School of the Americas protest growing each year

Thousands of terrorists, death squads, assassins, paramilitaries and torturers are being “trained” in “schools” as you read this.

Once these “students” graduate they will travel the world, leaving trails of blood, death and misery everywhere behind them. These “schools” are scattered around the world in oppressive states such as China, Russia, and Israel, but the most notorious of all these “schools” is located in the good old US of A.

Since 1946, “The School of the Americas” has trained over 60,000 Latin American “students” in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics (torture). The “school” was opened with the purpose of keeping the entire Western Hemisphere under American control and dominance. For this reason, the majority of the enrolled “students” are Latin American soldiers and paramilitaries who will be working for American interests once they graduate. This is not a secret. This is not classified. This is admitted fact. This is accepted and even proudly promoted by the American government.

The United States opened this school in 1946 under the name “U.S. Army Caribbean Training Center.” Seventeen years later it would be renamed “The School of the Americas.” It was originally opened in Panama, as it was closer, and easier for the right-wing paramilitaries, and fascist dictatorships in Latin America, and the Caribbean to send their soldiers to Panama than to the U.S. It was also easier to keep the school out of the public realm of consciousness by doing so. However in 1984, after 38 years of operation, the school was forced out of Panama as part of the Panama Canal Treaty. It was not shut down, instead the school now commonly dubbed; “School of Assassins”, was quickly relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia. As the “school” left his country, the former Panamanian president, Jorge Illueca, had this to say; “The School of the Americas is the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”

In 1990, Father Roy Bourgeois, who received a purple heart as a naval officer in the Vietnam War, founded the “School of Americas Watch” after realizing that his government was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, priests, union workers, and student leaders in Latin America. After doing his research, he realized that “The School of the Americas” was the most important contributor of oppression to Latin America. This “school” has produced more dictators than any other school in the world. At least eleven Latin American dictators including Manuel Noriega, Hugo Banzar Suarez, Roberto Viola, and Guillermo Rodriguez are graduates of this “school.”

This realization led Bourgeois to Fort Benning, where he opened a small office in front of the school with the purpose of closing the SOA permanently. The first protest he organized against the school drew a crowd of only six people, however, his perseverance paid off and every following year the protests grew in size and visibility.

As Bourgeois persisted in spreading the truth about this “school” around the world, high profile actors, writers and politicians began participating in the yearly protest. All the negative attention forced the SOA to be “closed” temporarily in December 2000. It was then reopened a month later with a new name; “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.”

In addition to the name change, the school also launched a massive PR campaign in a desperate attempt to clean up its image without cleaning up its act. This trick has not worked and the protests continue to grow despite this.

I decided to join this movement and traveled to Georgia this past weekend with over 100 people from the London area. As we had expected, the protests taking place on November 18 and 19 grew once again this year, bringing the number of protesters up from last years 20,000 to nearly 22,000.

I shouldn't use the word protest because it was more of an uplifting festival of resistance in the streets. There were puppetistas, break dancers, singers, drummers, rappers, punk-rockers, actors, grandmothers and young children who traveled from as far as Europe and South America to show their solidarity with the victims and their objection to U.S. foreign policy. The atmosphere was completely electric, welcoming, and friendly. As we all celebrated our mass resistance there were also simultaneous protests taking place against this institution in various cities around the world to demonstrate that this is truly a global movement.

Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez has also joined this movement, announcing that his country would become the first Latin American country to boycott the “school”.

Now it's your turn to do the same, speak out about the “School of Assassins.” Make plans now to join the protest next year and help shut down this terrorist training camp. Close the SOA. Fight terror where it starts.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.