SOA Watch

“I’m really proud of my Mom,” Peake says, noting that it is hard on the family, but she understands why her mother is so committed. She says she, too, may cross the line some day. 

SOA Victims Remembered 

S OA Watch estimates that over 64,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained by the SOA over the last 60 years. The actual number of people killed by SOA graduates is hard to determine, but Bourgeois estimates that 75,000 have been killed in El Salvador, 200,000 in Guatemala, and thousands more in Columbia. 

SOA Watch reports that, despite all of the evidence, few have been held accountable for these deaths. Victims tend to be poor people who work the land, but also targeted are union leaders, educators, student leaders and religious people. Archbishop Oscar Romero, six Jesuit priests, and four American nuns are some of the most widely know victims. 

Vigil organizers held civil disobedience training on Thursday and Friday. Over the weekend literature tables lined the entryway to the main gate of the base. On Sunday, from the stage set up in front of the gate, a woman from Columbia spoke in Spanish and another woman translated into English: “We remember today that on February 21 of this year, in our peace community eight of our members were massacred, including three children, one of whom was 18 months old and all of whose bodies were cut into pieces.” Names and ages of SOA victims were chanted over the loudspeaker as the solemn funeral procession began: “Bruno Claros, 50 years old,” a woman’s voice echoed above the crowd. 

“Presente!” the crowd chanted back in unison as they held up wooden crosses.

Next, a man chanted the name of another documented victim of SOA graduates. “Eva Romero, 11 years old, daughter of Bruno Claros.” 

“Presente!” the crowd chanted again as they raised a sea of white crosses.  

Marcos Rubenstein, 54, heard the names of several friends and co-workers he knew in Argentina. As a journalist and active union member, Rubenstein explained that journalists and people organizing unions were often the first to be captured, tortured, and disappeared. 

It took more than three hours to complete the list of names and as the marchers passed the front gate, they placed their crosses, flags, and tokens onto it. 

Carol Tyx, a professor of English at Mount Mercy College, described her two-week visit to Colombia with Christian Peacemaker Teams in May 2005. She met people who had fled from two small villages after violence resulted in the deaths of many family members. They had only recently returned to their homes. Tyx brought a banner to the vigil she had watched them paint in Spanish that translates as, “The Communities of La Florida and Los Neques don’t want Colombian officials trained at the School of the Americas in the United States.” 

The Hennessy Family 

I n the years before 9/11 thousands crossed the line and were released with a simple ban and letter telling them not to come back. Only those who returned were sentenced to prison. Sister Gwen Hennessy is one of many arrested for returning to cross the line. At age 68, she went to prison on July 14, 2001 for 6 months. She recalls walking around the track two months later when she heard that a plane flew into the World Trade Center. When she went inside, she found the other prisoners gathered around the TV. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” one of the women said to her. “To stop terrorism.” 

“I was so taken aback, that somebody understood the whole thing,” Hennessy recalls. “And another one stood up and said, ‘What goes around, comes around,’ and I thought, she understands, too.” 

Protesting the human rights abuses in Latin America is a family affair for the Franciscan Sister. Her sister, Dorothy Marie Hennessy, 91, is also a nun of the St. Francis Order. Like Gwen, Sister Dorothy has crossed the line on several occasions and served time in prison. Their brother, Father Ronald Hennessy, was stationed in Central America from 1964 until his death in 1999. He wrote to his family describing how young men were being taken to jail, their mothers coming to him out of desperation. “Villages were being wiped out, men, women and children, and no one was caring,” Gwen explains. “So he wrote a letter home to Iowa and said, ‘Publish it.’” 

Sister Gwen recalls that the church and the U.S. Embassy told him he should leave, but her brother refused. “No way, I am not leaving,” he said. “I can leave, but they can’t.” Later elected regional superior, he was assigned to a very conflicted zone in El Salvador. A book about Ron Hennessy’s experience with the genocidal practices of U.S.-backed Guatemalan governments, Through a Glass Darkly , by Tom Melville, was recently released by Xlibris. “It really tells this whole story of oppression, from way back when they had what they called, ‘ten years of spring,’ when they had a leader who tried agrarian reform, ” Gwen explains. 

Beyond the SOA 

L ike Hennessy, Tyx believes that shutting down the school is only part of what they are working towards. “We’re trying to change a whole foreign policy, a whole attitude about militarism. And the school almost feels symbolic,” Tyx said. “Not that closing it is not important. But if we close the school, you know, that wouldn’t change Plan Columbia.” 

The official name of the SOA was changed in 1999 to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced Bill HR 1217 that would suspend operations at the SOA/WHINSEC and investigate the development and use of the training manuals. Congress began considering the bill in June. 

All these efforts are having an impact. Argentina and Uruguay announced in March that they would no longer send soldiers for training at the SOA due to the history of human rights abuses. They join Venezuela, whose president Hugo Chavez announced in January 2004 that Venezuela would no longer send troops to train at the school. 

Ishi Fales did presentations about the School of the Americas in his classes at Kirkwood College after he returned to Iowa City from the 2005 vigil. “I thought it was very powerful,” he says, “It was an experience that I will really keep with me for a long, long time.”