The most recent Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Federation (WWF)states that the world is headed towards a global ecological crunch which is already significantly more damaging than the current financial crisis tha world leaders are working at alleviating in such a coordinated and vigorous manner.
The report, produced together with The Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, states that while reckless spending is causing a world recession, reckless consumption is causing the world's resources to be depleting at an alarming rate. In the last 35, the earth's wildlife population has decreased by one third. The report warns that if human consumption patterns maintain the same demaands on the planet as they do currently, by 2030 we will need 2 planets to maintain ouflifestyles...That is within our lifetime. While the majority of consumption comes from European and North American countries, the report explains that this is a global crisis and that more than 2/3s of the world's population lives in nations that are ecological debtors.
The report also shares the good news: that this crisis is not irreversible, and that while it is a global issue, we all have opportunities to become involved.
For more information from the WWF, click here for ideas on what you can do.
miércoles 29 de octubre de 2008
martes 7 de octubre de 2008
MCC Colombia Prayer Request
Friends,
The last few weeks have seen close friends and loved ones persecuted and threatened, and we need your prayers.
Colombia is living a particularly tense moment in history currently and although main stream media is telling the story of a Colombia with an improved security situation, a strong economy and in a time of post-conflict, we are seeing the opposite.
On August 29, Mennonite brother Hector Mondragon was falsely accused in the national newspaper of having ties with guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), just days before a planned speakers tour the United States around the Free Trade agreement being negotiated between the United States and Colombia. He is now in hiding and in fear for his life, as well as the safety of his family.
On September 17, close personal friend of the MCC Colombia team, Nelson Berrío, along with a list of other union leaders, members of the Permanent Assembly for Civil Society, and members of a political opposition party, the Polo Democrático, received death threats from a newly established paramilitary splinter group. These threats have created deep concern within the MCC team and we denounce these aggressions against our friends and colleagues.
The Colombian government, justice system and military intelligence system play a significant role in either generating threats against civil society leaders or in protecting those who suffer threats. For that reason, the Colombia government must be held responsible for the safety of these leaders.
Although the government has stated that the paramilitary apparatus has been dismantled and that security in the country is improving, these cases, like many other recent cases, highlight a different reality. We are concerned that the government is not responding adequately to the increasing insecurity faced by many peace movement and civil society leaders, and we ask for your prayers and your attention in the next months as action may need to be taken.
Pray for:
- the spirit of wise discernment in deciphering the right steps to take in response;
- light and truth to shine forth amidst confusion and anger;
- the perpetrators of these threats, that they may repent and turn from violent ways;
- strength and solidarity for these friends from the broad church community;
- the safety and well-being of those under threat, as well as that of their families
We remember the words of the psalmist, "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to the God of gods, for His steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His steadfast love endures forever" Psalm 136:1-3.
We believe that the Lord is good and that His steadfast love endures forever, and we trust in His strength. We believe that His love is made manifest through Christian solidarity and the community of believers' unconditional support for each other.
We appreciate your prayers.
The last few weeks have seen close friends and loved ones persecuted and threatened, and we need your prayers.
Colombia is living a particularly tense moment in history currently and although main stream media is telling the story of a Colombia with an improved security situation, a strong economy and in a time of post-conflict, we are seeing the opposite.
On August 29, Mennonite brother Hector Mondragon was falsely accused in the national newspaper of having ties with guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), just days before a planned speakers tour the United States around the Free Trade agreement being negotiated between the United States and Colombia. He is now in hiding and in fear for his life, as well as the safety of his family.
On September 17, close personal friend of the MCC Colombia team, Nelson Berrío, along with a list of other union leaders, members of the Permanent Assembly for Civil Society, and members of a political opposition party, the Polo Democrático, received death threats from a newly established paramilitary splinter group. These threats have created deep concern within the MCC team and we denounce these aggressions against our friends and colleagues.
The Colombian government, justice system and military intelligence system play a significant role in either generating threats against civil society leaders or in protecting those who suffer threats. For that reason, the Colombia government must be held responsible for the safety of these leaders.
Although the government has stated that the paramilitary apparatus has been dismantled and that security in the country is improving, these cases, like many other recent cases, highlight a different reality. We are concerned that the government is not responding adequately to the increasing insecurity faced by many peace movement and civil society leaders, and we ask for your prayers and your attention in the next months as action may need to be taken.
Pray for:
- the spirit of wise discernment in deciphering the right steps to take in response;
- light and truth to shine forth amidst confusion and anger;
- the perpetrators of these threats, that they may repent and turn from violent ways;
- strength and solidarity for these friends from the broad church community;
- the safety and well-being of those under threat, as well as that of their families
We remember the words of the psalmist, "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to the God of gods, for His steadfast love endures forever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His steadfast love endures forever" Psalm 136:1-3.
We believe that the Lord is good and that His steadfast love endures forever, and we trust in His strength. We believe that His love is made manifest through Christian solidarity and the community of believers' unconditional support for each other.
We appreciate your prayers.
jueves 2 de octubre de 2008
Hector Mondragon: Transcript of video conference given on FTA Speakers Tour
Trade Agreements: Defending the Rights of Corporations at the Cost of the Rights of the People
Héctor Mondragón
September 2008
Greetings to all and my appreciation to those who are present here, to hear my reflections despite my inability to be there with you in person.
I’ve had to turn to the help of technological experts to be able to share with you as had been planned.
You know that I’ve come to speak about the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the United States and Colombia. This is an important theme currently in our countries; it’s a topic of much debate.
You know that the unions of the United States, in particular the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations, have said to Mr. Obama, democratic candidate, that a central condition for their support of his candidacy will be that the democratic party not support the FTA with Colombia.
The unions of the United States have this perspective because they know the terrible reality that their companions in Colombia have been living over the last 20 years; that more than 2,600 trade union leaders have been assassinated during this time. And how the labour rights of the Colombian people have been systematically violated; and that effectively, in Colombia, labour rights are no longer applied in the large majority of economic sectors because unions have been weakened through assassinations and violence.
The same reason for my inability to travel for this presentation is related to this terrible reality that Colombia is living; the historic reality of voices of resistance, voices in favour of the rights of the people, being silenced.
We have many years of history of violence in our country, sometimes turning to assassinations and massacres, like in the union movement. Other times it takes the form of judicial and state repression in an attempt to criminalize social and political protest and the defense of rights of the people.
In my life I have been subject to all of these strategies of the powers that govern Colombia. I’ve been subject to torture that still scars my body and mind. I’ve needed to deal with years of death threats, needing to go into hiding time and again, not because of the violation of any laws or state norms, but because of an illegal death apparatus that threatens and kills in Colombia, as has been the case of the union leaders, and that have obliged me, for the most part of my life, to be aware of the moment when they might come and kill me, these assassins, sustained by the governing powers in Colombia.
And in this moment I’m needing to face this situation in which they are trying to judicially and politically attack me and I have stayed in Colombia precisely because I don’t want to flee from this strategy to criminalize my activities; this strategy of defamation and slander that is being brought against me. I have decided to confront it with the truth.
It is for these reasons that I am not physically there with you.
But I am here to tell you what I had to share with you on this tour.
And thank you to Rebecca who is accompanying me and who now is with you – I hope you will receive this message, which is mine but is also that of the people with whom I work – indigenous peoples, peasant organizations, the labour movement – people whom I have been accompanying for many years and who’s weariness – and dreams – I have witnessed. As well as the misfortune of living in a country subject to the terror of violence of a never-ending armed conflict and that is used systematically to strip the people of their rights.
In what framework – not just in Colombia, but internationally – are these free trade agreements being negotiated? I think that in this moment in the world we are at a cross-roads because, on the one hand, we’ve come – since the French Revolution – in the conquest of human rights. As a result of the strength of the struggle and the mobilization of peoples, these rights – since the moment of the declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution – have been winning their place in the world. After the defeat of Nazism after the Second World War, the United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and after that the declaration of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This created what many refer to as second generation human rights, which are effectively, collective rights. These are an integral part of this generation of rights that humanity has been achieving.
