With all the recent talk of torture (and now with the upcoming parole hearing of an Accessory in my father's murder), I could not resist reposting a little-seen piece I did upon first coming to OS.  Let us not forget our country's responsibility for training and supporting Latin American torturers.  For more information on an organization that has been working to end our government's abuse, please go to:  http://www.soaw.org/.

The still, small voice spoke to me the Friday before Thanksgiving, when I saw a van with scrawled-upon windows-- “Close SOA.”  “Stop WHINSEC.”  I may have been the only one on that part of highway 90  who even knew what those messages referred to.  They gave me a lift—a sense of camaraderie.  Here was someone who believed in what I believed in.  Since I’d moved back to my Deep South hometown from the D.C. area, I’d felt stranded, treading water in a sea of isolated acts of kindness that lacked the political organization to garner attention and bring about change.  There were church dinners to help feed the homeless and drives to provide necessities to disaster victims, but there was no rally to protest the inadequacies of FEMA or the health care system that often lies at the root of such problems.  People seemed well-meaning, but it was as if they were putting a band-aid on a machete wound.

I pulled up beside the van to honk.  It’s goofy, I know, but I wanted to give a thumbs-up or some sign of approbation.  The man ignored me, driving intently, eastbound, headed to the annual vigil to protest the “School of the Assassins.”

The School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning, GA, trains Latin American soldiers.  As you can guess by its murderous nickname, the school has become notorious for death and destruction.  I am no expert on the history of this school, but to name a few horrors from a very long list:

·         In 1989, Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, a Salvadoran army officer, murdered 6 Jesuit priests, a housekeeper, and her fourteen-year-old daughter.  The murders occurred less than a year after Cerritos had received training with the School of the Americas at Fort Benning.  The majority of those involved in the murders had been to the School of the Americas.

·         In 1985, Peruvian officers Telmo Hurtado and Juan Rivera Rondon murdered approximately 70 men, women, and children in a village in Peru.  The victims were ordered into a house, which was then fired upon by order of Hurtado.  He admits that he ended the assault by throwing a hand grenade into the house to finish off the injured.  Hurtado and Rondon had completed Arms Orientation courses at the School of the Americas in 1981-1982.  Armed forces killed and “disappeared” over 7,000 civilians in Peru during the 1980s.  Hurtado and Rondon recently faced extradition from the United States.

·         The School of the Americas was involved in three vicious military dictatorships in Guatemala from 1978-1986.  Soldiers trained by the SOA killed over 900 people in a village in El Salvador.  The SOA graduate Leopoldo Galtieri headed Argentina’s military when 30,000 people were killed or “disappeared.”  In Mexico….In Honduras…In Nicaragua…In Venezuela, Bolivia, Columbia…the list of atrocities is enormous. 

·         In May 2000, years after SOA training manuals advocating torture and murder were made public in this country, a bill passed that closed the School of the Americas. That very bill opened another school in the same buildings—WHINSEC:  Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Our tax dollars at work.

What the still, small voice said was, “Why don’t you go to the protest?  Follow that van.”  I had never met the SOA Watch group who organized the proceedings, but I’d kept up with them via Internet and had donated what small amounts of money I could. I knew the group was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois, who’d had friends raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers.  He is currently in danger of being excommunicated by the Vatican for supporting the right of women to be ordained as Catholic priests.  If the little man who wears expensive red shoes in Italy is mad at you, then often you are doing something right.

So I went.  I asked my brother if he could take the casseroles I’d promised to church.  Could he feed my pets?  Saturday morning I began the drive to Columbus, GA, not sure what I would find.

The vast, untold wealth I have accrued led me to five star accommodations at the local Days Inn.  (It actually was OK, except for the ants in the coffee pot.)  As I drove up, a handful of people wearing black shirts with peace signs were happily moving toward the hotel office.  Armed with an internet schedule, I planned where I should be. I knew that though a presence is kept a Ft. Benning by protestors all weekend, there were also seminars and film screenings by non-profits, religious groups, activists, etc., at the local convention center. On Sunday, the weekend activities would culminate with a massive rally at Ft. Benning and a sad, intense funeral procession which included the names of some of the school’s victims.

