Record crowd gathers to protest SOA

The Rev. Jerry Zawada has already served a federal prison term for trespassing on government property to protest a school he blames for human rights abuses in Latin America. This year, the 68-year-old Catholic priest risked another one. Zawada was among at least 41 protesters arrested during an annual protest calling for the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Corporation, formerly known as the Army's School of the Americas (SOA). On Sunday, Nov. 20, a record-breaking crowd of up to 19,000 people protested at the gates of the school in Fort Benning, GA. The SOA was created in 1946 as a training base for Latin American military officers to promote democracy in their home countries. Since then, an alarming pattern has developed between the graduates of the school and some of the worst human rights violations in Latin America, according to SOA Watch. It was legally closed in 2001 and renamed WHINSEC, but it operates in the same building and teaches many of the same courses as its predecessor. Its thousands of critics believe it hasn't changed at all and they have been demanding for sixteen years that the school shut down. School of the Americas Watch, the group that sponsors the annual rally, accuses the school's graduates of committing murders, rapes and tortures in Latin America. Military officials deny the charges. "We want to stop this," said Zawada, of Cedar Lake, IN, who was released from a seven-month sentence in November. Another prison sentence would be "nothing compared to the suffering of torture survivors and war victims," he said. Protesters are typically arrested each year when they enter the west-central Georgia military reservation. The Army added a second fence topped by razor wire last year, and erected a third fence this year, but the protesters–even the older ones like Zawada–seemed to find a way to scale or get past them. The protests are timed to coincide with the anniversary of the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. A congressional panel concluded that some of the killers were SOA graduates. "We feel this school is connected to suffering and death for the people of Latin America–a school that is paid for with our tax money," said SOA Watch founder Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest. "We are saying, 'Not in our name.'" Adriana Portillo Bartow has been back to her native Guatemala 15 times since members of her family disappeared more than 20 years ago, never to be heard from again. "My father and the other adults were tortured and killed," Bartow said. "The bodies were dumped so we would never find them. I hoped my daughters and sister were spared." Bartow, who now lives in Chicago, was among the 16,000 protesters who gathered the day before near the main gate of Fort Benning to protest. She said those responsible for her family's disappearance were trained at the school. Bartow said the Guatemalan Army first killed her 23-year-old brother in 1981. Two months later, on Sept. 11, personnel from the national police and the army came to her father's home and his place of work in two simultaneous military operations. "They detained my father, my stepmother, my 18-month-old sister and my two daughters. We never saw them or heard from them again," Bartow said. "They interrogated me. I don't know how long. They denied my father and daughters were at the house. For three years I couldn't do anything because I was terrified my other two daughters would be taken away from me. That was a common thing." She ended up in the United States seeking help from the US government and said officials later told her they had information but could not share it with her because of national security. Bartow said she has met with the United Nations Truth Commission and its Committee Against Torture and even filed a lawsuit against the Guatemalan officers she said she knows gave the orders, but the lawsuit was dismissed. She said there is clear evidence the officers were trained at the former School of the Americas at Fort Benning. That's why she has joined the protest and hasn't given up on finding out what happened to them. Sister Pat Hoffman, 74, of San Francisco, also attended this year. "I'm here to help close the SOA," she said. "We have a martyr in our group. She was killed in the Amazon, trying to help the people of the Amazon region save their houses. She was targeted as a troublemaker–Sister Dorothy Stang. We're absolutely sure soldiers from Brazil who were involved trained here." On the final day of protest, a Buddhist group arrived that had been walking from Atlanta to Ft. Benning since Nov. 12. Protesters were entertained by the Indigo Girls. A puppet pageant focused on the story of Prof. Carlos Mauricio, who was one of many civilians arrested and tortured by graduates of the SOA. Mauricio and two other Salvadoran torture survivors were able to move to the United States after their release, where they successfully sued their torturers, creating a precedent for other cases including one that ended in the conviction of two SOA graduates responsible for the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Finally, a funeral procession was conducted which each year commemorates the martyrdom of thousands of Latin Americans at the hands of death squads and armies led by School of Americas graduates. As each name was announced from the stage in a solemn, sing-song litany, the crowd chanted "presente" and participants circled the assembly grounds at the gate of Ft. Benning, carrying crosses marked with the names. Soon afterwards the first contingent of civil disobedience activists began their nonviolent trespass onto the grounds.