It is within this framework that we find the rights of children, environmental rights, which are not only collective rights of human beings, but also of animals, plant-life – of all living things. The rights of indigenous peoples, which are also part of this generation of social, economic and cultural rights. There have been significant advances in this area.
The Colombian Constitution also recognizes these rights as constitutional. The international agreements and conventions on human rights are guarantees of individual as well as collective rights. The latest was the declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the General Assembly of the United Nations approved on September 13 of last year, 2007. Unfortunately with opposing votes from the United States, Canada and abstention from Colombia, which was the only country in all of Latin America that did not vote in favour of this declaration, which, although it does not have co-active force, is a guide for the rights of indigenous peoples.
This process of approval for rights, however, is being put into question by another judicial process which is trying to establish a new global constitution, including another set of norms which have as an objective to define new norms which will protect the interests of what we call investors – in other words, the interests of transnational corporations. It is within this framework that the Free Trade Agreements appear.
Initially, the 29 countries named the “most developed” in the world, wanted to arrive to a global investment agreement. But it was precisely the resistance of people from Europe, from Japan, from Canada, and the United States, that impeded the establishment of this global agreement and made the agreement fail, in 1998. These people were aware – you yourselves – of how this agreement would affect fundamental guarantees of collective and individual rights. Of how this type of agreement would favour rights of transnational corporations and investors which would be in contradiction to the construction of individual and collective rights.
However, they have tried to implement this global trade agreement by other means. Sometimes by the World Trade Organization, which also has not been able to consolidate this global framework, although it has taken steps to establish some norms that have created and perpetuated hunger. But fundamentally the Free Trade Agreements have been the path to establishing this normative framework.
What is the message that I am wanting to bring to you? That the Free Trade Agreements are not simply about trade. Trade is one of the themes that are dealt with in the FTAs. Only one.
That’s to say, in the Colombia-U.S. FTA, there are 5 chapters on trade, but 15 others dealing with 13 other themes – and these themes are precisely the rights of transnational corporations.
So, then, what do we say?
The FTA does not only jeopardize the people of Colombia, it jeopardizes both peoples, Colombians and citizens of the United States alike. Your rights are also going to be affected because the rights of the investors are placed above the rights of the citizenry.
I’m not proposing a world without investors. I’m saying that the people must be first; that human beings must be first; that communities must be first –their rights must come before the rights of investment.
What, then are these rights of the investors that are being guaranteed by the FTAs?
First are the extra-territorial provisions, in other words, the rights of the transnational corporation to not respect national domestic legislation, rather be able to refer to private international tribunals that do not judge according to domestic law, rather according to the rules and norms of international trade agreements, in other words, according to their own rules of engagement.
This is very serious.
For example, for the indigenous peoples of Colombia, this means that an entire process of construction of rights for them, that the Colombian constitution recognizes, will not be recognized under the FTA.
In fact, this is true for all Colombians and their constitutional rights, but this will be the same for you.
The second right that the transnational corporations are seeking to guarantee is what they call “judicial stability”. This serves to guarantee the rights of investors to sue governments for changing laws that might impede the transnational corporation from making as much money had the laws not been changed.
This is extremely serious. This means freezing legislation. It is an attack on democracy. Basic democratic rights of all peoples includes the freedom to change governments and modify laws to best serve the interests of the common good, which is part of the right also to elect them. If the people realize they made a mistake in voting in a certain political party they have the right to modify their vote, have a referendum, and vote for a different party. This is the essence of democracy and the FTA by establishing “judicial stability” and indemnity for virtual expropriation is proposing that in the interests of the transnational corporation the laws cannot be modified.
At first glance, this is much more serious for Colombia because many more companies from the United States will invest in Colombia than Colombian companies investing in the United States. But this is also to say that there could be Colombian companies that perfectly enjoy these same conditions, with the only intention of investing in the United States, enjoying the same invulnerability, or impunity, vis-à-vis U.S. domestic law.
The third right that the transnational corporations are seeking is the so-called “intellectual property” rights, according to their perspective. Why do I say “their perspective”?
For example, the indigenous from Mexico began to grow corn 7,000 years ago. In that time, corn was like a thick stick, heavier than other grains. The work of indigenous cultivators over thousands of years, and more recently by peasant farmers, has brought us the corn on the cob we know today, and allows us to enjoy the great diversity of corn that exists. Obviously, the transnational corporations do not recognize the immense intellectual property that exists in all this biodiversity just found in the variations in corn. If the transnational corporation obtain rights to corn, they will patent is, and at this point in Colombia, a law has already been passed – Law 1033 of 2006 – that penalizes peasant farmers for using a patented seed without permissions with 4-8 years in prison – which is coincidentally, the same prison time a paramilitary that confesses to crimes against humanity and massacres of hundreds of people under the Peace and Justice Law.
So, we have a regime of laws which favour the transnational corporation and allow them to gain control of agriculture and other branches of production. The FTA seeks to allow for the patenting of living things – not only the products patented through laboratories and scientific experiment, but the ability to patent living creatures, which is much more serious, and which was prohibited in the Andean Community. Through pressure to approve this FTA, the Andean Community approved – for uncertain reasons, and I say uncertain because it was passed by three votes from Colombia, Peru and the outgoing government of Ecuador (the current administration does not agree – Bolivia was not allowed to vote because supposedly they were behind on their debt payments, which in turn caused Venezuela to pull out of the Andean Community, jeopardizing an internal process of economic integration between neighbours, as Colombia and Venezuela are, who should be strengthening their economic and commercial relations. And it wasn’t because of the political questions being debated currently, rather because of a very concrete issue – that being, the patenting of life.
So it is then these that are the rights of the transnational corporations.
The corporations want everything to be for sale, everything to be commodified. That water be commodified. That the corporation has, by definition, a right to privatize public utilities and services like electricity and more concerning, water; water, which should be a right for all human beings, and as I have said before, of all animals and plants and of all living things.
Today it is at risk of being converted into simply a business.
These are the rights of the transnational corporations, which when put together bring us mechanisms that undermine collective and individual rights.
To see how these mechanisms actually operate through the FTAs, let us remember that Colombia has signed the FTA with the United States twice. The first time in November 2005, and the second time in June, 2007. Why were these not ratified?
Because from the United States, there was significant pressure, from the unions and from human rights organizations, not only regarding the FTA with Colombia, but also regarding other FTA being negotiated at that time with Peru and South Korea. These democratic organizations of the United States demanded at the very least, 3 major changes in the agreements:
First, with respect to limiting intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry, with the objective of establishing minimum protection of the right to health;
Secondly, to limit the rights of the transnational corporations to establish minimum protection for environmental rights and; thirdly, to obligate fulfillment of the International Labour Organization conventions by the signers of the agreement in order to protect labour rights. This was not just in the case of Colombia, but with Peru and South Korea as well.
In Colombia, they asked for something more, realizing that these provisions could not be reality only in the text of the agreement, and that union leaders would no longer be assassinated could be guaranteed by simple adherence to these 3 conditions. So these 3 conditions, or changes, were introduced so that the United States congress would approve the FTA with Peru and South Korea, but would not suffice for the agreement with Colombia because human rights organizations and unions demanded that there be an end to the assassination of union leaders for the agreement to be signed.
The changes themselves are positive. But as we have seen, these changes still fail to guarantee the respect of fundamental individual and collective which are violated by other norms included in the FTA. For a free trade agreement to be just, it would be necessary that these issues such as “judicial stability”, extraterritorial provisions and intellectual property not be included in the agreements that supposedly are trade agreements, that these agreements wouldn’t become agreements concerning the rights of transnational corporations.
And in Colombia, it is necessary that the grace situation that our country is living ends.