I found my way to the convention center near the river.  It was a massive red brick building, formerly an iron works, with vast open spaces.  The first item ringed on my schedule was On the Line, a documentary with Father Bourgeois, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Bob Barr, and many others, that gave the history of the movement to close the school.  I fear that I possess a Swiss cheese memory of details, so I have been careful to check the facts.  Early in the documentary, the murdered bodies of the aforementioned housekeeper, daughter, and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador are shown.  You actually see how one man, sprawled facedown and shot through the back of the head, is leaking brains through a wound in his frontal lobe.  It is jarring, not only for the loss he has suffered, but because it reminds me of my father.  He was killed in 2006, beaten to death by my cousin during a robbery.  My cousin and his girlfriend got about $96 to buy crack cocaine, then robbed the house again the next night to steal the TV that stood about 15 feet from the body.  The coroner would not let me see my father, and when I asked the funeral home, I was solemnly told that it would be better to “remember him as he was.”  I could tell their faces were just short of trembling at the thought of my reaction if I looked at him.  How would they quell it? No one wanted to look me in the eye.  Sometimes I still feel that I should have viewed the body, because my imagination of it is so terrible.  I should have held his hand one last time.  These people thought they spared me, but my mind broke anyway.  I was hospitalized.  Since then, when I see violence or injustice, it seems more personal.

After the screening, one of the people from the film, Brian DeRouen, took questions.  Brian was one of the protesters who volunteered to trespass onto the grounds of Fort Benning and be arrested in order to bring attention to the cause.  At one time, thousands walked onto Ft. Benning’s grounds and were merely arrested, then quickly bussed back off and released.  Post 9/11, protestors who peacefully trespass onto Ft. Benning now face time in federal prison. 

Brian said that part of the reason he decided to be arrested involved his mother.  Every year in November when he attended the Fort Benning vigil and those at church asked her where he was, she could easily say, “Oh, he’s off on another protest, you know…” and leave it at that.  He was sure that after he was arrested and church people asked, “Where’s Brian?”, she wouldn’t be able to shrug it off by simply saying, “Oh, he’s in Federal prison.”  They would ask why.  What for?  What is so important that he would risk that?  And the people who loved him, like his mother, would have to give their testimony in his place to explain why this cause is so important.  And the word would spread.

Don’t tell my mother, but I actually thought about being arrested.  I imagined what it would be like if I called my brother and said, “Yeah…uh….I’m in jail.”  I know that it’s a noble cause and, though my faith falters at times, I believe God does take care of those who suffer to do good.  But my brother and I have both lost our jobs, and I am starting a new one December 1^st.  He is still looking, so we have been hunkered down together in this economy, trying to help support each other.  My mother is in an assisted living home, and we share the duties of taking her to appointments, paying some of her bills, and bringing her home for visits each weekend.  If all this was left to him, it would be a big load. And I know my mother would be in a constant state of panic.  She is frail and often confused (she had a massive heart attack after my father died, and has other troubles on top of that).  “Why, Mary?” she would say in her small, tired voice. “When are you coming home?”  Brian said it was hard to endure the worry his arrest caused his mother. There is a brighter side.  Though previously she had told him that it wouldn’t accomplish much to close the school (they’ll just open it elsewhere), she did rally her representative against it after Brian’s arrest.

I am afraid of institutions:  Police. Hospitals. After my father died and I was sick, I gained experience with these things that I thought I would never have. I decided that I would try to educate myself more and pass on what I knew to others, but that I couldn’t get arrested.  I bought two On the Line films.

After the question and answer session, I wandered around the convention center with spare time until the next seminar I wanted to see.  A few tables were set up with goods to bid on from Latin American countries.  I am 31, and though there was a smattering of people my age, the vast majority was college-aged.  Retirees were probably a distant second or third if you broke the crowd down into representative groups.  I watched part of a presentation on Columbia, the country that sends the largest number to the SOA.  Next, I went to see a presentation on torture survivors.  One group, TASSC, was founded by a torture survivor--a nun--in order to help other torture survivors heal and to stop torture worldwide.  We sat, probably 75 people, packed into a room to watch a movie called, Breaking the Silence: Torture Survivors Speak Out.  Two interns—again college-aged—who work at the group’s D.C. headquarters were hosting the movie, but the only speakers we had were from the computer of one intern.  “You’ll have to be cricket quiet,” she said, with the sweet perkiness of a kindergarten teacher.  There was a line outside of people waiting to come in.  “Learn to love each other!  Scootch closer!” she called to us, so we made room.  As interns, she and her friend support torture victims through the legal processes they must navigate to stay in this country.  Many times the interns are there in court, when the families of these victims are deceased or miles away.  They are the only friendly, supportive faces some of these survivors see in an indifferent system.  It must be an interesting meeting when people who have seen the worst of life come face to face with a person who seems to me to be so innocent and kind.  Maybe it refreshes something in the survivors. 

