Born and raised in the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, current board president Rev. Hector R. Rodriguez was drawn to a life of service and faith. Hector’s commitment to the farm workers began as a young boy in the 1950s when he accompanied a leader from his church to the international bridge where they handed out holy cards to the Braceros crossing the border to pick crops in America. He describes seeing the men through the fencing surrounding the border patrol station next to the international bridge, “I can still see them, all these men coming to talk with us along the chain link fence. We’d give them words of encouragement, say a prayer, ask them about their families, and give them a holy card to hold onto to uplift their morale.”  These men would have a look of foreboding as they left for faraway fields.  They were already deeply distressed about leaving their families while also hoping to raise sufficient funds to give them a more worthy life back home.

Hector went on to serve as a Catholic priest and a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.  He served parishes in San Antonio’s West Side and in the Rio Grande Valley where a third of his parishioners were farm workers. In March, they would head north and Hector would visit them in the labor camps, witnessing the conditions, offering Mass, preaching, and just spending time with them in the evening, joining them in eating some of what they harvested that day. Hector has centered his life’s work around helping the oppressed, from visiting labor camps to accompanying workers through the halls of Washington, DC to protecting workers on picket lines.

In the 1970s, he answered the call for members of the faith community to join the picket lines in the Coachella Valley, protecting the workers from the threat of violence. He describes sleeping in the camp with the workers, arriving at the picket line before dawn, and enduring the harassment and bullying of the state police and so-called “goons” who threatened the workers. Throughout that spring and early summer, NFWM organized different members of the faith community to stand with the workers. He believes the presence of the faith community helped to keep the violence at bay.

Now serving as an Episcopal priest, Hector was the Latino Missioner at the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. He is also the founder of PATH: People Acting Together in Howard, a community organization in his county of residence in Maryland, working for equity and justice. He served as Executive Director of the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network (CMFN) for a time and previous to that at the Campaign for Human Development of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Washington, DC. Hector began his tenure with NFWM in 2002 representing the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network and later rejoined NFWM as a representative of the Episcopal Church. He currently serves as the Board President of NFWM.