Because in Colombia, the systematic assassination of union leaders hasn’t been the only precedent, but rather an intense violence whose protagonists have been illegal armed groups, like the paramilitary and the guerrilla, as well as the state’s own armed forces. This violence has not begun recently, but is a violence that has been present for many years now; a violence which has a primary objective to rob the peasants, afro-Colombians, and indigenous of their land. It is a violence that expresses political intolerance to political opposition as well as towards social protest that began in the 19th century through numerous civil wars, products of this social and political intolerance, and which resulted again and again, in the dispossession of lands and the concentration of land in the hands of a few. If we think about the time between 1946 and 1958, 2 million people were displaced, 200,000 assassinated and displaced lost 350,000 farms in an undeclared war between the conservative and liberal parties. Today, over the last 20 years, over 4 million people have been displaced. This has created an extreme level of concentration of land in which some 15,000 people are owners of 67% of the land in a country with a population of 45 million. And within that group, there is a minority of 1500 people who own more than half of the land in the country.
This has been the result of the violence.
You can investigate every case to see who orchestrated the massacres, who used mechanisms of terror, to see if it was illegal armed groups – the paramilitary or guerrilla – or if it was the military. But we will always find the same result – the dispossession of the peasant, massacres and displacement.
We will also find the elimination of political opposition, the elimination of grassroots leaders, the destruction of social fabric. This is evidence that in our country, the processes that are happening in other countries in Latin America are not occurring here. In Ecuador, in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Mexico, we find a wide-spread resistance movement that is countering the measures of transnational corporations and are acting in defense of collective and individual rights of the people over and against the rights of the investors. It explains, for example, why in the last referendum in Bolivia, President Evo Morales received two thirds of the vote in his favour. These are strong social movements that know what they want to achieve and where they want to go. But in our country, things are not this way. These policies of free trade are imposed through blood and bullets, over the debilitation of social movements through the elimination of their leaders and the massacre of their peoples. This is what we have in Colombia.
This is what has caused the assassination of so many social movement leaders…how many of my friends…? And if I tell you that 5,000 of my friends have been assassinated, I may not be counting them all.
These things cause in us, in the social movements, to be constantly living with threats against our lives from legal and illegal actors.
This is the way in which this policy has been imposed, these free trade agreements, and it is why we turn to you, who have a democratic regime in your country, and why it is no surprise that this agreement has not been approved in the United States while it has been approved in Colombia, because our social and political fabric has been destroyed while you in the United States can still organize to block an agreement that violated the rights of the people. This, however, does not mean to say that in Colombia there isn’t still massive resistance. The indigenous in the department of Cauca achieved, in 2004, a large march in the city of Cali, and later they conducted community consultations in 6 communities on the free trade agreement which produced an encouraging result because 85% of the population voted, and 80% voted against the FTA. The Catholic Church and other organizations have organized similar consultations, resulting in similar outcomes, and there have been mobilizations, like in May 2006, which was harshly repressed through, among other things, helicopters begotten through Plan Colombia.
But the reality is that the existence of this war serves as a pretext for this regime to continue threatening us, repressing us, and silencing the social movements in Colombia.
For these reasons it is urgent for this terror to cease, of all the perpetrators of the violence. Of the political and economic powers behind the violence – what is demonstrating itself through the Para-politics – of the groups that have financed Paramilitaries. Of the Guerrilla that commits terrorist acts, which serve as a pretext for the regime to destroy social protest but also cause immense damage to the people. And of the state armed forces, that collaborate with the paramilitary, that repress unashamedly, and that have also been protagonists in serious violations against the population.
For us, the struggle of civil resistance, that we have been dedicated to all these years, sometimes causes us to almost lose hope. But the Colombian people have something very important, the social movement here in Colombia has something very important, which is faith.
Faith which is the experience of what we can hope for because we have known small victories through our struggles.
And with these small victories, like when the indigenous won the constitutional recognition of their rights in 1991, we see as though a ray of lightening lights the night, we see how the future will be; and we maintain our faith.
And this is why we continue the struggle.
And in this struggle we are ready and willing to give our lives.
We are in a historical moment that might be compared with what the United States went through in 1860. At that time there was an economist – an economist that today the neoliberal economists dismiss – who was very important for you, for the United States, who was Henry Charles Carey. Carey understood that the future of the United States depended on two things: that free trade not be permitted and that slavery be abolished. And he clearly understood the relation between those two things. Carey projected that if the United States allowed for free importation from England, which at that time has much more advanced technology than the United States, the effect of free importation would mean the ruin of the U.S. economy, the ruin of small U.S. business and the impossibility of the U.S. to become a prosperous country.
For these reasons, he maintained that it was necessary to protect production in the United States, so that the U.S. would prosper. For these reasons he’s viewed as a protectionist, and he is frowned upon today, but what is certain is that you triumphed, because this was also tied to another essential element, which was the abolition of slavery.
Carey said that if free markets were allowed, the United States would simply become an exporter of cotton and a net importer of industrial goods. And to become an exporter of cotton, it would have to become a country of slavery, because as you know, cotton came from the large cotton plantations where the slaves were. And the United States would have become what today we call underdeveloped or backwards – a colonial country dominated by England. And Carey had nothing against England, he only wanted his country to prosper.
A person that perhaps who are more familiar with, Abraham Lincoln, named him as his chief economic advisor and you all know that story already. These thesis prevailed, slavery was abolished, the United States protected its industry, and for these reasons, the United States is today a powerful nation.
What would we like at this moment?
We would like, like Carey wanted, that our country doesn’t become a country of slaves; a country that doesn’t continue being underdeveloped; a country where people can live with dignity. This is also our objective when we say we don’t want a free trade agreement.
We don’t want to be another United States of America. This does not interest us. Forget it.
I think the experience of being a super-power is not a good one.
But what is good is to be a prosperous country, and this the U.S. has done well.
So, now we think that if you fight to not sign these free trade agreements, in particular, the FTA with Colombia, you will be supporting our right to dignity, prosperity.
But, as I’ve said before, in doing this you are not just defending the rights of Colombians. You will be defending your own rights.
Mr. Samuel Huntington, whom you all know well, has invented the idea that the internal enemy of the United States is the Latino community and the reason, according to him, is that Latinos, because of their indigenous ancestry, believe in collective rights and for this reason are threatening to the central thesis of the free trade agreements, which is, that collective rights must be eliminated.
I call on you – and this is the central theme of the tour I was going to give and what I want to transmit to you through this medium – defend collective rights. Because they are your rights – environmental rights, rights to health, rights to shelter and housing –don’t let them take these rights, which is already happening to 2 million US citizens, and may happen to 6 million more. These collective rights – your collective rights – depend on our unity in the struggle against the free trade agreements. It is the same struggle, we have the same cause, that of our collective rights as peoples, to defend our rights as humanity, against the rights of investment. This struggle for our collective rights is the same cause. Although, there is one difference: we are giving our lives in this struggle, but be sure that we will continue and we trust that you, and us, together, will triumph.
Thank you.
Héctor Mondragón
September 2008
Greetings to all and my appreciation to those who are present here, to hear my reflections despite my inability to be there with you in person.
I’ve had to turn to the help of technological experts to be able to share with you as had been planned.
You know that I’ve come to speak about the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the United States and Colombia. This is an important theme currently in our countries; it’s a topic of much debate.
You know that the unions of the United States, in particular the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations, have said to Mr. Obama, democratic candidate, that a central condition for their support of his candidacy will be that the democratic party not support the FTA with Colombia.
The unions of the United States have this perspective because they know the terrible reality that their companions in Colombia have been living over the last 20 years; that more than 2,600 trade union leaders have been assassinated during this time. And how the labour rights of the Colombian people have been systematically violated; and that effectively, in Colombia, labour rights are no longer applied in the large majority of economic sectors because unions have been weakened through assassinations and violence.
The same reason for my inability to travel for this presentation is related to this terrible reality that Colombia is living; the historic reality of voices of resistance, voices in favour of the rights of the people, being silenced.
We have many years of history of violence in our country, sometimes turning to assassinations and massacres, like in the union movement. Other times it takes the form of judicial and state repression in an attempt to criminalize social and political protest and the defense of rights of the people.