The last thing I did before trudging to bed was to attend a meeting about how grass roots action can “leverage” the Obama presidency for good.  There were people there from Minnesota and Tennessee and Ohio and New York…even a few Canadians [Commies! ;)]  Again, most in the room were about 10 years younger than I, with some girls sporting close-cropped hair and some boys Flock of Seagulls bangs.  The session was hosted by Catholics United, a group I hadn’t heard of until that evening.  What I glean from a quick glance their way is that they want to ally the basic principles of faith—such as justice and equality, to current politics.  What a job.  The speaker there began by asking the group what they had done for Obama.  There were those who knocked on doors and those who helped register people to vote.  Then he began telling what his organization had done to help get Obama elected.  They helped break the story of Pastor John Hagee, who originally endorsed McCain, but had previously made seriously anti-Catholic statements, such as linking Hitler’s anti-Semitic views to a Catholic education.  McCain’s campaign valued Catholic votes, as they had launched a “Catholics for McCain” initiative, so the fact that Hagee’s views and his support of McCain got a news cycle was a blow to the Republicans.  Catholics United also condemned McCain for having Deal Hudson, who settled out of court for a sexual harassment suit, representing Catholic views on the Catholics for McCain campaign. 

We all listened.  Here was someone who’d gone a step beyond everyone else’s activities and had harnessed the fickle horse of the media at least twice to help Obama.  The host detailed his belief in “transactional politics,” which I privately dubbed backscratchery.  He said that if you could produce some kind of results for a candidate, you might just catch their ear about your proposed policies.  He didn’t seem cynical as much as merely practical.  You want to do good?  You need the help of people in power.  How will you get it?

He seemed to be asking us what leverage we had with Obama or how we could create some.  So these other people had knocked on doors and driven people to polls.  The host had attacked the McCain campaign and gotten media attention.  I had given Obama five dollars and responded to many nasty emails¹ that my family forwarded my way.  I guess Obama won’t be calling me.

We didn’t come up with much leverage.  I could tell people were nervous that Obama would be able to keep his progressive promises.  Would the country turn on him if our dire economic predicament wasn’t magically fixed right away?  Two people discussed rallies they’d planned, not in protest, but to help Obama, ahem, keep focused on his commitment.  I was glad that they were realistic enough to resist seeing Obama as the Messiah.  Someone said she didn’t want to make Republicans feel as locked out of the political process as she had felt for the past 8 years.  I found this generous and probably the right way to go.  It was over.  Drained, I made it back to bed before the next day’s mass funeral.

On Sunday, November 23, I got ready to leave the Days Inn and go to the funeral service for the thousands killed by the School of the Americas.  I would have made coffee (perhaps a sin when protesting corporate and military exploitation of Latin America) but there were ants in my tiny little pot.  At first I saw one, but as I passed the sink while dressing, more and more seemed to have converged, tiny specks meandering around the vanity.  At the check-out counter I reported them, then headed toward the far end of the room for breakfast.  Brian DeRouen came in carrying his 7-week-old son.  Other protestors soon followed.

Fort Benning was a short drive away.  As I turned down the road toward the back gate where the protest was located, I saw bands of people crossing the street carrying crosses with names, mostly in Spanish, painted in black upon them.  I saw that people were parking at businesses.  I pulled in at a nearly full pawn shop lot.  The friendly man there showed me a place to park, then tried to charge me $10.  He told me that I wouldn’t find a place around there without paying.  I politely left and went up a short hill to an area of small brick houses.  There were tiny clusters of policemen, and I asked one if I was allowed to park in the street as long as I didn’t block a driveway. His eyes squinted within a sun-reddened face.  Yes, he said, and you should be able to find all the parking you need here. 

I parked in front of a beige brick house, and the black man smoking in the yard offered me a spot in the driveway.  I told him I didn’t want to block anyone in.  “We stay here,” he said, but I just told him thanks.

