wfn.org | United Methodists Visit School of the Americas

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

CONTACT: Thomas S. McAnally
(10-21-71B){169}
			  Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470
March 23, 1998

United Methodists visit controversial
School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.

by Alice Smith*

COLUMBUS, Ga. (UMNS) -- To close or not to close the School of the
Americas at Fort Benning -- that is the troubling question for many
people of faith.
In probably the most high-profile examination of the issue for United
Methodists, bishops of the church will decide whether to endorse a call
for shutting down the school when they meet in April in Lincoln, Neb.
The bishops will base their decision in part on an analysis from the
denomination's Board of Church and Society.
In an effort to obtain first-hand information, the Rev. Thom White Wolf
Fassett, Church and Society chief executive, along with one staff member
and three governing board members, met separately on March 10 with
personnel from the school and Father Roy Bourgeois, director of the
School of the Americas (SOA) Watch. SOA Watch is the organization trying
to shut the school down. Four United Methodist pastors in South Georgia
also were part of the fact-finding group.
The school is a 50-year-old Army institution that offers training in the
Spanish language to military and police personnel from South and Central
America and the Caribbean.  Originally located in Panama, the SOA moved
to Fort Benning in 1984. During the Cold War, its stated mission was
preventing communism's spread among U.S. neighbors to the south.
The school has become a controversy in political as well as faith
circles, with proposed legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate to
close it.
Critics charge the SOA has contributed to chaos, death and the
subjugation of the poor. They say it is an anachronism now that all of
the Latin American countries, except Cuba, have civilian governments.
Proponents say it helped bring about democracy in those countries. They
contend that the school has moved away from sole military training and
is offering courses that Latin Americans will need to sustain peace and
fight such threats as narcotics trafficking and terrorism.
The United Methodists who visited the school received a surfeit of
information, much of it conflicting. Neither side disputes the school is
an arm of U.S. foreign policy and has reflected the changing interests
of the United States over the years.
"The school's curriculum has evolved to support U.S. foreign policy in
the region," said Capt. Kevin McIver, SOA public affairs director.
	Likewise, said Lt. Col. Stephen Keeling, battalion commander and
a member of St. Luke United Methodist Church in Columbus, "you can see
over time the varying levels of
U.S. interest based upon money that goes into a country for student
attendance here."
Neither side disputes also that alumni of the school have been
responsible for some murders and human rights atrocities in Latin
America. What they disagree on is whether that warrants closing the SOA
-- especially since the school has made human rights part of its
curriculum.
The SOA Watch maintains a list of 500 individuals implicated in human
rights abuses in Latin America. Two of the more extreme cases were the
1980 assassination of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero and the
1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two women, both of which occurred
in El
Salvador. The U.N. Truth Commission has documented that 19 of 26
military personnel implicated in the Jesuit murders and two of three
officers in the Romero assassination were trained at the SOA.
	McIver does not refute the U.N. findings, but he believes the El
Salvadoran officers' behavior was aberrant "and not indicative of the
training they received (at the SOA)."
"They were personal decisions based on situations at the time -- and the
wrong decisions," he said.
The school has produced some 60,000 graduates in the past 50 years, he
noted. Of those, only a tiny percentage have been implicated in human
rights abuses, and 20 individuals have been prosecuted and convicted, he
said.
If the school's purpose is to turn out assassins, as critics have
charged, then it's a "terrible failure" if only 1 percent resorts to
that behavior, observed the Rev. Leland Collins, director of the Georgia
Christian Council.
Dale Weatherspoon, a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in
Washington and a member of the Board of Church and Society, countered,
"A lot of folks have been implicated who haven't been prosecuted. I
think we all know those numbers can be higher as well."
More important than the actual number of SOA alumni who committed
atrocities is the suffering wrought on innocent civilians, such as the
900 to 1,000 people who died at El Mozote, Weatherspoon said. In that
massacre, also in El Salvador, 10 of the 12 officers cited by the U.N.
Truth Commission as responsible for the massacre were SOA-trained.
Although the murders and massacres are used by opponents of the school
as the most glaring reason to close it down, Bourgeois' concerns are
more broad-based and revolve around the suffering and poverty of the
