Hundreds Rally Against School of the Americas
Hundreds of students from Sacramento to San Jose gathered on Lone Mountain in February to hear the words of Fr. Roy Bourgeois, the man who brought infamy to the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. Bourgeois began calling for the Fort Benning, Ga., school’s closing more than a decade ago after learning of the human rights abuses committed by the SOA alumni.
 “We feel this school contributes to a whole lot of death and suffering in Latin America,” Fr. Bourgeois said during his appearance at USF.
The school trains Latin American personnel in military activities he said. Graduates have been held responsible for many human rights abuses in Latin America, including the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, in El Salvador.
“Of the 26 people who have since been held responsible for the massacre, 19 are graduates of the School of the Americas,” he said. “It is well known as a school of assassins.”
Although the United States in January changed the name of the school to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), Fr. Bourgeois contends that its mission remains the same.
“It’s still a combat school,” he said. “It’s still about men with guns. They tell us they’re teaching democracy. We say ‘How do you teach democracy through the barrel of a gun?’”
Fr. Bourgeois was the keynote speaker for a University Ministry-sponsored rally at USF to close WHISC. According to his biogrpahical information, he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972 and worked with the poor in Bolivia for five years. In 1980 he became involved in El Salvador after four U.S. churchwomen were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Two of the nuns killed were his friends. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in El Salvador ever since. He has spent three years in federal prisons for protest activities against the School of the Americas. He currently works at the School of the Americas Watch, located just outside the main entrance of Fort Benning.
“Fifty of our people have collectively served over 30 years in prison over the last 10 years,” Fr. Bourgeois said of others who have joined in his cause. “They could send us to prison, but they could not silence us. They could not silence truth….We need your help, your voices, your energy. Together, we can bring about some peace and justice. Let those who have a voice speak for the voiceless.”
He called upon his audience at USF, which included elementary school students to college students, to spread his message.
“There is $20 million per year going into this school to train people how to be commandos,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be better to close that school down and send these people to U.S. universities, like here at USF?”
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