I began to walk along the road toward the gated section that police had blocked off for pedestrians. 

Nuns held signs and crosses that bore hot-glue-gunned flowers around the names of the dead.  I saw vegans, anti-war protestors, ‘Obama girl’ shirt sellers, people peddling barbecue, and legal observers who could advise protestors of their rights and what to expect if they trespassed. In the middle of the road some protestors had created a scene of massacre.  They were blood-splashed and motionless, lying on the concrete.  Some people whitened their faces to a death mask and wore black robes.  They would lead the procession to the gates of Ft. Benning. 

I made my way toward a stage framed by banners beside and Ft. Benning’s flag behind.    We heard speakers and sang songs.  A Guatemalan woman talked about how her brother had been disappeared.  As a crowd, we read from our programs a solemn pledge to reflect the principles of nonviolence and to keep working for justice in the months to come.  A helicopter flew over the proceedings.  As we readied to move toward the gates to lay the crosses representing the dead, a recorded warning played from the fort.  We kept singing, so I could not make out all of it, but it warned trespassers of the consequences.  The last song before the funeral procession is, “No Mas, No more.”  No mas, no more, we must stop the dirty war, Companeros, companeras, we cry out, "NO MAS! NO MORE!"   

Next came the reading of the names.  Thousands were present.  At one point, Father Bourgeois reported more than 20,000 were attending, so once the procession started, my portion of the crowd didn’t even seem to move for a long time. Each victim’s name was sung out with the slow rhythm of a holy word, then an age was reported.  For example, “Os-car Ro-mer-o, 62-years-old.” After each name, the crowd held up their crosses and chanted, “Pre-sen-te.”  From what I understand, this word affirms that the spirits of the dead are with us and represented in our spirits.  We come together and affirm that we are working on their behalf.  They are not forgotten, and we will not stop.

In the crowd, I heard only the chanting and the occasional whirr of the helicopter.  The sunlight waxed and waned through the clouds, seeming to bless a name or a moment with its presence.  I had a lot of time to think about injustice and my father between my chanting.

“Pre-sen-te.”  Since 2000, we have sent 4 billion dollars to Columbia for a ‘war on drugs.’  They send back the highest number of soldiers to the S.O.A.

“Pre-sen-te.”  Maybe if the ‘war on drugs’ really attacked drugs and not democracy in Columbia, I would still have a father.

“Pre-sen-te.” My father spent years on a job he hated to keep us fed.  He only had a short time to live in retirement.

“Pre-sen-te.”  There are parents who wonder every year where their children have been taken.

“Pre-sen-te.”  After my father died, I became upset when my mother wanted to wash his jackets, because I didn’t want to lose a last bit of his smell.

“Pre-sen-te.”  We were finally moving toward the fence ever so slowly.  I wondered if my father could see me and if he would be proud. 

“Pre-sen-te.”   From the movie on torture I had seen the day before, a Honduran woman said that worse than being shocked, her torturers—supported by our government--would taunt her about her dead child.

“Pre-sen-te.”  Before the 2004 election, I begged my father to watch Fahrenheit 911.  After the election, I asked how he had voted.  “For Bush,” he replied.  “How could you after you’d seen the movie?”  I said.“It was all lies,” he replied.

“Pre-sen-te.”  I made it to the fence, which was already covered in crosses.   One had been placed especially high and was caught in the barbed-wire.  I lingered only a moment, then slowly moved away.

“Pre-sen-te.”  My father had lost both parents early.  Had taken care of his brothers and sisters.  Had worked hard and stayed out of trouble.  Had been left without a face. 

I tried to imagine the struggles of living in a third world country, while having armies trained by a wealthy neighbor take your land and your hope of self-sufficiency, all to make their businesses richer. Once when I’d confessed depression and asked how to get through it, my father replied, “Just keep gettin’ up.”I believe that he is here somewhere.  They are all here, waiting just beyond sight.  We cannot let them down.  We must keep getting up, as the oppressed peoples who continue the struggle to survive keep going around the world.

United, we will not stop. 

Presente.   

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¹Did you know that according to “Revelations” (sic) 13, Obama is the antichrist?  It isn’t true, but that didn’t stop my cousin from forwarding it to 50 people.