19,000 protest at U.S. torture school

By the bus and van, thousands of high school and college youth joined the annual protest at Ft. Benning, Ga., Nov. 19-20, sponsored by the School of the Americas Watch. They came from as far as Maine, Washington state and California and from Midwest states such as Minnesota and Iowa.

Protest at Ft. Benning, Ga.

On Nov. 20, some 19,000 people participated in the solemn procession that intones the names of the many victims of SOA-trained killers. Responding with one voice, “Presente!” the demonstrators took their pictures, coffins, flowers, flags, toys and crosses marked with names to the eight-foot-tall, triple barbed-wire topped fence and covered it as a memorial to the dead and a message to the Pentagon.

Each year as the numbers grow, so does the diversity of the crowd.

There were dozens of members of the United Auto Workers union, which sent staff from Detroit as well as members from locals in Alabama, Georgia and other states to join the protest.

Banners identifying religious orders of nuns and priests and lay organizations of numerous denominations could be seen throughout the crowd.

More than 100 members of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans against the War marched together.

While the protest’s central demand was that the training school for Latin Amer ican military be closed, many other peace and justice issues—from bringing the troops home from Iraq and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine to supporting farmworkers in Florida and providing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina—were included in the agenda of speakers, signs and banners and literature tables.

It was the murders of six Jesuit priests, their house-keeper and her teen-age daughter on Nov. 16, 1989 by Salvaldoran soldiers trained at the School of the Amer icas that prompted the protest to be scheduled the third week-end in November.

SOA Watch has exposed the predominant role of soldiers trained at Ft. Benning in the scores of massacres of peasants and indigenous peoples; the assassinations of trade unionists, religious and civic leaders; and use of torture and other repressive measures employed by right-wing regimes throughout Central and South America over the course of more than five decades.

Now named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the SOA, first established by the U.S. in Panama in 1946, is called the “School of the Assassins” by its opponents.

One of the most creative elements of the SOA protests is the puppet pageant. This year the story of Professor Carlos Mau ricio, a torture victim of SOA-trained soldiers in El Salvador, was dramatized. Prof. Mauri cio and two other Salvadorans who survi ved their imprisonment moved to the U.S., where they successfully sued their torturers.

That landmark case created a precedent and has since been followed by other convictions of SOA graduates, including those responsible for the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

Despite the intense security measures, some 40 people committed civil disobedience by managing to get onto the base grounds where they were charged with criminal trespass and other offenses. These committed opponents of U.S.-funded torture can expect to be sentenced to a minimum of three months in federal prison.

For more information, go to www.SOAWatch.org.