Local Group Adds Voice to National Call

The Western PA School of the Americas Watch (WPA-SOAW) joins the national School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) in calling for closure of the School of the Americas.  Formed in the fall of 2000, the group is planning its fifth annual trip to Ft. Benning, Georgia.  In anticipation of taking two busloads to Georgia, rooms to accommodate one hundred Western Pennsylvania participants have been reserved.  Members are now actively involved with the national group. The trip will culminate another year of local fundraising and outreach as well as its work on the national level.

Nationally, SOAW has issued a call to action to “Shut Down The School Of The Americas, November 19-21, 2004, Fort Benning, Georgia.”

The School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is a combat training school for Latin American security personnel located at Fort Benning.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, the SOA was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America. The US taxpayer funded SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in such courses as counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics.

For over a decade, students, religious, labor, veterans, human rights, and social and global justice groups have been converging every November at the gates of Fort Benning to speak out in solidarity with the people of the Americas and to engage in nonviolent direct action. We will gather again this year on November 20 and 21, 2004, to continue together in the struggle until the School of the Americas is closed and the policies it represents are changed forever.

This “School of Assassins,” in the guise of promoting democracy, has graduated eleven Latin American dictators, including Manuel Noriega of Panama, Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala, and Hugo Banzar Suárez of Bolivia. Graduates of the school have been consistently linked to human rights violations and to the suppression of popular movements in Central and South America of people demanding access to land, safer working conditions and control of their own natural resources.

For decades, while supporting death squads, propping up dictators and actually overthrowing democratically elected leaders, the US government claimed it was bringing democracy to Latin America. But we do not believe that you can bring about positive social change through the use of force. You cannot spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.

Locally, the WPA-SOAW urges people to join in this call to close the SOA.  Buses will leave Pittsburgh on Friday, November 19, 2004, and return on Monday, November 22, 2004.  Deanna Caligiuri, an intern at the Thomas Merton Center, will be handling trip reservations and can be contacted at the Merton Center.  Online registration will also be available.  Email address is info_wpasoaw@yahoo.com. 

- Edith Wilson