17th Annual Rally to Demand Closure of the School of the Americas

This weekend Bellarmine students and residents throughout the Louisville community will join thousands from across the nation at Fort Benning, Georgia to demand a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy in the form of the closure of the controversial School of the Americas (SOA).

The SOA, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture and execution. There have also been hundreds of cases of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school. Yet, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place.

New research confirms that the school continues to support known human rights abusers. For example Col. Francisco del Cid Diaz was allowed to return to SOA in 2003 for further training despite having been investigated by the United Nations for ordering the shooting of 16 indigenous peasants in El Salvador after his initial session at the base.

“This school is responsible for training militaries that then use the techniques they learned against their civilian populations,” says Nancy Jakubiak, a grandmother in Louisville, Kentucky, who has been protesting for years at Fort Benning. "Closing the SOA would send a strong human rights message to Latin America and the world."

There is hope for this mission too, as support for the SOA continues to erode, and even transform into opposition. Earlier this year, the governments of Argentina and Uruguay announced that they would cease all training at the school, becoming the second and third countries to announce a cessation of training, following the 2004 announcement of Hugo Chavez that Venezuela would no longer send troops to train at the school. Last year over 19,000 people gathered for the annual protest, creating the largest demonstration to date in the 16 year history of the protest. According to coordinators, this year’s protest has the potential to break that record yet again, as more and more people become aware of the situation in Fort Benning every year.