Salt of the Earth: December 1999 social justice news

Social justice news
December 1999

WTO's uninvited guests stir up Seattle
The Third Way or the highway?
A new call to end the death penalty

The School of the Americas—revisited (again!)
November 21 (Columbus, Georgia)—The U.S. Army's announcement—just days before what has become an annual demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia—that it plans to change the School of the Americas' name and its structure didn't impress many of the nearly 10,000 protesters, including the more than 4,000 who risked arrest by trespassing onto the base in a solemn funeral procession. The proposed changes certainly haven't convinced Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch, to end his nine-year-old campaign to close the Spanish-language military training facility.

"They're talking about teaching democracy at the school now, but you do not teach democracy through the barrel of a gun," Bourgeois told the crowd at the November 21 protest. "It can only be closed; it cannot be changed. We will keep coming back every year until this school is closed."

For more information:
Link to Latin America Working Group

Official US Army School of the Americas Web Page

Link to Resource Center of the Americas

Link to Just the Facts: A Civilian's Guide to U.S. Defense and Security Assistance

SOA Labor Union WebPages

Mexico Solidarity Network

Non-Violence Web Page

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee

Colombia Support Network

Directory of Human Rights Sites in Spanish

American Friends Service Committee

The SOA protest is held in November near the anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989. Of the 26 Salvadoran soldiers involved in the executions, 19 were graduates of the SOA.

The Army refuses to shut down the school, but years of protests and last fall's threat of significant cuts to the SOA's budget seem to be having some impact. Under orders from Defense Secretary Louis Caldera, the Army plans to rewrite the SOA's charter and restructure its military focus by admitting civilian students, dropping some military courses (including one in commando tactics), and shifting authority over the curriculum to the Department of Defense.

If the Pentagon and Congress approve, the Army hopes to "reopen" the SOA next spring as the Center for Inter-American Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Georgia.

But for the growing number of SOA opponents who claim the school has contributed to oppression, violence, and murder in Latin America, the changes are little more than "image polishing." U.S. Representative. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., was quoted in the New York Times as saying the proposals don't go far enough. "It's like putting perfume on a toxic dump," he said.

At the weekend protest, speakers and those in the crowd echoed that sentiment. "They can change their name and move the school, but we are not going away," said Adriana Portillo-Bartow of Chicago, a Guatemalan human rights activist whose family members were "disappeared" during the Guatemalan war.

"The people you have trained are professional torturers, killers, and kidnappers," she said. "That's why we want to shut you down."

The evidence for those claims is substantial. According to SOA Watch, the school's graduates are among the most notorious human rights violators in Latin America. They include General Manuel Noriega, former ruler of Panama now in prison in the United States on drug charges; two of the three Salvadoran army officers involved in the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero; and three men implicated in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen later that year in El Salvador.

In 1991, SOA manuals that included sections on torture, kidnapping, assassination, and blackmail came to light. They have since been pulled from the curriculum.

The Army denies that the SOA teaches torture and insists that only a minority of graduates have been involved in human rights abuses. Caldera claims the proposed changes are not a capitulation to SOA critics, but rather a "new vision on how to meet the needs of the nation in this post-Cold War era.

But such efforts to improve the SOA's reputation were quickly dismissed at the protest, which has grown each year. Last year, some 7,000 people attended, and more than 2,000 protesters "crossed the line" onto the base, risking arrest and—for some who had previously trespassed and been given "ban and bar" letters—six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Estimates of this year's numbers varied, with the Army reporting that 3,100 of 8,000 protesters trespassed, while SOA Watch claimed 4,408 of 12,000 people crossed the line.

Thousands of protesters began pouring into Columbus, Georgia, on Friday evening, arriving by plane, bus, car caravans, and even one group by foot. A dozen or so marchers—reportedly including a Catholic priest—hoofed it from the King Center in Atlanta to the gates of Fort Benning, as a witness of their solidarity to close the school. Even before SOA Watch's scheduled events began Saturday morning, hundreds of students from Jesuit universities all over the country gathered Friday evening for a "Jesuit Teach-in" under a large white tent in downtown Columbus.

A second teach-in was held Saturday evening, followed by an overflow Mass attended by more than 1,000 people. During the prayers of the faithful, which were voiced spontaneously from the crowd, one that pleaded, "So we don't have to come back next year" received applause and cheers.

Saturday's gathering outside the gate resembled a street festival, with folk musician Pete Seeger leading the crowd in favorites such as "If I Had a Hammer" and "Down by the Riverside." Among the speakers was Rufina Amaya, one of only two survivors of the 1981 El Mozote massacre of 900 villagers in El Salvador. Speaking through an interpreter, she told the crowd how the soldiers wrote on trees that they had been trained in the United States.

Protesters who planned to cross the line were required to attend one of several nonviolence training workshops that day. The next morning, the line of people prepared to trespass stretched for blocks.

Organizers stressed the solemnity of the "funeral procession."

"Today is not about us," said Carol Richardson, co-director of SOA Watch. "It's not about seeing if we can get arrested. It's about honoring people. It's about commemoration. It's about memorial."

Bourgeois also emphasized the bigger picture. "The starting point is not the School of the Americas," he said. "The starting point is Latin America and that reality where our brothers and sisters are suffering."

Actor Martin Sheen, joining the protest for his second year, provided a lighter moment when Bourgeois introduced him as the president of the United States. Sheen plays President Josiah Bartlett on "The West Wing," a dramatic series on NBC.

"As the acting president of the United States—hence the commander in chief—I hereby decree that the School of the Americas should cease to exist immediately," he said to the laughter and applause of the crowd. Moments later, he crossed the line with Jesuit Father Dan Berrigan.

This year's procession was similar to those in year's past, with a few additions. Protesters marched six abreast across a white painted line, carrying white crosses with names of victims of SOA graduates written on them. For more than an hour, names of these victims were read aloud while the crowd responded to each one sing, "Presente!"

About 70 individuals lead the procession, carrying mock coffins and dressed in black shrouds and wearing white "death masks." Those who volunteered for this high-risk action marched about a half-mile onto the base's property, where they then smeared red paint on their faces and lay down by the coffins.

Most of the trespassers were loaded onto buses and dropped off about two miles from the base. Some protesters refused to enter the buses, and sat or knelt on the road. They eventually were taken on the buses and also released.

Sixty-five protesters were arrested and taken to Lawson Army Airfield to be processed. Among those, 23 were repeat offenders who will be required to appear before the local judge, who has consistently given the maximum sentence.

Gerhard Fisher of Brookfield, Wisconsin, is one of those 23. "It's going to be harder on my wife and kids than on me," said the retired pharmacist. "But there comes a time when you have to follow through on what you believe in."—Heidi Schlumpf

For more information about the SOA, visit the SOA Watch or read U.S. Catholic's "Let this school out for good."

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