Could the new Congress put an end to the SOA?

In session
December 2006

Could the new Congress put an end to the SOA?
Every year, protesters at the School of Americas/Whinsec hope that this year will be their last, but each November, they have to return, standing in solidarity with those killed and tortured by the Latin American security personnel trained at the school.

This year though, the hope of the 22,000 nonviolent protesters who gathered November 17-19 at the gates of Fort Benning in Georgia was buoyed by more than their record-setting numbers. The crowd buzzed with excitement over the prospects of closing the U.S. military school through legislative and diplomatic efforts.

“We have a real shot this year to close this school down,” said Pam Bowman, the legislative coordinator for the School of Americas Watch, in a speech at the Ignatian Family Teach-In, at which religious leaders and fellow students address young Catholics from Jesuit colleges and high schools. This cause is important to the Jesuits because six Jesuit priests and two lay women were killed by El Salvadoran soldiers trained at the SOA on November 16, 1989.

With the midterm election, Bowman said, 34 legislators who did not support an amendment cutting funding to the SOA/Whinsec in June 2006 were voted out of office. The amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill needed only 15 more votes to pass.

Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) has told the SOA Watch that in the 110th Congress he will introduce legislation to close down the School of the Assassins, as it is known among many throughout Latin America, Bowman said. She urged protesters to continue the fight when they went home by educating their senators and representatives, especially the newly elected, about their cause and invited all to participate in SOA Watch’s Lobby Day, which will be held in Washington, D.C. in February 2007.

Many have been disheartened by past attempts to close the school through legislation. Past efforts resulted in Congress simply renaming the School of Americas the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (Whinsec) in 2001. While cutting funding to the SOA/Whinsec would be a victory for the SOA Watch, supporters fear that a school training Latin American soldiers in combat and counter-insurgency would open elsewhere.

The SOA Watch, however, is hopeful that they can lessen the demand any such school by working through Latin American countries.

“A school without students will have to close,” Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and the founder of the SOA Watch, said to a cheering crowd.

In 2004, the government of Venezuela said it would cut its ties with the school and denounce it. This year Uruguay and Argentina followed suit. This has inspired recent trips by Bourgeois and other activists to Ecuador, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia to meet with human rights groups and governmental officials. With the election of (the Sandinista/leftist/populist leader) Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua this November, Bourgeois joked that he could get him to sever ties with the school over e-mail.

SOA Watch opened at office in Caracas, Venezuela in September to coordinate its work in Latin America. At the same time that Bourgeois rallied the crowd at the gates of Fort Benning, protesters gathered for vigils in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Peru, as well as in Ireland, Canada, and other U.S. sites.

Despite efforts to keep protesters out of Fort Benning, 16 were arrested for crossing the line, most through a hole in the fence located away from the front gate. Those arrested included at least two women who were part of the 1,000 Grandmother Standing Strong. According the SOA Watch website, this movement succeeded in gathering more than 1,000 grandmothers, constituting “80,000 years of wisdom” to march together in white handkerchiefs.—photos and story by Megan Sweas

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