School of the Americas

The weekend of November 17-18 marked the 11-year anniversary of the assassination of 6 Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her 13-year-old daughter. A UN Truth commission later found that 19 of the 26 responsible for the killings were graduates of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Although this was just one in a number of atrocities committed by SOA, it brought together a committed group of people at the gates of Fort Benning to commemorate the assassinations and protest the continued training of Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency, torture, and execution. Since the initial gathering of 12 people in November 1990, the numbers have grown dramatically, to an estimated 12,000 people last year and close to that again this year. (For more information on the SOA, see the School of the Americas Watch’s website at www.soaw.org.)

Originally founded to quell the “threat” of communism in Latin America, the rhetoric of the SOA has changed significantly in the past ten years. Now its primary mission is to train Latin American soldiers to protect the interests of corporations, fight the drug war, and maintain the status quo, which has meant terrible oppression of the poor—particularly the indigenous communities of Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Despite the rain and cold, thousands gathered at the main entrance to Fort Benning to stand in solidarity with the poor of Latin America and mourn for the 4,000+ who have died at the hands of SOA graduates. On Saturday, powerful testaments from Mexican (Chiapas) and Colombian community leaders interspersed with live music from Pete Seeger, Bruce Cockburn, and the Andean group Llajtasuyo made for an educational and inspirational afternoon. Following more music and addresses Sunday morning, the funeral procession began, in which 3,400—each carrying a cross with the name of a person killed by SOA graduates—crossed the line onto Fort Benning.

The military police stopped us about a mile inside the base and gave us two options: (1) turn back, walk off the base, and not be arrested or processed; or (2) board buses to be taken to the military processing center to be fingerprinted and photographed. Approximately 2,100 chose the second option, because a big part of this movement is civil disobedience.

The buses took us to the MP headquarters in an airport hangar where we were kept on the bus for several hours, then moved to a tent, and finally taken into the processing center. Our group, in addition to many others, was intentionally split up to foster a sense of confusion and separation during the process. Yet it was inspirational to meet a whole new group of people and hear the reasons why the nuns, Veterans for Peace, school teachers, college students, grandmothers, etc., chose to come to Fort Benning. After we were fingerprinted, photographed, and given a letter barring us from returning to the Fort Benning premises for a five-year period, the MPs loaded us onto buses and dropped us off at a city park a couple of miles from the entrance to Fort Benning.

Just after the main funeral procession crossed onto the Fort Benning premises, another wave of civil disobedience—marked as “high-risk”—began. Groups buried coffins, planted corn, and ignored police orders. A “puppet invasion” occurred, which ended in a rather short-lived, yet tense, encounter with MPs a mile inside the base. At a different Fort Benning entrance, a group also staged a massacre and locked arms and legs to block traffic and resist arrest.

The recent protest at Fort Benning is just one of number of growing resistance movements across the country and around the world. As economic globalization and policies that put profits over people continue to exacerbate the gap between the rich and poor, these movements will only increase in size, frequency, and influence. It is an exciting and distressing period, as there are seeds of hope beginning to sprout in spite of the structural realities that continue to deepen injustice.      Z

Baker Perry is a doctoral student in geography at the University of Washington.