In my life I have been subject to all of these strategies of the powers that govern Colombia. I’ve been subject to torture that still scars my body and mind. I’ve needed to deal with years of death threats, needing to go into hiding time and again, not because of the violation of any laws or state norms, but because of an illegal death apparatus that threatens and kills in Colombia, as has been the case of the union leaders, and that have obliged me, for the most part of my life, to be aware of the moment when they might come and kill me, these assassins, sustained by the governing powers in Colombia.
And in this moment I’m needing to face this situation in which they are trying to judicially and politically attack me and I have stayed in Colombia precisely because I don’t want to flee from this strategy to criminalize my activities; this strategy of defamation and slander that is being brought against me. I have decided to confront it with the truth.
It is for these reasons that I am not physically there with you.
But I am here to tell you what I had to share with you on this tour.
And thank you to Rebecca who is accompanying me and who now is with you – I hope you will receive this message, which is mine but is also that of the people with whom I work – indigenous peoples, peasant organizations, the labour movement – people whom I have been accompanying for many years and who’s weariness – and dreams – I have witnessed. As well as the misfortune of living in a country subject to the terror of violence of a never-ending armed conflict and that is used systematically to strip the people of their rights.
In what framework – not just in Colombia, but internationally – are these free trade agreements being negotiated? I think that in this moment in the world we are at a cross-roads because, on the one hand, we’ve come – since the French Revolution – in the conquest of human rights. As a result of the strength of the struggle and the mobilization of peoples, these rights – since the moment of the declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution – have been winning their place in the world. After the defeat of Nazism after the Second World War, the United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and after that the declaration of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This created what many refer to as second generation human rights, which are effectively, collective rights. These are an integral part of this generation of rights that humanity has been achieving.
It is within this framework that we find the rights of children, environmental rights, which are not only collective rights of human beings, but also of animals, plant-life – of all living things. The rights of indigenous peoples, which are also part of this generation of social, economic and cultural rights. There have been significant advances in this area.
The Colombian Constitution also recognizes these rights as constitutional. The international agreements and conventions on human rights are guarantees of individual as well as collective rights. The latest was the declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the General Assembly of the United Nations approved on September 13 of last year, 2007. Unfortunately with opposing votes from the United States, Canada and abstention from Colombia, which was the only country in all of Latin America that did not vote in favour of this declaration, which, although it does not have co-active force, is a guide for the rights of indigenous peoples.
This process of approval for rights, however, is being put into question by another judicial process which is trying to establish a new global constitution, including another set of norms which have as an objective to define new norms which will protect the interests of what we call investors – in other words, the interests of transnational corporations. It is within this framework that the Free Trade Agreements appear.
Initially, the 29 countries named the “most developed” in the world, wanted to arrive to a global investment agreement. But it was precisely the resistance of people from Europe, from Japan, from Canada, and the United States, that impeded the establishment of this global agreement and made the agreement fail, in 1998. These people were aware – you yourselves – of how this agreement would affect fundamental guarantees of collective and individual rights. Of how this type of agreement would favour rights of transnational corporations and investors which would be in contradiction to the construction of individual and collective rights.
However, they have tried to implement this global trade agreement by other means. Sometimes by the World Trade Organization, which also has not been able to consolidate this global framework, although it has taken steps to establish some norms that have created and perpetuated hunger. But fundamentally the Free Trade Agreements have been the path to establishing this normative framework.
What is the message that I am wanting to bring to you? That the Free Trade Agreements are not simply about trade. Trade is one of the themes that are dealt with in the FTAs. Only one.
That’s to say, in the Colombia-U.S. FTA, there are 5 chapters on trade, but 15 others dealing with 13 other themes – and these themes are precisely the rights of transnational corporations.
So, then, what do we say?
The FTA does not only jeopardize the people of Colombia, it jeopardizes both peoples, Colombians and citizens of the United States alike. Your rights are also going to be affected because the rights of the investors are placed above the rights of the citizenry.
I’m not proposing a world without investors. I’m saying that the people must be first; that human beings must be first; that communities must be first –their rights must come before the rights of investment.
What, then are these rights of the investors that are being guaranteed by the FTAs?
First are the extra-territorial provisions, in other words, the rights of the transnational corporation to not respect national domestic legislation, rather be able to refer to private international tribunals that do not judge according to domestic law, rather according to the rules and norms of international trade agreements, in other words, according to their own rules of engagement.
This is very serious.
For example, for the indigenous peoples of Colombia, this means that an entire process of construction of rights for them, that the Colombian constitution recognizes, will not be recognized under the FTA.
In fact, this is true for all Colombians and their constitutional rights, but this will be the same for you.
The second right that the transnational corporations are seeking to guarantee is what they call “judicial stability”. This serves to guarantee the rights of investors to sue governments for changing laws that might impede the transnational corporation from making as much money had the laws not been changed.
This is extremely serious. This means freezing legislation. It is an attack on democracy. Basic democratic rights of all peoples includes the freedom to change governments and modify laws to best serve the interests of the common good, which is part of the right also to elect them. If the people realize they made a mistake in voting in a certain political party they have the right to modify their vote, have a referendum, and vote for a different party. This is the essence of democracy and the FTA by establishing “judicial stability” and indemnity for virtual expropriation is proposing that in the interests of the transnational corporation the laws cannot be modified.
At first glance, this is much more serious for Colombia because many more companies from the United States will invest in Colombia than Colombian companies investing in the United States. But this is also to say that there could be Colombian companies that perfectly enjoy these same conditions, with the only intention of investing in the United States, enjoying the same invulnerability, or impunity, vis-à-vis U.S. domestic law.
The third right that the transnational corporations are seeking is the so-called “intellectual property” rights, according to their perspective. Why do I say “their perspective”?
For example, the indigenous from Mexico began to grow corn 7,000 years ago. In that time, corn was like a thick stick, heavier than other grains. The work of indigenous cultivators over thousands of years, and more recently by peasant farmers, has brought us the corn on the cob we know today, and allows us to enjoy the great diversity of corn that exists. Obviously, the transnational corporations do not recognize the immense intellectual property that exists in all this biodiversity just found in the variations in corn. If the transnational corporation obtain rights to corn, they will patent is, and at this point in Colombia, a law has already been passed – Law 1033 of 2006 – that penalizes peasant farmers for using a patented seed without permissions with 4-8 years in prison – which is coincidentally, the same prison time a paramilitary that confesses to crimes against humanity and massacres of hundreds of people under the Peace and Justice Law.
So, we have a regime of laws which favour the transnational corporation and allow them to gain control of agriculture and other branches of production. The FTA seeks to allow for the patenting of living things – not only the products patented through laboratories and scientific experiment, but the ability to patent living creatures, which is much more serious, and which was prohibited in the Andean Community. Through pressure to approve this FTA, the Andean Community approved – for uncertain reasons, and I say uncertain because it was passed by three votes from Colombia, Peru and the outgoing government of Ecuador (the current administration does not agree – Bolivia was not allowed to vote because supposedly they were behind on their debt payments, which in turn caused Venezuela to pull out of the Andean Community, jeopardizing an internal process of economic integration between neighbours, as Colombia and Venezuela are, who should be strengthening their economic and commercial relations. And it wasn’t because of the political questions being debated currently, rather because of a very concrete issue – that being, the patenting of life.
So it is then these that are the rights of the transnational corporations.
The corporations want everything to be for sale, everything to be commodified. That water be commodified. That the corporation has, by definition, a right to privatize public utilities and services like electricity and more concerning, water; water, which should be a right for all human beings, and as I have said before, of all animals and plants and of all living things.
Today it is at risk of being converted into simply a business.
These are the rights of the transnational corporations, which when put together bring us mechanisms that undermine collective and individual rights.
To see how these mechanisms actually operate through the FTAs, let us remember that Colombia has signed the FTA with the United States twice. The first time in November 2005, and the second time in June, 2007. Why were these not ratified?
