Mass Media writer and UMass student John Guthrie traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia with his son to attend and report on this story.
Students from as far away as Berkeley, California as well as Massachusetts institutions like University of Massachusetts Boston and Boston College were present at a protest at the main gate of Fort Benning, Georgia on November 21-23 to try and close the School of the Americas.
The School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation is infamous for training south American dictators and strongmen in techniques of torture, death squads and brutal civilian control, and has long been a target for activists who feel that America discourages democracy abroad to further strategic interests.
The Pentagon officially denied for years that the SOA taught tactics that included torture and murder, but training manuals obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicated that tactics including terror, torture, and truth serum were, in fact, taught.
The death of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador provides another dramatic example of activities by some SOA graduates. Bishop Romero spoke up for his parishioners, impoverished farmers who lacked basic necessities. He was assassinated as he stood before the altar conducting mass in 1986. Three of his five assassins were School of the Americas graduates. Romero’s statue can now be seen in an alcove on the west side of London’s Westminster Abbey near that of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Anglican Church reserves this honor for “20th century Christian martyrs.”
As well as striking out at church officials, the acts of violence and repression carried out by SOA graduates have been directed against students, teachers, journalists, and labor leaders.
While atrocities committed by SOA graduates continue to be the main focus of the protest, the emphasis has widened to include protestors concerned about the war in Iraq, globalization and other issues.
SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and U.S. Navy Veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart for injuries suffered in Vietnam, said, “They’re getting meaner; the closer we come to shutting the SOA down, the meaner they get.”
Father Bourgeois began the annual rally and march at Fort Benning in 1990 after hearing of the slaughter of 6 Jesuit Priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s teenaged daughter on November 16, 1989 in El Salvador. A congressional task force headed by the late Representative Joseph Moakley of Massachusetts investigated the massacre and determined that the assassination had been carried out by School of the Americas graduates trained at Fort Benning.
Father Roy then traveled to Fort Benning and picketed the front gate. Ten others joined him. Following that first protest, he moved into an apartment directly across from the front gate and has lived there ever since “to let them know somebody’s keeping an eye on them.”
The march now typically attracts ten thousand or more people each November. Father Bourgeois notes “…it continues to grow as the public become aware of … a terrorist training school operated by the United States Army.” Over 60,000 South Americans have graduated from the institution.
In the year 2000, the House of Representatives came within 10 votes of outright closure of the school. The Department of Defense then “closed” the school, reopening it in the same facility under the name the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,”or WHISC. Father Bourgeois tersely characterized this as a “cosmetic change…different name, same shame. Graduates of the school are continuing the same tactics in Colombia, and other countries throughout Latin America just like before. Despite claims to the contrary and the addition of an 8 hour course on democracy, there is no evidence that anything has changed there.”
Father Bourgeois, soft spoken and civil, was born in Lutcher, Louisiana in 1938. Following graduation from Southwestern Louisiana University and service in the Navy, Father Bourgeois was ordained as a priest in 1972. He served as parish Priest in Bolivia for five years. He was finally arrested there and expelled from the country for his outspoken support of the poor. He has served multiple terms in US federal prison for his protest activities against the School of the Americas. He expresses confidence about the schools eventual closure.
“At first,” he noted, “very few people were even aware of the existence of SOA. But now more and more people know about it, and it’s getting out into the mainstream media. The movement is sustained now by a lot of college students and high school students. We’ve opened a DC office now.”
Father Bourgeois’ 1995 documentary film “School of the Assassins,” was nominated for an Academy Award as was his 1983 film, “Gods of Metal” about the nuclear arms race.
A number of protestors chose to march onto the base itself on Sunday in order to be arrested. Typical prison sentences for this act of civil disobedience are six months in federal prison.
According to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, retired army colonel Bob Poydasheff, the mayor of Columbus, Georgia and the city’s top public safety official gave the order that all protestors entering the protest site be searched using metal detectors. At least one demonstrator was arrested after refusing to be searched. Poydasheff stated that the searches are for the purpose of “protecting the demonstrators…we are not only protecting the demonstrators, we are protecting the surrounding areas as well.”
The colonel did not deem it necessary to search the participants of a counter-demonstration in support of WHISC.
Renny Goldman, an undergraduate at the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA, a school operated by the Jesuits, called her presence as an “act of faith,” and “a memorial to the six Jesuit priests killed by School of the Americas graduates in El Salvador.”
While the majority of the protestors were students, the protest included mainstream Protestant contingents, Quakers, Unitarians, Jews, and others. Sister Betty Kenny stated that she is a member of the multidenominational organization Sisters OnLine. “We’re interested in a number of issues, especially environmental ones. But I’m also concerned about the American nuns who were raped and murdered in El Salvador by SOA graduates in 1980.”
The performance of folk singer Pete Seeger provided the highlight.
Seeger, 84, is a WWII vet, a folk music icon and a determined anti-war spokesman. As he mounted the stage outside the locked gates of Ft. Benning, loudspeakers inside the gate blared out “patriotic music” in an effort to drown him out. Despite the noise, Seeger launched into his anti-war anthem, “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?”
In defiance of the Army’s high-decibel musical stylings, the crowd of demonstrators joined in with Seeger, their voices carrying over the Army’s loudspeakers in a poignant display of solidarity.