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Campaign Against School of the Americas
Lobbies El Salvador
By Raúl Gutiérrez*
SAN SALVADOR, May 7 (IPS) - Representatives
of School of the Americas Watch visited El
Salvador to ask the incoming government of
the leftwing FMLN, which will take office in
June, to stop sending military officers to
the U.S. army academy, which has long been
accused of teaching torture techniques.
El Salvador has a special significance for
School of the Americas (SOA) Watch, because
the movement was founded in 1990 by
Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois (a former
naval officer and Vietnam veteran) in
response to atrocities committed during this
country’s 1980-1992 civil war.
Bourgeois became an outspoken critic of U.S.
foreign policy in Latin America after four
U.S. churchwomen – two of whom were friends
of his - were raped and killed by Salvadoran
soldiers in December 1980. The November 1989
murders of six prominent Jesuit priests,
along with their housekeeper and her teenage
daughter, then became a catalyst for the
emergence of SOA Watch.
SOA Watch has offices outside of Fort
Benning, Georgia – where the SOA, renamed
the "Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation" (WHINSEC) in 2001, is
located - and in Washington, D.C.
"The light of our movement was switched on
in El Salvador, where the killings of the
priests helped open our eyes to the way the
U.S. army was using our taxes," Lisa
Sullivan, SOA Watch’s Latin America
coordinator, told IPS.
"Our money was used to train members of the
Salvadoran military in how to kill peasants,
priests and nuns," said Sullivan.
The 12-year war between government forces
and the leftist FMLN (Farabundo Martí
National Liberation Front) guerrillas left
80,000 people dead or disappeared, mainly at
the hands of the armed forces and far-right
death squads.
The FMLN, which became a political party in
1993, won the presidential elections in
March.
The SOA was founded in Panama in 1946 as a
U.S. army training school for Latin American
military personnel.
It trained Latin American soldiers in
counterinsurgency techniques, before and
during the years of the U.S. "national
security doctrine." Many SOA graduates ended
up involved in human rights violations
throughout the hemisphere, in Mexico,
Central America and South America.
In 1984, then president of Panama Jorge
Illueca kicked the SOA out of his country,
and it was moved to the army base at Fort
Benning, Georgia.
In response to the controversy and protests
by human rights activists, the SOA was
officially "closed" in December 2000. But it
reopened a month later as WHINSEC - in the
same installations, with the same staff
carrying out the same work.
The United Nations Truth Commission in El
Salvador found that 19 of the 26 Salvadoran
soldiers and officers implicated in the
murders of the Jesuit priests were SOA
alumni.
The 64,000 Latin American soldiers who have
trained at the SOA also included three of
the five Salvadoran troops who raped and
killed the three U.S. nuns and a Catholic
lay worker in 1980 and two of the three
cited in the March 1980 assassination of
Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was
shot by a sniper while conducting mass.
A total of 48 of the 69 Salvadoran officers
cited by the U.N. Truth Commission for human
rights violations had been trained at the
SOA.
The list of SOA graduates also includes:
former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega
(1983-1989); Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto
Viola, former members of the military juntas
that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983; and
other dictators like Juan Velasco Alvarado
(1968-1975) of Peru, Guillermo Rodríguez
(1972-1976) of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer
(1971-1978) of Bolivia.
Since SOA Watch protests against the school
began, nearly 200 activists have served a
combined 81 years in prison for acts of
civil disobedience, like attempting to enter
the grounds of Fort Benning.
One of them is Jesuit priest Joseph
Mulligan, who was arrested in November 2003
for trespassing and spent February to April
2004 in a prison in Georgia.
Mulligan told IPS that he took part in the
SOA Watch protest vigils held every November
outside of Fort Benning to commemorate the
murders of the Jesuit priests because as a
U.S. citizen he feels responsible for what
his government does in Latin America.
The largest number of protesters drawn to
the annual vigil was 22,000, in 2006. Six
SOA Watch protesters are currently in prison
for civil disobedience, serving sentences
ranging from two to six months.
"We want to send the army and U.S. society
the message that we are opposed to the
continued training of soldiers who go on to
violate human rights," Mulligan said.
SOA Watch activist Pablo Ruiz, from Chile,
called for the construction of "a new
concept of the armed forces," and protested
that the president of his country, socialist
Michelle Bachelet, has not yet removed
Chilean soldiers from the school in Fort
Benning "because the power of the military
is still very strong."
According to SOA Watch figures, civil
war-torn Colombia sends more troops to SOA/WHINSEC
than any other country: 323 in 2007,
followed by Chile (195), Peru (134),
Nicaragua (78), the Dominican Republic (65),
Ecuador (62), Panama (50), Honduras (44), El
Salvador (37), Guatemala (35), Costa Rica
(22), Paraguay (15), Mexico (13), Jamaica
(10), Belize and Brazil (four) and Canada
(two).
The SOA Watch activists say they have
visited 16 Latin American countries since
2008, meeting with local officials to urge
them to withdraw all troops from SOA/WHINSEC.
Their efforts have borne fruit in several
cases. Chile only sent 45 troops in 2008,
and Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and
Venezuela have ceased to send troops
altogether.
Sullivan said that when President-elect
Mauricio Funes of the FMLN takes office in
June, there is a possibility that El
Salvador will follow suit.
Mary Anne Perrone, another SOA Watch
activist, said that when Vice
President-elect Salvador Sánchez Cerén met
with the group’s representatives, he
admitted that he was unfamiliar with WHINSEC,
but that he would take the information
provided by the activists very seriously.
El Salvador had plans to increase the number
of troops sent this year to SOA/WHINSEC to
58.
A source close to Sánchez Cerén confirmed to
IPS that he met with the SOA Watch
representatives, but did not discuss the
results of the meeting.
"It’s disturbing; governments are often not
fully informed that troops from their
countries are undergoing training at WHINSEC,
because since 2005 the school no longer
reveals the names of its students, since
most of them are attending on the basis of a
personal invitation," said Sullivan.
"We believe it is important to strengthen
the concept of sovereignty in Latin
America," the SOA Watch Latin America
coordinator added. * Not for publication in
Italy.
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