Despite rain and cold temperatures, students from a Tufts contingent ventured down to Fort Benning, Ga. from Nov. 17 to 19 to protest the US Army School of Americas (SOA), a training ground that teaches combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics tactics to Latin American soldiers. Fifteen Tufts students were arrested during the demonstration, according to event coordinator sophomore Roger Winn.
This demonstration and vigil is held yearly to honor the anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter in El Salvador in 1989 by SOA graduates. Over 10,000 people took part in the vigil, according to SOA Watch at www.soaw.org, and 2,100 of these protesters were arrested for crossing the border into SOA property. Tufts took 32 students by van, including Wesleyan University and Museum school students, through the Coalition for Social Justice and Nonviolence.
For those arrested, the consequences were minimal - they are not allowed to step foot on the base for five years. For Winn, who was among the arrested, this was a small price to pay to make a bold statement. "The more people that cross the line, the louder the protest - I used [crossing the line] to make my voice louder," Winn said.
Winn and others from the Tufts contingent find the actions and mere existence of the SOA insufferable. When senior Ariana Wohl was abroad in Chile last year, she heard first-hand accounts of acts of terror that occurred during dictator Augusto Pinochet's rule - realities that were made possible, in part, by SOA graduates. A large number of Pinochet's army and intelligence staff consisted of SOA grads, according to websites such as the National Catholic Reporter and www.derechos.org.
Wohl, who also went to the protest when she was a sophomore and assisted in coordinating the trip this year, became further involved after her experiences in Chile.
"After studying in Chile, I was further energized to take a stand against this school because I talked to and became friends with so many survivors of Pinochet's reign. I remember hearing horrible things about [acts such as] rape and electrical torture," she said. "I feel a personal duty to my friends and teachers there."
Wohl also got her friends involved in the cause, such as junior Sarah Marcus, who attended the vigil for the first time this year.
"I heard it was a really powerful protest that attracts all different types of people and everyone comes together for the cause - and that's how it was," Marcus said. "There were college students, older people, Veterans for Peace, families with little kids."
SOA grads have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses recorded in Latin America. According to SOA Watch, the school's 60,000 graduates include infamous dictators such as Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Events associated with the SOA continue to plague Latin America. According to Wohl, a recent massacre orchestrated by SOA grads slaughtered 400 people in El Solado, Colombia just this February.
"The school has always been this arm of the US government and army, a way [for the US] to have a hand in foreign politics to undermine popular uprisings whenever they're [about] to occur," Wohl said, adding that SOA protesters are currently focusing on human rights violations in Chiapas, Mexico and Colombia. "The areas where the SOA has been active have been areas where the US has had certain political and corporate interests."
Awareness of the violations committed by SOA graduates has recently seeped into the US consciousness. Even at Tufts, the number of protesters doubled from just 15 last year. "[Awareness of the SOA is] definitely a national trend," Wohl said.
However, Wohl blamed the news media for insufficient coverage of the vigil. "There were very small blurbs in [The New York] Times and [The Boston] Globe. [The stories] only mentioned people who were arrested, not the number in attendance," she said, adding that this does not address the size, and therefore, the importance of the protest.
The number of protesters at the event may be one of the most important factors when it comes to affecting change. "The only people who can do anything are the legislators," Marcus said. "[The protest] shows the government there are enough people who want to shut down the school and we're going to keep coming down there."
The protesters' actions were also significant in regards to the cause that they seek to promote. "Nonviolence is critical to this experience because it's antithetical to answer violence with violence. Most people participating in this movement feel strongly [about] nonviolence," Wohl said.
In the future, Wohl's personal convictions will keep her involved in the SOA cause until action is taken. "Just as a human being I can't stand to willingly go along knowing that my government and my tax dollars are training people to decimate their own people," she said, adding that she hopes to start a letter writing campaign and possibly participate in the April SOA demonstration in Washington, DC.
With such an awareness of the SOA, Winn also feels that he cannot tolerate such violations. "Without showing up [to the vigil], I'm accepting the status quo and accepting the methods used today that don't account for human rights," he said. "I value human life and any time it's disrespected and people suffer, I need to speak out against it."
Wohl added that there are other schools like the SOA at other sites around the world, but the one in Georgia receives the most attention because of its immediacy. "This school has been targeted because it's here, it's in our backyard," she said.
However, Marcus felt removed from what she heard about the SOA until she attended the vigil. "I wanted to make the sacrifice to miss what was going on at Tufts that weekend and drive 40 hours to see how it would be for myself. It's easy to hear about something and distance yourself from it, but I wanted to go down and show my support in a more active way," she said.
