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The founder of the School of the Americas (SOA) Watch spoke to a crowded house at Regis University on Thursday, Sept. 14. SOA Watch is a non-profit organization working to close down the SOA located on the Fort Benning military base in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Pentagon's declared mission for the SOA (which changed its name to WHINSEC in 1999) is to strengthen the militaries of Latin America as well as build closer ties with those nations.
The critics of SOA say that the school trains Latin American soldiers in how to effectively suppress their own people and that the human rights record of the school's graduates are so bad that the school must be closed down.
Father Roy Bourgeois has spent almost two decades in a struggle to see the school closed down. While speaking at Regis University he talked about the beginning of the movement. "We only had 10 of us at the first protest at the gates of Fort Benning," said Bourgeois. That was in the early 90s- last year over 19,000 people joined us at the gates."
The protest, held every year in Nov., coincides with the commeration of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter. It was discovered by a UN Truth Commission that they were all murdered by graduates' of the SOA. It was that event that sparked the SOA Watch and years of protest and legislative work to try to close the school.
Defenders of the school say that the school promotes democracy in Latin America and since 9/11 it also serves a purpose in Bush's War on Terror.
Bourgeois spoke to the students and citizens of Denver between trips to South America. He is currently working on a campaign they call "the Latin American strategy" where they speak directly to the leaders of Latin America and ask them to stop sending soldiers to the SOA. So far Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay have announced that they will cut off their connection to the school and Bolivia's leader, President Evo Morales, told Father Bourgeois personally that he would phase out the number of soldiers Bolivia has at the school over the next few months. Bourgeois told the crowd at Regis that this was especially satisfying news because, as a young priest with the Maryknolls, he was first stationed in the slums of La Paz Bolivia and worked with the poor. At that time the Dictator, Hugo Banzer, a graduate of the SOA, was ruling the country with brutal violence and oppression, but according to Bourgeois, the fear that so covered all of Bolivia is gone and Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, has replaced it with a sense of hope.
According to Bourgeois, the SOA Watch protest will be held again this year on the weekend of Nov. 18 and 19 outside the gates of Fort Benning.
Editor's note: senior Advocate reporter Thomas Mestnik will be traveling to Georgia for exclusive coverage of this year's protest.
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