On the night of November 16, 1989, a Salvadoran Army patrol entered the University of Central America in San Salvador and massacred six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. Nineteen of the military officers cited for this atrocity received training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The following year, Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois and a few supporters held a protest near Fort Benning and the SOA Watch was born. The protests have continued annually every November at Fort Benning since 1990 and now include thousands of demonstrators from across the country. This year's vigil will be held November 16-18.

 

The School of the Americas (SOA) was founded in 1946 at the U.S. Army base in Panama to train military students from various Latin American countries. In 1984, the school was moved to Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, as required by the Panama Canal Treaty. The school has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers and police, producing some of the region's most notorious death squad leaders and human rights abusers. Graduates from the school have been indicted or implicated in numerous atrocities in their home countries, including the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. In 2000 the school was reorganized and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). 

 

Pax Christi has long supported the goal of SOA Watch: to close the school and end the U.S. militarization of the Americas. Pax Christi members from Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta, and many other locations in Georgia have attended the vigils with regularity over the years. Several Pax Christi members from Atlanta have entered the base and been arrested; while most were released, one was incarcerated for two months. Pax Christi members have also signed petitions and written letters to members of Congress urging legislation to suspend operations at the school.

 

Following the pattern of recent years, this year's vigil will include a demonstration at Stewart Detention Center on Friday, November 16. Stewart is privately operated on behalf of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is in an isolated location near Lumpkin, Georgia, 35 miles south of Columbus. Many of the detainees are from Latin American countries. Organizers focus attention on this remote detention center because it is the largest in the United States. There is a growing list of documented violations of human rights at Stewart, including conditions leading to hunger strikes, inadequate medical care, the death of two detainees, the separation of families, and the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens.

 

Click here to learn more of the facts about the SOA.