Feb-Mar-97

Speaking for the Voiceless

We who have a voice, we should speak for the voiceless -Archbishop Oscar Romero
ON NOVEMBER 16,1989, six Jesuit priests, along with their co-worker and her 15-year-old daughter, Salina, were dragged out of their rooms at the University of Cen-tral America, San Salvador, in the middle of the night and killed with M-16 rifles supplied by our tax money. At that time we had been pumping a million dollars a day into El Salvador. According to the U.S. Congressional Task Force, the soldiers responsible for that massacre were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.

This was the first time that I and many others who had been working on Latin American issues had heard about this school on American soil. That's when we went to Columbus, Georgia. There, right outside the main gate of Fort Benning, we set up a School of the Americas Watch, where for the last six years we have been doing research and gathering documentation on this school. We gather at the main gate of Fort Benning each year to protest against the School of the Americas (SOA), which we see as the "School of Assassins." We gather, not only to remember the six Jesuits and the two women, but the many other people in Latin America who have died at the hands of this school's graduates.

When we gathered in front of the gate a year ago, each of us had the name of one of the Jesuits or one of the women on our shirts, spattered with fake blood. A couple of soldiers represented the School of the Americas graduates. After the memorial service, thirteen of us-a 74-year-old nun, World War II veterans, a couple of priests, an attorney from California, a mother of eight-went on to Fort Benning. About two hundred yards into Fort Benning, we lay on the ground, dramatizing the deaths in the 1989 massacre. For simply lying on the ground, we were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. First-time offenders like Sister Claire, the 74-year-old nun, the World War II vets, and the mother of eight, got two months in prison. I got six months at the Federal prison in Atlanta.

The killers-the 19 officers cited for that massacre-were given amnesty, while we who non-violently protested the killings were sent to prison. Just before we were sentenced, we said to the judge (who had pardoned William Calley for the My Lai massacre) that we do not fear prison. We will speak from prison. The truth cannot be silenced. And we have continued speaking from the thirteen different prisons that we were sent to around the country.

The Jesuits were killed for the same reason that Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed by graduates of the school, for the same reason that the four church women were raped and killed by graduates of the school, for the same reason that labor leaders were killed there. They were speaking the language of the poor, confronting a socio-economic system in El Salvador controlled by a small elite. That country is a microcosm of what's been going on throughout Latin America. The oligarchy, over the years, has come to own most of the land, together with the power and the wealth and the military. Anyone confronting that system is seen as "el enemigo," the enemy. The U.S. Army School of the Americas taught that critics of U.S. foreign policy, critics of the military and the oligarchy, are comunistas, the insurgents. They are to be "eliminated."

Who are "they"? Who are the "insurgents"? They are the poor and those who work with the poor. They are the campesinos who cannot make it on $1.00 a day and reach a point when they can no longer endure their suffering and scream out "¡Basta! Enough!" They speak out for food; they speak out for their children, who are dying before their time. For that, they are hunted down, tortured, killed. Those who dare to defend the plight of the poor and speak out for justice and a more equal distribution of the wealth and the power and the land are also seen as the enemy. The Jesuits were put in that category. They were a real threat to the system. They were educating people, raising consciousness, not only in El Salvador but throughout Latin America and the world. Many of them were well traveled, going to Europe, coming to the United States, bringing their findings, their awareness of what was going on in their country. The military said, "We will not tolerate this any more."

The School of the Americas is now in its 50th year. That school began in 1946 in Panama as a U.S. Army school that trained Latin America's officers and enlisted men. Over 60,000 soldiers went to that school over the past fifty years. Supposedly the school was started, in the words of the Pentagon, "to bring stability to Latin America." However, within a short while the school became known as "La Escuela de Golpe," The School of Coups" because so many of its graduates became the country's dictators. One of them was Gen. Manuel Noriega, ex-dictator of Panama, now doing forty years at a U.S. Federal State Prison for drug running. Another was Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez from Bolivia, where I lived for five years. He was brutal, very repressive, responsible for the death and the exile of hundreds of Bolivians. Yet General Banzer in 1988 was brought to Fort Benning and inducted into the School of the Americas' Hall of Fame, where today his photograph hangs on the wall with those of some 18 other generals. Another graduate was Roberto D'Aubuisson, the well known death squad leader from El Salvador.

In 1984 this school was forced out of Panama by the terms of the Panama Canal treaty and very quietly set out in the pines of Georgia where today it is operating full force with U.S. taxpayer money, training about 1500 soldiers a year from Latin America, including the high ranking officers and the leaders in their military. The Pentagon has consistently denied that the School has anything to do with torture, but this past September 20th, they called a press conference and announced that manuals used at the School of the Americas for seven years advocated torture, blackmail, executions. The school teaches commando operations, insurgency techniques, and interrogation techniques. The Pentagon now acknowledges that many graduates of this school have returned to their home countries and have done terrible things.

