Media Mouse was in attendance for the annual School of Americas (SOA)/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) protest in Fort Benning, Georgia this past weekend. The two day protest saw 16,000 people on Saturday and 19,000 on Sunday. The event coincided with the anniversary of the massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989 by a Salvadoran Army Patrol, two members of which were SOA graduates. The SOA is charged by its critics as training its students in becoming human rights violators throughout Latin America. Perhaps its most famous graduate is General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, the Chilean military dictator from 1973 to 1990 who has been held responsible for innumerable war crimes. In 2001, the SOA "closed," reopening shortly thereafter in the same compound. with a new name, the WHINSEC. Protests have been happening there since 1990.
The protest itself featured an array of speakers, performers, theater, presentations, and puppetry, among many other things. While the consumption of various activist wares seemed to be a priority for many people (there was also an array of vendors peddling various activist-related goods), an air of genuine desire for change could be felt. Of particular note during the protest were the several speakers who were survivors of torture who gave particularly moving testimony. The link between torture in U.S. foreign policy as taught through the SOA in the past and the present-day use of torture in places like Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other places and the fighting of some government officials to make torture legal was frequently brought up. Also, a Food Not Bombs group from an unknown city did an amazing job providing delicious free food both days. The massive puppets were an energizing presence throughout the event, as well. On Sunday, a list of all people killed by SOA graduates or by groups under the command of SOA grads was read along with their age and city, with each name followed by the Spanish word "Presente." Media Mouse left before the ceremony was finished, but was present for an hour-and-a-half to two hours worth of name reading, including an extremely long list of unnamed children from Columbia . The acknowledgment of these children’s deaths along with the reading of many names of children under five years old was enough to bring many at the protest to tears. Later in the day, 41 people were arrested after cutting through or climbing over the recently constructed third fence onto WHINSEC property. Most of the arrestees will be facing six months in jail, a sentence that has recently been increased as part of an effort to intimidate and discourage SOA protesters.
During the first day of the protest, tours were being offered of the WHINSEC base itself by its officers. Reports from those who took the tour said although it contained a predictable amount of whitewashing of SOA history, the question-and-answer session with several high-ranking members of the WHINSEC revealed several points of interest about the closing and reopening of the school. Whenever an audience member would include information about actions committed by the SOA or SOA graduates in their statement or question, they would quickly dismissed by saying that whether or not that information was true, it happened during the time the SOA was open. Now that it is officially closed, former human rights abuses have no relevance, according to the WHINSEC representatives. Also, the official reason given by said representatives for the SOA’s closing was that it had "fulfilled its Cold War mission” and no longer needed to exist. This is obviously an outright lie, seeing that immediately after the SOA’s closing, the WHINSEC opened in the SOA's former building and was not significantly different from the SOA. Despite efforts by the WHINSEC and its spokespeople to discredit them, the closing of the SOA was solely because of the efforts of groups like SOA Watch, the massive annual protest, and pressure from the general public, not because of the fulfillment of its Cold War mission.
Despite its past successes, a serious reevaluation of tactics would be highly advisable for the annual protest organizers and the anti-SOA movement as a whole. Aside from the acts of civil disobedience on Sunday, there was no direct confrontation of any aspect of the institution itself. 19,000 people converged on Fort Benning over the weekend, and while mobilizing such a large number of people is important and a testament to the enormous number of people opposed to the SOA and its policies, it is not enough to close the school, especially when mainstream media coverage of the event is minimal. Furthermore, one must question the effectiveness of a movement which aims to shut down the SOA, yet limits its actions against it to two days a year. The annual convergence is an important event, but if any more success in the movement is to be expected, public pressure on and actions against the SOA should be continuous, not limited to once a year.
[ Read more: SOA Watch | Photos from the Protest ]
