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.