Because from the United States, there was significant pressure, from the unions and from human rights organizations, not only regarding the FTA with Colombia, but also regarding other FTA being negotiated at that time with Peru and South Korea. These democratic organizations of the United States demanded at the very least, 3 major changes in the agreements:
First, with respect to limiting intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry, with the objective of establishing minimum protection of the right to health;
Secondly, to limit the rights of the transnational corporations to establish minimum protection for environmental rights and; thirdly, to obligate fulfillment of the International Labour Organization conventions by the signers of the agreement in order to protect labour rights. This was not just in the case of Colombia, but with Peru and South Korea as well.
In Colombia, they asked for something more, realizing that these provisions could not be reality only in the text of the agreement, and that union leaders would no longer be assassinated could be guaranteed by simple adherence to these 3 conditions. So these 3 conditions, or changes, were introduced so that the United States congress would approve the FTA with Peru and South Korea, but would not suffice for the agreement with Colombia because human rights organizations and unions demanded that there be an end to the assassination of union leaders for the agreement to be signed.
The changes themselves are positive. But as we have seen, these changes still fail to guarantee the respect of fundamental individual and collective which are violated by other norms included in the FTA. For a free trade agreement to be just, it would be necessary that these issues such as “judicial stability”, extraterritorial provisions and intellectual property not be included in the agreements that supposedly are trade agreements, that these agreements wouldn’t become agreements concerning the rights of transnational corporations.
And in Colombia, it is necessary that the grace situation that our country is living ends.
Because in Colombia, the systematic assassination of union leaders hasn’t been the only precedent, but rather an intense violence whose protagonists have been illegal armed groups, like the paramilitary and the guerrilla, as well as the state’s own armed forces. This violence has not begun recently, but is a violence that has been present for many years now; a violence which has a primary objective to rob the peasants, afro-Colombians, and indigenous of their land. It is a violence that expresses political intolerance to political opposition as well as towards social protest that began in the 19th century through numerous civil wars, products of this social and political intolerance, and which resulted again and again, in the dispossession of lands and the concentration of land in the hands of a few. If we think about the time between 1946 and 1958, 2 million people were displaced, 200,000 assassinated and displaced lost 350,000 farms in an undeclared war between the conservative and liberal parties. Today, over the last 20 years, over 4 million people have been displaced. This has created an extreme level of concentration of land in which some 15,000 people are owners of 67% of the land in a country with a population of 45 million. And within that group, there is a minority of 1500 people who own more than half of the land in the country.
This has been the result of the violence.
You can investigate every case to see who orchestrated the massacres, who used mechanisms of terror, to see if it was illegal armed groups – the paramilitary or guerrilla – or if it was the military. But we will always find the same result – the dispossession of the peasant, massacres and displacement.
We will also find the elimination of political opposition, the elimination of grassroots leaders, the destruction of social fabric. This is evidence that in our country, the processes that are happening in other countries in Latin America are not occurring here. In Ecuador, in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Mexico, we find a wide-spread resistance movement that is countering the measures of transnational corporations and are acting in defense of collective and individual rights of the people over and against the rights of the investors. It explains, for example, why in the last referendum in Bolivia, President Evo Morales received two thirds of the vote in his favour. These are strong social movements that know what they want to achieve and where they want to go. But in our country, things are not this way. These policies of free trade are imposed through blood and bullets, over the debilitation of social movements through the elimination of their leaders and the massacre of their peoples. This is what we have in Colombia.
This is what has caused the assassination of so many social movement leaders…how many of my friends…? And if I tell you that 5,000 of my friends have been assassinated, I may not be counting them all.
These things cause in us, in the social movements, to be constantly living with threats against our lives from legal and illegal actors.
This is the way in which this policy has been imposed, these free trade agreements, and it is why we turn to you, who have a democratic regime in your country, and why it is no surprise that this agreement has not been approved in the United States while it has been approved in Colombia, because our social and political fabric has been destroyed while you in the United States can still organize to block an agreement that violated the rights of the people. This, however, does not mean to say that in Colombia there isn’t still massive resistance. The indigenous in the department of Cauca achieved, in 2004, a large march in the city of Cali, and later they conducted community consultations in 6 communities on the free trade agreement which produced an encouraging result because 85% of the population voted, and 80% voted against the FTA. The Catholic Church and other organizations have organized similar consultations, resulting in similar outcomes, and there have been mobilizations, like in May 2006, which was harshly repressed through, among other things, helicopters begotten through Plan Colombia.
But the reality is that the existence of this war serves as a pretext for this regime to continue threatening us, repressing us, and silencing the social movements in Colombia.
For these reasons it is urgent for this terror to cease, of all the perpetrators of the violence. Of the political and economic powers behind the violence – what is demonstrating itself through the Para-politics – of the groups that have financed Paramilitaries. Of the Guerrilla that commits terrorist acts, which serve as a pretext for the regime to destroy social protest but also cause immense damage to the people. And of the state armed forces, that collaborate with the paramilitary, that repress unashamedly, and that have also been protagonists in serious violations against the population.
For us, the struggle of civil resistance, that we have been dedicated to all these years, sometimes causes us to almost lose hope. But the Colombian people have something very important, the social movement here in Colombia has something very important, which is faith.
Faith which is the experience of what we can hope for because we have known small victories through our struggles.
And with these small victories, like when the indigenous won the constitutional recognition of their rights in 1991, we see as though a ray of lightening lights the night, we see how the future will be; and we maintain our faith.
And this is why we continue the struggle.
And in this struggle we are ready and willing to give our lives.
We are in a historical moment that might be compared with what the United States went through in 1860. At that time there was an economist – an economist that today the neoliberal economists dismiss – who was very important for you, for the United States, who was Henry Charles Carey. Carey understood that the future of the United States depended on two things: that free trade not be permitted and that slavery be abolished. And he clearly understood the relation between those two things. Carey projected that if the United States allowed for free importation from England, which at that time has much more advanced technology than the United States, the effect of free importation would mean the ruin of the U.S. economy, the ruin of small U.S. business and the impossibility of the U.S. to become a prosperous country.
For these reasons, he maintained that it was necessary to protect production in the United States, so that the U.S. would prosper. For these reasons he’s viewed as a protectionist, and he is frowned upon today, but what is certain is that you triumphed, because this was also tied to another essential element, which was the abolition of slavery.
Carey said that if free markets were allowed, the United States would simply become an exporter of cotton and a net importer of industrial goods. And to become an exporter of cotton, it would have to become a country of slavery, because as you know, cotton came from the large cotton plantations where the slaves were. And the United States would have become what today we call underdeveloped or backwards – a colonial country dominated by England. And Carey had nothing against England, he only wanted his country to prosper.
A person that perhaps who are more familiar with, Abraham Lincoln, named him as his chief economic advisor and you all know that story already. These thesis prevailed, slavery was abolished, the United States protected its industry, and for these reasons, the United States is today a powerful nation.
What would we like at this moment?
We would like, like Carey wanted, that our country doesn’t become a country of slaves; a country that doesn’t continue being underdeveloped; a country where people can live with dignity. This is also our objective when we say we don’t want a free trade agreement.
We don’t want to be another United States of America. This does not interest us. Forget it.
I think the experience of being a super-power is not a good one.
But what is good is to be a prosperous country, and this the U.S. has done well.
So, now we think that if you fight to not sign these free trade agreements, in particular, the FTA with Colombia, you will be supporting our right to dignity, prosperity.
But, as I’ve said before, in doing this you are not just defending the rights of Colombians. You will be defending your own rights.
Mr. Samuel Huntington, whom you all know well, has invented the idea that the internal enemy of the United States is the Latino community and the reason, according to him, is that Latinos, because of their indigenous ancestry, believe in collective rights and for this reason are threatening to the central thesis of the free trade agreements, which is, that collective rights must be eliminated.
