I’d like to expand on The Daily Eastern News’ article about the Days of Resistance in Washington, D.C., to close the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).

First, a bit of a history lesson. The School of the Americas was opened in 1946 in Panama as a way of “professionalizing” military personnel from Latin America under terms of Panamanian Canal Treaty. Panamanian President Jorge Illueca called it “the biggest base for destabilizatoin in Latin America.” It was moved to Fort Benning, Ga., where it trains 700 to 2,000 soldiers each year from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran and a Catholic priest, has spoken out against the school for more than 10 years:

“The Department of Defense re-opened the United States Army School of the Americas (SOA) under the name “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” at Ft. Benning, Ga., on Jan. 17, 2001. The new institute is no different from the SOA it replaces. Infantrymen and women from Latin America come to learn to fight. By refusing to make any significant changes to the new school, the Department of Defense failed to address the real issue – the violence perpetrated against the people of Latin America by U.S.-trained soldiers – when it renamed the SOA.”

In the past 10 years, evidence against the school has mounted, and the human rights records of its graduates beg us Americans to question our tax dollars ($18 million worth) being used to perpetuate violence in Latin America.

With the name change, there was supposed to be a change in what was taught at the SOA/WHISC. However, in a recent interview in Michigan, Col. Richard Downie, the U.S. Army director of WHISC, told a reporter that the courses offered at the school were basically the same as before. Why are we spending our tax dollars this way?

The majority of the people in Latin America struggle to survive with inadequate health care, clean water, housing, education and employment opportunities. And yet our energies are spent on training soldiers to return to their countries to oppress their own people. It was graduates from the school that murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero, raped and murdered four U.S. churchwomen, killed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, and massacred more than 900 unarmed peasants in a mountain viallge called El Mozote.

And these atrocities are not just past events. Bishop Juan Gerardi from Guatemala was murdered in 1998 by an SOA graduate one day before his report on human rights abuses was released. In Colombia, kidnapping and killings of civilians are linked with SOA graduates by the United Nations. Colombia presently is our No. 1 customer at the SOA/WHISC.

Close to 10,000 soldiers from Colombia have been trained at the SOA/WHISC, and yet, the Colombian armed forces have a history of human rights violations and ties to paramilitary groups repsonsible for 78 percent of all the political killings in Colombia. What is our response? Rewarding the Colombian military with a two-year $1.3 billion aid package in the form of military training, helicopter, and fumigation-related expenses.

What these militaries need is reform, not funding. Maybe we need to come up with a new way of doing business in training militaries from Latin America. Bourgeois makes a great suggestion:

“If we are serious about teaching democracy and respecting human rights in Latin America, then we should send soldiers to civilian institutions, where they will learn that the military must be subordinate to civilians. We cannot teach democracy through the barrel of a gun.”

Our own government sees the wisdom in this with numerous Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. programs at universities throught the U.S., including the fine one here at Eastern. This way our tax dollars are being put to good use, and our commitment to democracy and human rights are not just words we speak for ourselves, but believe them to be true for all people throughout the world.

I am proud of the 11 students on this campus who fasted the week of March 25 to close the SOA/WHISC. They are linking their fasting with the suffering of the people in Latin America and with the need to close the SOA no matter what name it has. Another eight students went to Washington, D.C., to learn, lobby and raise awareness regarding the SOA. Change happens slowly, but please contact your U.S. representative to co-sponsor a bill introduced by Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., to close SOA/WHISC. A companion bill will be introduced in the Senate. Contact Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who sponsored last year’s bill, and encourage him to do so again.