wfn.org | Presbyterians Join School of The Americas Protest

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

4-May-1999 
99178 
 
    Presbyterians Join in `Death March' 
    To Protest School of The Americas 
 
    by Evan Silverstein 
 
WASHINGTON - As if participating in a gruesome funeral procession, 
Presbyterian Anne Barstow paraded solemnly with about 2,000 other 
demonstrators at the Pentagon on Monday, May 3, protesting the U.S. Army's 
School of the Americas (SOA). 
 
    Along with puppet effigies of anonymous arms dealers, President Clinton 
and Chile's ruthless former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, the protesters 
waved banners, donned white death masks and carried bloody crosses bearing 
the names of  thousands of people brutally murdered in Central America, 
allegedly by graduates of the so-called "School of the Assassins." 
 
    Barstow, one of at least 50 Presbyterians taking part in the protest, 
was there to remember those who died and to pray on their behalf, "Nunca 
Mas"- never again. 
 
    Three Presbyterians, including Peace Fellowship co-chair Marilyn White, 
were hauled off to jail for their roles in the march that called for the 
closing of the federally-funded school at Fort Benning, Ga. Sixty-one 
protesters were detained. Charges were filed against 54. 
 
    The protest was part of four days of vigils, music and mourning 
sponsored by the School of the Americas Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based 
organization founded in 1990 by a Maryknoll priest, the Rev. Roy Bourgeois. 
The group also stages a rally at Fort Benning each November. 
 
    Barstow, who has traveled to Central America 10 times since 1986, knows 
first-hand about the savage work of SOA alumni - the massacres, the 
torture, the disappearances, the rapes, the fear. 
 
    "I have seen and learned of horrors on every trip," said the New York 
City resident, who recently returned from Chiapas, Mexico, where indigenous 
peoples have been murdered since 1994 by paramilitary groups tutored by 
people with SOA-sponsored training.  She stayed in the village of Acteal, 
where military forces massacred 45 people, 36 of them women and children, 
in December 1997. 
 
    Barstow said she also has spoken with massacre survivors in Rio Negro, 
Guatemala, where 177 women and children were killed and 440 villages were 
destroyed by the Guatemalan Army. 
 
    A report released in February by the Guatemalan Truth Commission said 
U.S. counterinsurgency training had "had a significant bearing on 
human-rights violations" during the nation's 36-year-long civil war. The 
report identified the SOA as a source of the training. 
 
    "For 13 years I've been going to Central America, and I have seen the 
effects of the training that goes on at SOA in terms of the deaths," 
Barstow said. "I've talked with survivors of massacres. I am fed  up with 
this, and I have found that the source of much of it is at the School of 
the Americas. That is why I am protesting here in this country against that 
school." 
 
    The marchers used upturned buckets as drums, pounding out a methodical 
death march as the procession circled  the massive defense building under 
the watchful eyes of police and security officers wearing rubber gloves. 
Hundreds of names of the dead were broadcast over a portable loud speaker: 
 
    "Lucio Carlos ... five years old." 
 
    "Presente!" ("Here!"), the protesters responded. 
 
    "Gregorio Martinez ... 14 years old." 
 
    "Presente!" 
 
    Several motorists traveling along nearby Interstate-395 honked their 
horns in support of the marchers, while Pentagon employees watched from 
office windows. The demonstrators, of  all ages and walks of life, shouted 
to them and to government employees arriving for work. 
 
    The banners they carried included: "We Will Transfer Evil Into Good"; 
"Father James Carney, U.S. Citizen, Where Are His Remains?"; and, "Rape, 
Murder, Torture and SOA SUX." 
 
    There was a memorial for the murdered, with oratory, music and by the 
symbolic dismantling of the SOA war machine - represented by a large 
cardboard skull that was torn apart, piece by piece, as marchers recited a 
litany of atrocities committed by SOA graduates. 
 
    The peaceful group was denied permission to present the remains of the 
shredded machine to Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. 
 
    Washable red paint, representing the blood of SOA victims, was poured 
on and around demonstrators acting as corpses on the sidewalk. That was 
when police started rounding up the participants and driving them in vans 
to a nearby warehouse for processing.  Some of the "corpses" had to be 
dragged from their symbolic resting places. 
 
    Generally, only those who purposely risked arrest by using the red 
paint were detained. 
 