I call on you – and this is the central theme of the tour I was going to give and what I want to transmit to you through this medium – defend collective rights. Because they are your rights – environmental rights, rights to health, rights to shelter and housing –don’t let them take these rights, which is already happening to 2 million US citizens, and may happen to 6 million more. These collective rights – your collective rights – depend on our unity in the struggle against the free trade agreements. It is the same struggle, we have the same cause, that of our collective rights as peoples, to defend our rights as humanity, against the rights of investment. This struggle for our collective rights is the same cause. Although, there is one difference: we are giving our lives in this struggle, but be sure that we will continue and we trust that you, and us, together, will triumph.
Thank you.
Hector Mondragón speaks to the Mennonites
To my brothers and sisters, the Mennonites
Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. The LORD will protect him and preserve his life; he will bless him in the land and not surrender him to the desire of his foes. . . But you, O LORD, have mercy on me; raise me up, that I may repay them. I know that you are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me. In my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever. Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.
Psalm 41:1-2, 10-14
To be a Mennonite for me has meant to be a mature Christian. I made my commitment to Jesus Christ before I joined the Mennonite Church. When I was in high school, I was able to participate in a Bible group and come to important conclusions about my life. Reading Matthew 25:35-45 was decisive for our commitment. We understood that we could find Christ here and now, in the hunger, the homeless, the displaced, the sick, the prisoner, and the poor, and we went to meet up with him.
Upon reading Luke 18:18-25 we questioned our concept of morality, of integrity. There, a young man that had kept all the commandments of Gods law receives clear answers from Jesus: “no one is good except God alone”; “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
We were middle class youth; we thought we were good people, but Christ warned us, only God is good, the rest are sinners. He told us not to think of ourselves as good just for not robbing, not lying, going to church, or not committing adultery; he asked more of us. He told us to leave everything for the poor and follow him. We decided to believe all this. I thanked my parents for the religious and moral formation and the life example they gave me and that they assisted me in taking steps towards this commitment with Jesus Christ. Since I didn’t have anything to sell, I decided to surrender what I had to the poor; I gave my life for the poor, with the assurance that among the poor and in each poor person was Christ. Everything I did to one of these brothers, I did to Christ himself. We learned to love and even give our lives for them (1 John 3:16, John 15:13). I have committed many errors and have many faults, but I have always been faithful to this commitment.
It is life lived through this commitment that has sustained and cultivated faith in me, despite all of my failures. Faith is not only a belief; faith that is alive is a lifestyle, resulting only from the experience of commitment to God. It is a relationship with God; it is “the foundation of things hoped for and the demonstration of what is not seen” like the Greek manuscripts of Hebrews 11:1 really say. This foundation is not established, then, by mere certainty or conviction, but means a complete test, a sufficient demonstration that results from following the Lord. It is He, then, that is given merit for allowing this experience, and not the person who receives the gift of believing in him.
I have already strange story many times how it was Jesuit priests who helped me realize that drawing close to the Mennonites would revive and mature my faith. I was faced with the sad reality of the violence in Colombia and the political debates in which I participated since 1990 and I became convinced that it is necessary to sow the fruit of justice through peace (James 3:18). One time, when I was working at CINEP (Center for Investigation and Popular Education), a priest, who is now a Jesuit provincial head, asked me to comment on a letter he had sent to defend his position of nonviolent struggle for popular rights. In the conversation, he mentioned to me that the Mennonites were coherent with the position of peace in the gospel. This led me to search out who they were and where I could find them. I knew about the Anabaptists historically, but I did not know about the Mennonites; I began to study the theme, and every day that went by I wanted to know more.
Finally, as a result of a forum about conscientious objection, an indigenous senator, with whom I had began to work in 1992, asked me to accompany him to the Teusaquillo Mennonite Church. The indigenous are very unique in Colombia in that they are not obligated to serve in the military, and decidedly support conscientious objection for the rest of Colombians. At the forum, I met the pastors Noé Gonzalía and Peter Stuckey, who upon my request to know more about the church, invited me to attend the following Sunday. I continued to attend this church without fail until October of 1998 when I had to leave Colombia because of threats to my 2 children (now I have a third son). Years earlier, I had decided to be baptized, and I was baptized on July 20th by Noé Gonzalía. In addition to being a member of the Teusaquillo church, for four months I attended the Mennonite church in Kennebeck in Maine in the United States, where I was living for the second semester of 2000. Currently, I am part of the Mennonite community in North Bogotá, established under the umbrella of the Teusaquillo church.
All this time in the church has helped to mature my faith, and I am very thankful not only to those who are part of the congregations to which I have belonged, but also to all Mennonites, beginning with those who, in the 16th century continued the church of peace that Jesus founded, in which and for which the Christian martyrs of the first three centuries, Prisciliano, the Waldensians of the 7th to the 15th century, and so many more Christians all died.
Upon reading “The Martyrs Mirror” I strengthened my commitment to and witness for the poor and I solidified my decision for nonviolence, unconformity with the world’s system of selfishness (Romans 12:2), following Jesus Christ on the path of love for the enemies (Matthew 5:44), accepting the way of not fighting evil with evil nor facing violence with violence but overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21), and fighting for peace through new social relations based on love and not on money.
Reading “The Martyrs Mirror,” which Peter Stucky lent me to read during a recuperation period after a surgery was illuminating. It prepared me for the new persecutions that were coming and allowed me to deeply reflect about those of the past, about my torture in 1977, the death threats that I received and continued to receive (dozens between 1988 and 2004). So, without wavering, I renounced defending my life at the cost of others, and ever since then I have lived only because God wants me to and has allowed me to protect myself without harming anyone.
Jesus does not promise that we will not be persecuted. On the contrary, he repeatedly announces that they will persecute us. He tells us that we will be blessed when they persecute us and say bad things against us because of his name (Matthew 5:11). By chance, is the cause of Christ not the cause of the poor? Well, clearly it is, for everything that we do for the poor, for those brothers, we do for Him. We cannot forget that; the cause of Christ is the cause of the poor, and for that reason they persecute us and say bad things against us. In the same way they persecuted the prophets (Matthew 5:12), about whom we can read how much they fought for the poor (for example, Isaiah 1:11, 5:8, 58:7, 61:1; Jeremiah 5:28, 34:8-22; Ezekiel 16:48-49; Amos 4:1, 5:12, 8:4-6; Micah 2:1, 3:3).
The Scripture says it all. Everyone who wants to follow Christ will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household! (Matthew 10:24-25). I cannot be surprised now that they slander me out loud after having looked for a way to kill me for 20 years. It hurts me to know that my family has suffered and still suffers. If it was announced to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35), then those who follow Jesus also suffer great pain, the pain of those who love, the pain of their loved ones.
“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all” (Psalm 34:19). God does not promise that we will be free from affliction, but that He will deliver us from them. I can say, like Paul, “the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them” (2 Timothy 3:11), until God wants me to be with Him forever. Jesus Christ triumphed over this same death with resurrection; he delivered us from this same death (1 Corinthians 15:28). Those that want to kill our body will not be able to take our life (Matthew 10:28); those that now want to kill the word, will not be able to keep it from living in a society of solidarity, in every hungry person that eats, in every displaced person that receives his land, in every indigenous town and afro community that lives the alternative of love, in every worker that has justice in his/her job and for his/her kids, in everyone that will love, putting an end to violence.
Nevertheless, I live in anguish, like any persecuted human being. The Lord himself in his anguish had sweat like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” All of the terrible mental burden that I carry because of the torture I suffered has awoken again, and I have traveled to confront the anxiety and to confront the slanderers.
I have been able to begin this new period of witness writing about “My choice for civil resistance,” and this terrible situation has been an opportunity to give testimony about nonviolence, against violence, for justice for the poor. Because we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28) even the worst things. The persecution brings us to the testimony, and this testimony means that the Word reaches more hearts and changes lives.
