what he thought, and he would always tell them, no matter 
who it was," said his wife, Consuelo Paez.

Mr. Bejarano loved to discuss the government. On Saturday afternoons, he 
would meet friends at a cafe in Bogota, where they would talk for hours 
over small cups of sweetened black coffee. "The obligatory topic of 
conservation was always politics," said Ms. Paez.

Mr. Bejarano rose from an impoverished upbringing in the countryside to 
study economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He 
returned to Colombia to become an ambassador to Guatemala and El Salvador 
and one of the country's most respected intellectuals. He loved whiskey, 
expensive suits, and classical music. He could intimidate strangers with 
his presence and his resume, but not his family and friends. They called 
him Chuchu, an affectionate nickname in Colombia for people named Jesus.

A gunman assassinated him in a hallway at the National University on 
September 15, 1999. He was 53 years old.
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