    Several hundred people took part in a similar demonstration here in 
1997. There was no Pentagon protest last year, because most of the leaders 
of SOA Watch were in prison for previous protests. 
 
    Peaceful vigils were held for two days on the steps of the U.S. 
Capitol. The program got under way with a peaceful rally in front of the 
White House, followed by a benefit concert. 
 
    Among those arrested was White, a resident of suburban Houston, Texas, 
who was jailed once before for taking part in an SOA Watch demonstration at 
Fort Benning. She said after her release that she'll be in Georgia for this 
November's protest,  "if I'm not in jail." 
 
    "The [Presbyterian] Peace Fellowship as an organization, and all of us 
as individuals, have made a commitment to work to close the School of the 
Americas, and that job will be completed when the school is actually 
closed," she said. "That's why we're still here and will continue to be 
here at whatever action SOA Watch plans." 
 
    White was charged with pouring a red substance on a walkway, a 
misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail. She was 
ordered to appear in court in Alexandria, Va., on July 2. 
 
    The other Presbyterians arrested were Maryland resident Bill Galvin, 
also of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and the Rev. Clifford Frasier of 
Jackson Heights, New York. Neither could be reached for comment. 
 
    Two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assemblies, in 1994 and 1995, 
have called for closing the SOA  because many of its graduates have been 
identified as abusers of human rights. The church has joined other 
human-rights and Latin America-focused organizations in the fight against 
the school. 
 
    Some of the Presbyterian protesters traveled from states including 
Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, New York, Texas, Maryland and Georgia. The 
delegation included 12 students from Presbyterian-affiliated Warren Wilson 
College in Swannanoa, N.C. 
 
    The PC(USA) was the first denomination to formally call for the 
school's closing, according to Bourgeois, who said the action prompted 
several other religious bodies to do the same. 
 
    "So many people of faith are connecting their faith with this issue, 
which is a moral issue," he said. "The way the Presbyterian Church stood 
out kind of motivated many other groups." 
 
    The controversial school, founded by the U.S. Army in 1946 to train 
Latin American soldiers to defend against "instability" in their countries, 
moved in 1984 from Panama to Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga. It has 
several nicknames, including "School of Assassins," "School of the Coups" 
and "School of the Dictators." 
 
    Among its approximately 60,000 graduates are former Panamanian Gen. 
Manuel Noriega (now serving a 40-year prison sentence in Florida for drug 
dealing), former Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer, and Pinochet, whose 
military regime killed more than 3,000 people and tortured thousands more 
during his 17-year reign. 
 
    The school is a complex of dormitories, classrooms and extensive 
training grounds that enrolls up to 2,000 soldiers per year. 
 
    In 1992 the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for 
Intelligence Oversight investigated the school and found evidence of the 
SOA's bloody work throughout Latin America. Among other things, the study 
confirmed the existence of a long-rumored training manual advising 
"students" on the uses of blackmail, beatings, torture, false imprisonment, 
executions and bounties for enemy dead. 
 
    The Pentagon declassified the manual in 1996, providing potent evidence 
to SOA Watch. Since then, leaders of the school have said that such tactics 
are no longer taught and that the curriculum now includes a mandatory 
course in human rights. They contend that the school is largely responsible 
for the growth of democracy in Latin America. 
 
    When former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass., first introduced a 
proposal to eliminate some of the school's funding, in 1993, the measure 
was defeated 256-174. Last year, when a similar bill was sponsored by Rep. 
Joseph Moakley, D-Mass., the outcome was the same, but the vote was 
212-201. 
 
    "We're getting closer," White said. 
 
    Lois Baker, editor of the Peace Fellowship's newsletter, "Briefly...," 
who served in the U.S. Army during War World II, said she is appalled by 
the SOA. 
 
    Baker first went to Central America in 1984 to protest atrocities 
during Nicaragua's civil war. She also visited Chiapas, with Barstow, and 
has traveled to El Salvador. 
 
    "The whole damn thing is sick," she said. 
 
    According to Baker, more than 100,000 Central American refugees have 
flocked to Houston, her hometown, bringing with them numerous accounts of 
atrocities committed by the military - such  as "locking people in a school 
house and setting the school house on fire." 
 
    "The training for this is done with my tax money, and I want it 
stopped," Baker said. "I'd rather my tax money go to help people in this 
country who need schooling, who need health care. 
 
    "I'm in it to the finish." 

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