makopress

by Matt Kapko

Like so many in his generation, Father Roy Bourgeois looks back on his experiences in the Vietnam War as a major turning point. When growing up in rural Georgia, he never discussed issues like the impacts of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

It was on the battlefield in Vietnam, “in the midst of all the violence and madness,” where he was forced to question the use of violence. “Many of us have discovered the hard way – that is not the way,” Bourgeois said.

He returned from Vietnam thankful to be alive – a changed man – and determined to work for peace. Three years later he went on his first demonstration.

“The road to peace is not there for us today. We’ve got to walk it, we’ve got to make it,” he said.

Bourgeois took his walk for peace to Latin America. He began his work in a barrio outside La Paz, Bolivia where he witnessed the deaths of many children under the age of 5.

Soon, Bourgeois was in El Salvador. By the time off his arrival in the 1980s, 60 percent of the land in El Salvador was owned and controlled by 14 families, he said.

It was a violent and volatile time in El Salvador. The country was in the midst of a civil war that lasted 13 years (1980 – 1992).

Two incidents in 1980 left the country in panic: the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the rape and slaughter of three nuns and a lay worker.

In the village of El Mozote, more than 900 civilians were massacred in late 1981. There were hundreds of women and children among the victims – the youngest being just 3 days old.

Later, in a testimony, Rufina Amaya, the sole survivor and witness to the massacre, said “God allowed me to live so that I can testify how the army killed the men and women and burned their bodies. I didn’t see them kill the children, but I heard the children’s screams.”

SOA truths emerge

A U.N. Truth Commission Report on El Salvador later cited 49 of the 60 officers responsible for committing the atrocities during El Salvador’s Civil War as graduates of the School of the Americas (recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The report dubbed the school as the “school of assassins.”

This was no news to Bourgeois, who had researched the School of the Americas [SOA] and quickly became an outspoken opponent of its involvement in Latin America.

Since its creation in 1946, the SOA has trained nearly 60,000 Latin American soldiers and officers from 23 countries in Latin America. It currently trains an average of 1,000 soldiers a year from 18 countries.

Knowing that thousands of graduates from the SOA are responsible for atrocities committed throughout Latin America, Bourgeois chose to dedicate his time and energy to shutting the school down.

He finds the school’s training techniques immoral, but pushing him further into action was his discovery of the schools location: Fort Benning, Georgia.

So in the late ‘80s when Bourgeois and some friends caught word that 525 Salvadoran soldiers showed up at the school for training, they decided to take the battle home to the United States and proclaim, “Not in our name.”

They snuck into the base at night, climbed up a tall pine tree and with the help of a boom box, blasted the speech Romero gave the night before his assassination.

For this act of civil disobedience, Bourgeois was sent to prison for a year-and-a-half.
El Salvador would even suffer more bloodshed when, in 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were dragged out from the University of Central America in San Salvador and massacred.

A Congressional report concluded that 19 of the 26 officers responsible were trained at the School of the Americas.

Shutting down the SOA

News of this event became the catalyst for Bourgeois’ forming of the School of the Americas Watch [SOAW]. He could no longer bear the U.S. government’s involvement in operating, “a school of assassins; a school of dictators.”

At the cost of $20 million a year to U.S. taxpayers, the soldiers attending the school are trained in psychological operations, combat skills and counter-insurgency techniques. “Who are the insurgents? This is the key question,” Bourgeois said. “In Latin America it is who they always are: the poor!”

The [SOAW] annually holds a vigil in front of the school to “commemorate the victims, shut down the school and change oppressive U.S. foreign policy.” Last November more than 10,000 people came to protest.

“We don’t wait for religious leaders to speak,” Bourgeois said. Too many of them are securely anchored to corporate interests and keeping busy as “cheerleaders for war,” he explained.

“We answer to a higher law; a law that calls us to change our foreign policy in Latin America. When Jesus said, ‘Let us love our enemies,’ he probably meant we shouldn’t kill them.”

President Bush keeps telling us that we have to shut these terrorist training camps down, he said over loud applause. “What a better place to start than right here in Georgia.”

The next vigil is set for Nov. 22-23. More information can be found at www.soaw.org.

Thoughts on Iraq

Bourgeois recently returned from a trip to Iraq a few months ago, and shared some of his experiences at Humboldt State University on April 1. “I wanted to talk with the people we’ve been getting ready to kill,” he began, “The people in Iraq are like us. They are us.”

The majority of Iraqis he spoke with said they do fear Saddam Hussein, but their fear of the United States and its bombs is much greater.

Now our country’s at war, he said. “More civilians killed yesterday, more today, more tomorrow.”

Bourgeois said people around the world are telling the United States that it is “out of step” with the rest of the world. “Our greatest enemy is not Iraq. Our greatest enemy is ignorance and its right here in the United States.”

Explaining why he feels so compelled to dissent, he recited words from a speech Romero gave the night before he was assassinated: “Let those who have a voice speak out for the voiceless.” Like Romero, our weapon has to be knowledge and nonviolence, he said.

“Hope has always been very important to me,” however, “It’s so easy for the anger I’m feeling to consume me. I have never seen it quite this bad before.”

“We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in knowing that,” but “We can’t stay home. We’ve got to speak. We’ve got to act.”