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Front Page > Issues > 2005> January

16,000 stand witness once again at SOA

by emiko goka-dubose

Nov. 20, 2004
Fort Benning, Columbus, Georgia

“Niño sin identificacion, de El Salado Colombia,” a woman’s sole voice calls in liturgical cadence.

“Presente!” returns voices of 16,000.

Another unidentified child from El Salado, Colombia is called, and again, the crowd responds, “present,” implying that no victim has been forgotten.

The litany continues for several hours as protestors mourn the individuals, with or without identification, killed, tortured, and disappeared by graduates of the School of Americas, located in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The infamous school began in Panama in 1946 and, after training Somoza’s Nicaraguan National Guard and the Salvadoran Military in the 80s, was soon dubbed the “School of Coups” before being permanently excommunicated from Central America. In 1984, the School of Americas moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. For the past 20 years, the School of Americas has taught Latin American soldiers forms of counter insurgency within the confines of Fort Benning. Among some of the school’s most highly lauded graduates are Manuel Noreiga and Omar Torrijos, former dictators of Panama; 10 of the 14 Salvadoran soldiers who wiped out the entire 900 civilian population of El Mozote in one night; and seven Colombian soldiers cited in the 2000 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report. SOA graduates had significant military leaderships under the three successive military dictarships in Guatemala from 1978 to 1986, marked with the highly trained death squads and overt use of civilian torture and massacres. Currently, of the school’s 700 attendees, the highest percentage of students comes from Colombia, training in counter narcotics and counterinsurgency tactics.

After a continuous five minutes of naming each unidentified child found after the massacre of La Gabarra, Colombia, the litany continues with names from the 2001 Acteal massacre in Chiapas, Mexico.

The School of Americas Watch began in 1990 by Father Roy Bourgeois with a 35-day water-only fast at the front gates of Fort Benning with 10 others, including Kathy Kelly from Voices in the Wilderness. To mark the anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their coworker and her teenage daughter in El Salvador on Nov. 16, 1989, the SOA Watch began the vigil at the front gates of Fort Benning in 1995. Legislative work by U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA), organizations such as the Human Right Watch and Amnesty International, forced the Pentagon to release the School’s training manuals in 1996, which specifies the usage and tactics of counter-insurgency warfare, and advocates methods of torture, extortion, and execution. In January of 2001, the school underwent a cosmetic change. Currently, the School of Americas is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), and its current commandant, Col. Richard Downie, though familiar to Latin America, having served as a Foreign Area Officer in Panama and in part of the Defense and Army Attaché in Mexico City, has no previous ties to the School of Americas. WHINSEC was mandated by law to begin human-rights instruction to all attendees. Each course offers eight hours of “Mandatory Human Rights Awareness Training.” In 2001, WHINSEC cost the American taxpayers an estimated $5.6 million, approximately the cost of a new main battle tank.

There is a collective solemnity as the funeral procession continues. The fences that guard Fort Benning, installations post-2001, have been transformed into altars, covered in crosses with the names and ages of those killed, tortured, and disappeared amidst doves, Japanese cranes, photos, handwritten signs.

This year, more that 16,000 people amassed to voice their desire for the WHINSEC to close its doors permanently. Organizations such as Veterans for Peace, labor organizations, faith communities such as the Catholic Workers, Witness for Peace, Maryknoll sisters, Buddhist monks, gather with high school and college student groups, families, activists from all walks of life. A rally is held the day before the funeral procession with speakers, such as Sister Helen Prejean, Martin Sheen, and Reverend Graylan Hagler, representatives from human rights groups such as HIJOS, a group of the children of the disappeared, and musical performances. The Puppetistas, an informal group of creative artists, performed a melodramatic skit retelling the ongoing labor struggle between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an union of migrant farm workers and Yum Brand’s resturant franchise Taco Bell, adding levity through participatory education.

Throughout the funeral procession, 15 people cross onto Fort Benning property as an act of non-violent civil disobedience. To cross onto the military property, many scale two 10-foot tall security fence topped with barbed wire. Others push through razor wire to an open field where military police await them. The initial sentence ranges from 3-6 months in federal prison, though some of the “Prisoners of Conscience” who have crossed onto the military property multiple times have been sentenced to two years. Among this year’s fifteen “Prisoners of Conscience” include Ed Lewinson, a 75 year-old man blind since birth, and Tom McLean, age 79, navigating together through a piece of the forest to reach the military property.

The SOA Watch has been effective in drawing attention to WHINSEC. Recently, Father Roy Bourgeois traveled to Venezuela and negotiated with President Hugo Chavez. President Chavez was already well informed about the ìSchool of Assassinsî as he referred to it, because graduates of the SOA orchestrated the coup that attempted to overthrow him. After discussing the school for some time, President Chavez agreed to send no more Venezuelan soldiers to be trained at WHINSEC.

The four-hour funeral procession ends with performances ranging from satirist George Shrub to singer-songwriters from Ashville, NC to Austin, TX. The eventís ultimate perfomance is Llajasuyo (Quechua for People United), an Andean musical group in its fifth year return to the gates of Ft. Benning. As the last notes strummed from the churanga, the once blue skies of Georgia release a heavy downpour, weeping harmoniously as the SOA vigil comes to its end this year, though many protestors have vowed to continue to return until the SOA/WHINSEC is permanently closed.

emiko is a somewhat recently relocated local writer and radical social service worker bee.

 

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Last Updated: February 8, 2005