Please pray. Pray for me, for Colombia, for those who govern us that they will cease the persecution and we will have peace and justice, because God wants all humans to be saved (1 Timothy 2:2-4). “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. . . The prayer of a righteous man is powerful” (James 5:13,16). The fruit will be harvested (James 5:7). Lord Jesus Christ, we wait for your return, with love, patience, and humility.
September 15, 2008
Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. The LORD will protect him and preserve his life; he will bless him in the land and not surrender him to the desire of his foes. . . But you, O LORD, have mercy on me; raise me up, that I may repay them. I know that you are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me. In my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever. Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.
Psalm 41:1-2, 10-14
To be a Mennonite for me has meant to be a mature Christian. I made my commitment to Jesus Christ before I joined the Mennonite Church. When I was in high school, I was able to participate in a Bible group and come to important conclusions about my life. Reading Matthew 25:35-45 was decisive for our commitment. We understood that we could find Christ here and now, in the hunger, the homeless, the displaced, the sick, the prisoner, and the poor, and we went to meet up with him.
Upon reading Luke 18:18-25 we questioned our concept of morality, of integrity. There, a young man that had kept all the commandments of Gods law receives clear answers from Jesus: “no one is good except God alone”; “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
We were middle class youth; we thought we were good people, but Christ warned us, only God is good, the rest are sinners. He told us not to think of ourselves as good just for not robbing, not lying, going to church, or not committing adultery; he asked more of us. He told us to leave everything for the poor and follow him. We decided to believe all this. I thanked my parents for the religious and moral formation and the life example they gave me and that they assisted me in taking steps towards this commitment with Jesus Christ. Since I didn’t have anything to sell, I decided to surrender what I had to the poor; I gave my life for the poor, with the assurance that among the poor and in each poor person was Christ. Everything I did to one of these brothers, I did to Christ himself. We learned to love and even give our lives for them (1 John 3:16, John 15:13). I have committed many errors and have many faults, but I have always been faithful to this commitment.
It is life lived through this commitment that has sustained and cultivated faith in me, despite all of my failures. Faith is not only a belief; faith that is alive is a lifestyle, resulting only from the experience of commitment to God. It is a relationship with God; it is “the foundation of things hoped for and the demonstration of what is not seen” like the Greek manuscripts of Hebrews 11:1 really say. This foundation is not established, then, by mere certainty or conviction, but means a complete test, a sufficient demonstration that results from following the Lord. It is He, then, that is given merit for allowing this experience, and not the person who receives the gift of believing in him.
I have already strange story many times how it was Jesuit priests who helped me realize that drawing close to the Mennonites would revive and mature my faith. I was faced with the sad reality of the violence in Colombia and the political debates in which I participated since 1990 and I became convinced that it is necessary to sow the fruit of justice through peace (James 3:18). One time, when I was working at CINEP (Center for Investigation and Popular Education), a priest, who is now a Jesuit provincial head, asked me to comment on a letter he had sent to defend his position of nonviolent struggle for popular rights. In the conversation, he mentioned to me that the Mennonites were coherent with the position of peace in the gospel. This led me to search out who they were and where I could find them. I knew about the Anabaptists historically, but I did not know about the Mennonites; I began to study the theme, and every day that went by I wanted to know more.
Finally, as a result of a forum about conscientious objection, an indigenous senator, with whom I had began to work in 1992, asked me to accompany him to the Teusaquillo Mennonite Church. The indigenous are very unique in Colombia in that they are not obligated to serve in the military, and decidedly support conscientious objection for the rest of Colombians. At the forum, I met the pastors Noé Gonzalía and Peter Stuckey, who upon my request to know more about the church, invited me to attend the following Sunday. I continued to attend this church without fail until October of 1998 when I had to leave Colombia because of threats to my 2 children (now I have a third son). Years earlier, I had decided to be baptized, and I was baptized on July 20th by Noé Gonzalía. In addition to being a member of the Teusaquillo church, for four months I attended the Mennonite church in Kennebeck in Maine in the United States, where I was living for the second semester of 2000. Currently, I am part of the Mennonite community in North Bogotá, established under the umbrella of the Teusaquillo church.
All this time in the church has helped to mature my faith, and I am very thankful not only to those who are part of the congregations to which I have belonged, but also to all Mennonites, beginning with those who, in the 16th century continued the church of peace that Jesus founded, in which and for which the Christian martyrs of the first three centuries, Prisciliano, the Waldensians of the 7th to the 15th century, and so many more Christians all died.
Upon reading “The Martyrs Mirror” I strengthened my commitment to and witness for the poor and I solidified my decision for nonviolence, unconformity with the world’s system of selfishness (Romans 12:2), following Jesus Christ on the path of love for the enemies (Matthew 5:44), accepting the way of not fighting evil with evil nor facing violence with violence but overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21), and fighting for peace through new social relations based on love and not on money.
Reading “The Martyrs Mirror,” which Peter Stucky lent me to read during a recuperation period after a surgery was illuminating. It prepared me for the new persecutions that were coming and allowed me to deeply reflect about those of the past, about my torture in 1977, the death threats that I received and continued to receive (dozens between 1988 and 2004). So, without wavering, I renounced defending my life at the cost of others, and ever since then I have lived only because God wants me to and has allowed me to protect myself without harming anyone.
Jesus does not promise that we will not be persecuted. On the contrary, he repeatedly announces that they will persecute us. He tells us that we will be blessed when they persecute us and say bad things against us because of his name (Matthew 5:11). By chance, is the cause of Christ not the cause of the poor? Well, clearly it is, for everything that we do for the poor, for those brothers, we do for Him. We cannot forget that; the cause of Christ is the cause of the poor, and for that reason they persecute us and say bad things against us. In the same way they persecuted the prophets (Matthew 5:12), about whom we can read how much they fought for the poor (for example, Isaiah 1:11, 5:8, 58:7, 61:1; Jeremiah 5:28, 34:8-22; Ezekiel 16:48-49; Amos 4:1, 5:12, 8:4-6; Micah 2:1, 3:3).
The Scripture says it all. Everyone who wants to follow Christ will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household! (Matthew 10:24-25). I cannot be surprised now that they slander me out loud after having looked for a way to kill me for 20 years. It hurts me to know that my family has suffered and still suffers. If it was announced to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35), then those who follow Jesus also suffer great pain, the pain of those who love, the pain of their loved ones.
“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all” (Psalm 34:19). God does not promise that we will be free from affliction, but that He will deliver us from them. I can say, like Paul, “the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them” (2 Timothy 3:11), until God wants me to be with Him forever. Jesus Christ triumphed over this same death with resurrection; he delivered us from this same death (1 Corinthians 15:28). Those that want to kill our body will not be able to take our life (Matthew 10:28); those that now want to kill the word, will not be able to keep it from living in a society of solidarity, in every hungry person that eats, in every displaced person that receives his land, in every indigenous town and afro community that lives the alternative of love, in every worker that has justice in his/her job and for his/her kids, in everyone that will love, putting an end to violence.
Nevertheless, I live in anguish, like any persecuted human being. The Lord himself in his anguish had sweat like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” All of the terrible mental burden that I carry because of the torture I suffered has awoken again, and I have traveled to confront the anxiety and to confront the slanderers.
I have been able to begin this new period of witness writing about “My choice for civil resistance,” and this terrible situation has been an opportunity to give testimony about nonviolence, against violence, for justice for the poor. Because we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28) even the worst things. The persecution brings us to the testimony, and this testimony means that the Word reaches more hearts and changes lives.
Please pray. Pray for me, for Colombia, for those who govern us that they will cease the persecution and we will have peace and justice, because God wants all humans to be saved (1 Timothy 2:2-4). “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. . . The prayer of a righteous man is powerful” (James 5:13,16). The fruit will be harvested (James 5:7). Lord Jesus Christ, we wait for your return, with love, patience, and humility.
September 15, 2008
Mennonite Churches and MCC support Hector Mondragon
SUPPORT LETTER FROM THE COLOMBIAN MENNONITE CHURCH FOR HECTOR MONDRAGON
The Colombian Mennonite Church has more than 60 years of a nonviolent testimony of service to this country in search of peace and well-being for Colombia. At the global level, for nearly 500 years the Mennonite Church has been teaching and practicing nonviolence and opposition to every type war, recruitment from armed groups, and violence of every kind.
