Tactics shift as protest swells

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 11, 1998 by Patrick Marrin

Army escorts 2,319 protesters away from the School of the Americas without incident or arrest

Lil Corrigan was back in Columbus, Ga., this year, older and wiser at 75, clutching a light blue stole over her small shoulders to give her the courage she had prayed for last year when she watched 600 other protesters get arrested for marching into Fort Benning to denounce the School of the Americas.

This year, Corrigan -- and 2,319 of the total 7,000 protesters -- were ready to cross the line and be arrested in defiance of a federal law banning partisan political speech on a military installation.

The movement to close the School of the Americas began in 1990 with a 35-day fast by 10 protesters. It lingered on over subsequent years as barely publicized acts of nonviolent resistance by a determined but small group of opponents. In recent years it has become a rapidly growing, broad coalition of peace and justice advocates committed to returning each year in ever greater numbers until the School of the Americas is closed.

While the SOA protest has grown, so has the battle for media spin and tactical high ground between SOA Watch organizers and the Army. In the flurry of maneuvers leading up to the protest vigil, Gen. Glenn Weidner, commander of the school, first accepted an invitation from students at nearby Columbus State University to debate SOA Watch founder Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois Nov. 10. Weidner withdrew on the eve of the highly publicized confrontation, rescheduling his own appearance at an Army-sponsored event set for Saturday, Nov. 21, at the same time as the SOA Watch vigil. Bourgeois rejected the last-minute change as lacking ordinary Southern courtesy. Local media called the Army's move a transparent ploy.

And when Army buses arrived to take protesters to the rescheduled debate, Bourgeois had a surprise of his own, offering, unsuccessfully, to send several symbolic coffins to represent the vigil.

There would be more surprises. The stole Lil Corrigan wore this year bore the name of Mary Trotochaud, a 48-year-old activist from Atlanta, now serving a 14-month sentence in federal prison for trespass at Fort Benning during previous protests.

But the outcome would be different for those who committed civil disobedience this year. Corrigan trespassed onto the military base Sunday morning with 2,319 others but was then set free. In the face of such overwhelming numbers, the Army decided not to charge any of the violators, including some 70 who had anguished over expected prison terms for entering the fort a second time. The tactic was not without some success in throwing the carefully prepared protesters off balance into what one described as a state of both "relief and puzzlement."

Bourgeois, who has gone to prison seven times for opposing U.S. policy in Latin America, quickly sought to refocus the protest after the march and asked those who felt some letdown to accept the feeling of powerlessness as part of their solidarity with those in Latin America who suffer routinely under authority applied in arbitrary and unpredictable ways.

Back next year

"If the school is still open, we want you to come back next year and bring a friend," Bourgeois said. "We are going to keep coming back as long as it takes."

The SOA, dubbed the School of Assassins throughout Latin America, is a U.S.-funded Army facility where soldiers from 22 Latin American countries receive combat training. The Army says the school, founded in 1946 in Panama and moved to Fort Benning in 1984, is a necessary extension of U.S. policy in Latin America, first to fight communism and now to fight drugs.

Opponents of the school say that among the 60,000 graduates of the school over its 50-year existence are some 600 soldiers who can be directly tied to some of the worst human rights atrocities in the region. SOA graduates include 10 Latin American dictators and other high-ranking officers responsible for rape, torture, murder and drug-trafficking. Many of these committed crimes after leaving the school. Some known abusers have been invited to the school as speakers and special guests or are honored in its Hall of Fame, a gallery of portraits inside the facility. At least three officers who served on the SOA faculty have been cited for human rights abuses in Latin America.

The annual protest at Fort Benning recalls the Nov. 16, 1989, murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Jesuit University in San Salvador. According to a U.N. Truth Commission report, 19 of the 26 soldiers implicated in the assault were SOA graduates, including the senior officer who planned the murders.

SOA graduates have been linked to the 1980 rape and murder of four American church women, the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the massacre of over 900 people in the village of El Mozote, El Salvador, and the genocidal war waged in Guatemala against indigenous peoples that claimed 200,000 lives.

A symbolic funeral procession into the fort carries symbolic coffins and small white crosses bearing the names of thousands of victims of violence in Latin America.