From School of the Americas Watch email

Photo of Father Roy Bourgeois by SOA Watch.

August 9th will mark the thirtieth year since Father Roy Bourgeois and two close friends first crossed the line. After fasting in protest at the entrance of Fort Benning, Roy, Linda Ventimiglia, and the late Father Larry Rosebaugh disguised themselves in the uniforms of high-ranking army officials and walked onto the grounds of base. It was three years after the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, and, with the arrival of 525 soldiers to Fort Benning from El Salvador for military training, Linda, Larry, and Roy had a special message to deliver. After the bugle was blown, and the lights turned out, the three made their way to the area near the Salvadoran barracks, remaining hidden within a small cluster of pine trees. Armed with a cassette player, and a tape of Archbishop Romero's last homily, Roy climbed high into a tree and played the speech. "His voice boomed into the barracks," Roy recalls. As the speech thundered in the sky, dozens of Salvadoran troops ran from the barracks to figure out the source of the voice. Also arriving on the scene were several heavily armed officials ordering Roy to climb down from the tree. The three were arrested, charged with criminal trespassing and impersonating an army officer, and were sentenced to a year and a half in prison. One year later, the U.S. Army School of the Americas was opened in Fort Benning after being forced to leave Panama by President Jorge Illueca in 1984. The resistance to the school from within Panama was a part of that country's strides toward independence, and their rejection of U.S. imperialism.

The U.S. resistance to the SOA/WHINSEC and U.S. militarization in the Americas grew from this original act of resistance. SOA Watch was formally founded in 1990, and has continued to grow since then. In the past 23 years, the U.S. has continued to tighten its grasp on Latin America and the Caribbean. It does not always employ the guns and the tanks to oppress people: there are other means of "protecting democracy". This includes the World Bank checkbook, the free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the US-Colombia TPA, and deregulation of economic markets. But as empire has grown, so has the resistance. Much of this is due to the tireless work of social movements, who relentlessly identify attacks on community building, cultures of peace, and self-determination and try to thwart the tools of imperalism before they are set in motion. These social movements are strongest when they stand in solidarity with one another. The struggle to close the SOA is united to many different struggles: the struggle for immigrant rights, the right of communities to control their own destiny, the right of workers to unionize, the struggle against police brutality in our communities, and the work to end the attack on whistleblowers who promote democracy by revealing the truth behind the lies.