The brief history above shows that this is the teaching that is given to the members and to anyone who is willing to listen, and this is the commitment that our members assume.
Héctor H. Mondragón has been a member of our church since 1994, that is, 14 years. We have known him as a Christian not only committed to the cause of Jesus Christ, but also to Jesus’ teaching and example of nonviolent love. As a person dedicated full time, both as an investigator and advisor, to the cause of the poor, in particular the indigenous and peasants of our country, brother Mondragón has worked in support of the church in favor of justice for these groups of people, particularly in relation to possession of land. But, always from the perspective of nonviolence. His positions towards the government as well as toward the insurgent groups have been clear.
Because of this, we are very concerned about the attempt to link him, through the Raul Reyes’ computer, to alias Sara and to the FARC through a national newspaper article. The timing of this development seems to us clumsily “coincidental”, just before a planned speaking tour in the United States in order to explain the implications of and concerns about the free trade agreement with that country for the great majority of Colombians. Brother Mondragón could not travel on his tour. On the other hand, Colombians interested in seeing the FTA approved were able to make their visit to the United States this month. This fact makes us feel there is an evident lack of fair play in the democratic debate surrounding this issue.
We want to signal that the Colombian Mennonite Church rejects any attempt to link one of our members – and in this particular case Héctor H. Mondragón – to any armed group or any violent practice or to slander his/her name, as we all know, also is extremely dangerous for the life and security of any person in this context.
We hope with this to emphasize our position of support for brother Mondragón for the peace of anyone or any group who might have been confused with such news. At the same time, we ask for support both at the nation and international level to defend the good name and to ensure his security.
We do not doubt that the truth will ultimately triumph and the cause of God’s justice for the poor of the earth as well. Also, we believe that God will vindicate the righteous, and we invoke the words of Jesus: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled and Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God, and Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
We also call on those who represent a different position than us, those who continue to use weapons to achieve their ends, including the governing class of our country to reflection, repentance and change, with our sights on opening paths to peace and well-being for Colombia, because we believe in the possibility of conversion and new courses.
Thank you for your solidarity and support in this difficult time.
Cordially,
Alix Lozano, President
Christian Mennonite Church of Colombian
Arli Klassen, Executive Director
Mennonite Central Committee
The Colombian Mennonite Church has more than 60 years of a nonviolent testimony of service to this country in search of peace and well-being for Colombia. At the global level, for nearly 500 years the Mennonite Church has been teaching and practicing nonviolence and opposition to every type war, recruitment from armed groups, and violence of every kind.
The brief history above shows that this is the teaching that is given to the members and to anyone who is willing to listen, and this is the commitment that our members assume.
Héctor H. Mondragón has been a member of our church since 1994, that is, 14 years. We have known him as a Christian not only committed to the cause of Jesus Christ, but also to Jesus’ teaching and example of nonviolent love. As a person dedicated full time, both as an investigator and advisor, to the cause of the poor, in particular the indigenous and peasants of our country, brother Mondragón has worked in support of the church in favor of justice for these groups of people, particularly in relation to possession of land. But, always from the perspective of nonviolence. His positions towards the government as well as toward the insurgent groups have been clear.
Because of this, we are very concerned about the attempt to link him, through the Raul Reyes’ computer, to alias Sara and to the FARC through a national newspaper article. The timing of this development seems to us clumsily “coincidental”, just before a planned speaking tour in the United States in order to explain the implications of and concerns about the free trade agreement with that country for the great majority of Colombians. Brother Mondragón could not travel on his tour. On the other hand, Colombians interested in seeing the FTA approved were able to make their visit to the United States this month. This fact makes us feel there is an evident lack of fair play in the democratic debate surrounding this issue.
We want to signal that the Colombian Mennonite Church rejects any attempt to link one of our members – and in this particular case Héctor H. Mondragón – to any armed group or any violent practice or to slander his/her name, as we all know, also is extremely dangerous for the life and security of any person in this context.
We hope with this to emphasize our position of support for brother Mondragón for the peace of anyone or any group who might have been confused with such news. At the same time, we ask for support both at the nation and international level to defend the good name and to ensure his security.
We do not doubt that the truth will ultimately triumph and the cause of God’s justice for the poor of the earth as well. Also, we believe that God will vindicate the righteous, and we invoke the words of Jesus: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled and Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God, and Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
We also call on those who represent a different position than us, those who continue to use weapons to achieve their ends, including the governing class of our country to reflection, repentance and change, with our sights on opening paths to peace and well-being for Colombia, because we believe in the possibility of conversion and new courses.
Thank you for your solidarity and support in this difficult time.
Cordially,
Alix Lozano, President
Christian Mennonite Church of Colombian
Arli Klassen, Executive Director
Mennonite Central Committee
Mennonite Church member in danger
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) had intended to facilitate a speaker's tour with Colombian Mennonite economist Hector Mondragón. This tour, planned for Sept.3, 2008 through Sept. 15, 2008, was focused on the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia.
It was decided on Saturday, Aug. 28, that Hector would not come on the tour.
On Friday, Aug. 27, an article about the detention of Liliany Patricia Obando a purported member of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – the largest guerrilla group) appeared in a Colombian national newspaper. This article, refers to a letter addressed to Hector Mondragón written by Raul Reyes, slain member of the FARC Secretariat, recommending Liliany Patricia Obando as a collaborator.
Mondragón never received this letter. He says he has never had contact with Raul Reyes. The Attorney General's office has not notified Mondragón of any judicial process against him, so this public statement becomes slander and violates basic legal process.
In the Colombian political context, it is clear that the newspaper reference was not accidental; it is a form of implicit accusation.
The newspaper article has generated fear among Mondragón’s family members and a deep sense of anxiety for Mondragón as he mentally relives past experiences of imprisonment, torture and death threats.
The church community together with Mondragón and his family decided that it would be dangerous and unwise for Mondragón to travel to the United States without clarifying his judicial status and clearing his name of the implicit accusation of relating to the FARC.
Although the motives behind publishing the reference to Mondragón in the newspaper article are still unclear, the immediate results are clear. The fact that Mondragón can not travel blocks U.S. audiences from hearing him in person with regard to questions concerning the Free Trade Agreement.
The Colombian Mennonite Church and Mennonite Central Committee ask for prayers for the Mondragón family concerning protection, wisdom and clear discernment in this complex and uncertain situation.
It was decided on Saturday, Aug. 28, that Hector would not come on the tour.
On Friday, Aug. 27, an article about the detention of Liliany Patricia Obando a purported member of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – the largest guerrilla group) appeared in a Colombian national newspaper. This article, refers to a letter addressed to Hector Mondragón written by Raul Reyes, slain member of the FARC Secretariat, recommending Liliany Patricia Obando as a collaborator.
Mondragón never received this letter. He says he has never had contact with Raul Reyes. The Attorney General's office has not notified Mondragón of any judicial process against him, so this public statement becomes slander and violates basic legal process.
In the Colombian political context, it is clear that the newspaper reference was not accidental; it is a form of implicit accusation.
The newspaper article has generated fear among Mondragón’s family members and a deep sense of anxiety for Mondragón as he mentally relives past experiences of imprisonment, torture and death threats.
The church community together with Mondragón and his family decided that it would be dangerous and unwise for Mondragón to travel to the United States without clarifying his judicial status and clearing his name of the implicit accusation of relating to the FARC.
Although the motives behind publishing the reference to Mondragón in the newspaper article are still unclear, the immediate results are clear. The fact that Mondragón can not travel blocks U.S. audiences from hearing him in person with regard to questions concerning the Free Trade Agreement.
The Colombian Mennonite Church and Mennonite Central Committee ask for prayers for the Mondragón family concerning protection, wisdom and clear discernment in this complex and uncertain situation.
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