Leader Against the US Army's "School of the Americas" Visits Cochabamba

Readers: The following is a posting from one of our Democracy Center researchers, Aaron Luoma, about the visit this week to Cochabamba of Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the America’s Watch. If you are in town in the next few days, I hope you will join us.

Jim

Leader Against the US Army's "School of the Americas" Visits Cochabamba

This coming Monday night, March 13, at 6:30 p.m., those present in Cochabamba will have the opportunity to hear from Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the America’s Watch (SOAW). The title of this public talk, and panel discussion to follow, is: School of the Americas: The Security Policy of the United States and Military Violence in Latin America. The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is an institution that trains Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency tactics, psychological warfare, and interrogation tactics. Its graduates have been implicated in countless atrocities and human rights violations throughout Latin America since the school’s founding in 1946.

Father Roy Bourgeois began his Maryknoll service working with the poor in Bolivia in the mid-1970s. During the dictatorship of former SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer, a member of the school’s ‘Hall of Fame’, Father Roy was arrested and forced to leave the country. He founded SOAW in 1990 and has worked tirelessly ever since to close the school, including serving over four years in prison for non-violently protesting the SOA. Annual SOAW protests at the gates of Fort Benning attract more than 15,000 participants.

Since it formation, the SOA has always been, and continues to be, a vital and strategic component of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. The fulfillment of U.S. military and economic security goals, however, comes at a price for Latin America: these highly trained officers return to their countries not to repel a foreign enemy, but, more often than not, to repress and brutalize their own citizenry. Taken from the SOAW web site , former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”

The school’s record is particularly shameful in El Salvador. SOA graduates have been found responsible for: the assassination of Archbishop Romero in 1980; the murders of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989; and the four church-women raped and murdered in 1982, two of whom were friends of Father Roy. Participating in Monday’s panel will be Carlos Mauricio from El Salvador, tortured at the hands of SOA graduates. Closer to home, another SOA grad is the army sharpshooter, Captain, Robinson Iriarte de La Fuente. It was Iriarte de la Fuente who, in April 2000 during the Cochabamba water revolt, was captured on film shooting live rounds into an unarmed crowd. A seventeen-year-old boy, Victor Hugo Daza, was shot and killed with a bullet through the face. Brutal repression by SOA graduates continues today in Colombia, in what Human Rights Watch calls ‘State Terrorism.’

This public event is being sponsored by: The Coordinator for Water and Life, The Democracy Center, the Bolivian Solidarity Network, and the Maryknoll Language Institute.

This weekend’s events are as follows:

Friday, March 10 – 7:30 p.m.

Documentary Film: 'School of the Assassins’ – nominated for an Academy Award in 1995, this film details the history of the SOA and the effort to close it.
Location: La Republika Café (342 Ecuador, between 25 de Mayo and Espana)

Monday, March 13th

9 a.m-5:00 p.m. – Local organizations exhibit their materials on themes such as human rights, military violence, and other campaigns.

Location: Plaza Principal, 14 de Septiembre

(If anyone would like to participate in presenting their organizations work in the Plaza Principal on Monday, please call Tita Camacho at: 440-7680)

6:30-9:00 p.m.: Panel Discussion: School of the Americas: The Security Policy of the United States and Military Violence in Latin America

Presenters:

Father Roy Bourgeois (Founder, School of the America’s Watch)
Carlos Mauricio (Professor in El Salvador, and torture victim of SOA graduates)
Ana Laura Duran (Assembly for Human Rights-Cochabamba)
Dr. Andres Guatier (Institute of Therapy and Investigation of the Consequences of Torture and State Violence)

Moderator: Theo Roncken, Accion Andina

Location: Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB), Calama 255 (two blocks south of the plaza principal)