We are working hard to close the School. The Pentagon will fight to keep it going because it is very important in the context of U.S. foreign policy. Historically, our policy is built around protecting our interests in Latin America. We need the military to keep that socio-economic system going, a system that keeps a vast majority of our brothers and sisters impoverished, living on the edge-fertile ground for our large corporations to go there and pay workers a fraction of what we pay workers here.

What I find very offensive, however, is when the officials-the comandante of the school and the generals from the Pentagon-say "Look, we are teaching these soldiers about democracy. We had actually implemented [and they are truthful about this], a four-hour human rights course at the school." It's a joke! This school is not about democracy; it's about control, suffering and death of people in Latin America.

I grew up in a small town in Louisiana, got a degree in geology, and became a naval officer. I went to Vietnam, and it was a turning point in my life. Losing friends there, being wounded myself, I started asking questions I had not asked before. In the midst of all of this darkness and violence and death in Vietnam, a missionary and a small staff were trying to heal the suffering of these children. I was doing a little volunteer work there and began to see them as healers, as peacemakers. I started thinking about doing something like that with my life. After my year there, I left Vietnam and came home and entered the Maryknoll order. I spent the next six years studying theology, then was ordained a Catholic priest, and went to serve the poor of Bolivia. The outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, became my home for the next five years. It was there in Latin America that I really got educated. The poor in Bolivia and later in El Salvador became my teachers. They taught me much about my country's foreign policy, about the CIA and the multinationals. I came home grateful for that experience and feeling responsible to educate people in my own country about what I had seen and heard, about the CIA and how they operate there, about our foreign policy.

The Pentagon and our foreign policy are still operating in the mode of the Cold War. The School of the Americas officials talk in the classroom about the "dragon" that represents communism. "The head has been cut off, but the tail, the most dangerous part, is still out there." The Pentagon still sees people in Latin America-the poor, those who work with the poor, labor leaders, human rights advocates, health care workers-as the enemy, as insurgents.

When we look at the plight of the poor, we see the vast majority of people living in abject poverty. We see inadequate housing, no running water, lack of schools, no medicines when they're sick. If we were living under those conditions, we would be doing what the people there are doing. We would be saying, "¡Basta ya! Enough!" We're not going to take this. We're going to change." But when they call out for change and organize, our CIA is there, as in Guatemala, as in El Salvador, as in Honduras, with the Battalion 316 trained by the CIA and others. We are there, not to promote democracy and human rights and a better quality of life, but as an obstacle. We are there to protect U.S. economic interests.

I am very saddened, very angry at times, when I think of the silence that comes from Rome, and the silence from the vast majority of our Catholic bishops here in the United States and in Latin America. Historically, the church is a cheerleader for the government in Latin America and has a very hospitable relationship with the U.S. government.

Yet, in Latin America there have been Oscar Romeros. There have been other bishops, though few in number, a real minority. But my hope does not come from the hierarchies of the institutional churches. They have become a corporate executive. They are into wealth and power as the business people. My hope comes from people of faith, people of goodwill, people who are on the side of the poor in Latin America and here at home-grassroots people, women and men who are speaking out, many for the first time, who are calling on their bishops and others to speak out. And if they don't speak out, we're moving ahead without them.

Grassroots organizations in Latin America continue to organize, to work in their unions, in their hospitals, in their universities, trying to confront the injustice of their poverty. There is a growth in consciousness here too. A movement is spreading around the country-veteran's groups, church groups, students, teachers. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for example-76,000 nuns-recently passed a resolution to close the school. We are hoping that the new Congress will cut out its funding. Letters and phone calls-written in the context of budget cuts-should make a very simple request: Cut off all funding to the School. Rep. Joseph Kennedy has been a leader. We got within thirty-five votes of cutting all funding to the school. He will once again try to run through a bill in Congress to cut off funding. At a time when we are cutting school budgets for our children, this school is getting $18.5 million a year to train thugs from Latin America in the art of killing.

I also encourage people to see "School of Assassins" narrated by Susan Sarandon, an 18-minute video that was nominated for an academy award last year. It is an excellent resource for students, for veterans' groups, for faith communities. I encourage people to call the Maryknoll Order to purchase that video [$14.95, plus $3.00 postage]: (800) 227-8523. Use it to educate others.

Closing the School of the Americas is one of many issues revolving around justice and peace, and they're all connected. Archbishop Romero said it quite well: "We who have a voice, we should speak for the voiceless." We can think about his words and search our own consciousness, look at our own experience, and ask, "How can I speak on this issue that I'm learning about?" We don't all have to go to jail or do acts of civil disobedience, but we can do something, whether writing Congress, writing the President, or writing letters to editors.

Material for this article was excerpted and edited from an interview by Jerry Brown shortly before Father Bourgeois was released from prison in Atlanta, GA..

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