people of Latin America. A Maryknoll missionary, he first went to
Bolivia in 1972
and has been immersed in Latin American issues since.
"This is not a complicated issue," he said. "It's about
suffering, death -- people dying because they don't have the basics of
life."
Throughout the decades, he said, the military has protected the elite
and rich, and it has participated in the continued subjugation and
oppression of the poor citizens in their countries.
"When the poor can no longer endure their suffering, when they begin to
organize, they are silenced, they disappear, they are tortured, raped,"
Bourgeois said. "That's been the reality of Latin America."
He said he witnessed the brutality of the military in Bolivia, El
Salvador and Guatemala.
"It was frightening. I was more fearful in Bolivia and El Salvador than
I was in Vietnam as a soldier."
The Rev. James Swanson, pastor of St. Mary's Road United Methodist
Church in Columbus and a member of the Board of Church and Society,
acknowledged the terrible conditions under which many Latin Americans
live. However, he wondered how closing the school would address systemic
issues.
"I don't hear anybody talking about the policy changes that need to be
put into effect," he said. "I'm hearing us talk about things that are
highly visible but don't really get at the core of what's going on. My
world understanding is that closing the school and not dealing with the
systemic problems will not help the poor and suffering down there."
Bourgeois disagreed, stating that closing the school will be a "major
step forward" in Latin America, where military officers still hold the
real power.
"It will send a positive message to the poor of Latin America (and)
contribute to lessening the fear so many people in Latin America have
toward their soldiers. It will help bring power to the civilian
governments because what the school really has been about has been
keeping the militaries of Latin America entrenched in power."
Fassett said the closing of the school should be coupled  with policy
changes.
"We have the rationale for talking about the elimination of the SOA
based on comprehensive analysis (but it should be linked) with the
simultaneous call for a new order, a new policy. It has to be a holistic
approach."
He said he is keeping a close watch on the Chiapas situation in Mexico
to see if U.S. Latin American policies of the past have simply moved
north.
In Chiapas, he explained, there are "allegations of helicopters and
U.S.-trained personnel providing guidance to the Mexican military, who
are imposing some brutal opposition on the indigenous people."
The criticism of the school and the documenting of abuses has led to a
change in curriculum over the past seven years with an emphasis on human
rights. All people entering the school receive a basic four-hour
indoctrination, while other courses have a more in-depth human rights
component. The yearlong Command and General Staff Officer Course for
top-grade officers devotes three days to human rights.
"We are the proponent for human rights training with the U.S. Army and
the U.S. military," McIver said. "You can't go to any school in the U.S.
military and find human rights training in each and every course."
Still, he acknowledged, the school's mandate is military training. "Our
primary mission is to teach tactical skills, U.S. Army doctrine.
Secondary to that is human rights awareness training, in part because of
the criticism, because of things some graduates have gone back and done
or
been linked to."
The school's curriculum is the same as that taught in other U.S Army
schools, Keeling said.
As democracy has become the rule in Latin America, the school has added
courses such as de-mining fields; the role of the military in a
democracy; computer literacy; and emergency medical assistance.
The most popular course now, McIver said, is counter-drug operations.
"Of the 1,000 (students) we trained last year, 333 were in the
counter-drug (course)."
Bourgeois acknowledged that the school has been under pressure to clean
up its curriculum, but he called its efforts "window dressing."  If the
U.S. really wants to promote democracy in Latin America, he said, it
would "close down the school and send students to U.S. universities.
This is where democracy is taught, in an open exchange of ideas, without
jungle fatigues, without that M-16."
Over the past few years, critics of the school have gained momentum in
Congress and in faith communities. Last November, about 2,000 gathered
at Fort Benning for the annual vigil remembering the deaths of the six
Jesuit priests and two women. Some 601 were arrested when they crossed
the line onto Fort Benning property to plant white crosses. Twenty-five
"repeat offenders" were sentenced to six-month prison terms.
Bourgeois was to begin serving a six-month sentence at a South Carolina
federal prison on March 23. United Methodist Carol Richardson, who heads
the SOA Washington office, is already serving a half-year sentence.
"When we get out of prison, we will be back," Bourgeois promised. "The
truth will not be silenced."
#  #  #
*Smith is executive director of the Georgia United Methodist
Communications Council.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
Releases and photos also available at
http://www.umc.org/umns/