School trains soldiers to kill

By Jacob David

This Friday, 22 members of the Santa Clara community will travel to Ft. Benning, Ga., to take part in the annual vigil and protest to close the School of the Americas (SOA). The SOA is a military training academy funded by the U.S. for Latin Americans whose graduates have been linked for decades to numerous massacres, murders, dictatorships and other forms of terrorism.

Approximately 10,000 people converge on the school each year to call for the closing of this institution of mass murder and oppression and to remember the lives lost at the hands of the school's graduates. The annual vigil began in 1990 after the United Nations Truth Commission discovered that a majority of those responsible for the murder of the six Jesuits and two laywomen at the Jesuit University of Central America in El Salvador were trained at the SOA.

The SOA was founded in Panama in 1946 to help professionalize Latin American militaries. In the 1960s, its stated purpose was to fight the spread of communism. The school moved to its current location at Ft. Benning in 1984. According to its Web site, over 60,000 soldiers have been trained at the school since 1946.

The impact of the school has been felt all over Latin America. In El Salvador, the SOA trained most of the officers who plotted the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who also planned the massacre of the 900 citizens of El Mozote and who killed the six Jesuits whose crosses adorn the front lawn of our mission church. Beyond El Salvador, Nicaraguan dictator Manuel Noriega, Guatemalan dictator Manuel Callejas and Bolivian dictator Hugo Suarez are all graduates and members of the SOA's hall of fame.

The mission of the school, according to the charter code that established it, is as follows:

- Provide professional education and training to military, law enforcement and civilians to support the democratic principles of the Western Hemisphere.

- Build strong relationships among the participating nations, helping to ensure peace and stability throughout the hemisphere.

- Promote democratic values, respect for human rights and knowledge and understanding of U.S. customs and traditions.

These words appear noble. Few will argue with supporting democracy. But when the U.S. and a developing nation build a "strong relationship," the impoverished majority of the developing nation loses. The U.S. strives to achieve peace and democracy by supplying the governments of these countries with military equipment and training. This is why the SOA exists. However, these governments rarely have the interest of their people in mind, as has been proven in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and many other countries.

Colombia, the leading recipient of U.S. military aid, has been torn by a civil war for the past 40 years. Colombia is the leading Latin American supplier of cocaine and oil to the U.S. 4,300 civilians died and 300,000 were displaced from their homes in 2001 alone according to Amnesty International. Pumping more military might into the situation will not be a solution.

The U.S. provided extensive military aid to El Salvador for over 10 years and proved that peace efforts through military means cost thousands of innocent civilian lives. It wasn't until four American churchwomen were killed that the U.S. decided to cut funding to the Salvadoran government. A diplomatic solution was then reached between the sides, after nearly two decades of fighting.

Colombia is a similar situation. A similar solution seems applicable and is being pursued by many Colombians. By training anti-insurgent combatants, the SOA is merely propagating a violent system that will continue to kill the innocent. Because the school is funded by the U.S. government, we are implicated as citizens in their deaths. Eighty-four percent of the noncombatants killed in Colombia in 2000 were killed by the government or government-sponsored paramilitary militias according to the Center for International Policy - the people that the SOA trains.

The bottom line is that education in killing and in respecting human rights cannot happen at the same time because the act of killing requires a devaluation of humanity. Supporters of the school will argue that graduates of any university are liable to become criminals one day. The SOA is different because it propagates a mindset in which killing and torturing are acceptable, even preferred, ways of solving problems.

"It is the calling of a Jesuit university to take a conscious responsibility for being a force for justice," said Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the superior general of the Jesuits, at a talk at Santa Clara in 2001. The Jesuit order is modeled after the example of St. Ignatius, a converted soldier who realized the hypocrisy of war for peace. It is modeled after Jesus, who spoke of loving one's neighbor.

To attend the vigil and protest is to speak with the voice of the victims. President Paul Locatelli, S.J., said at the vigil in 1996, "I celebrate with you the lives of the eight Salvadoran martyr ... a murder planned and executed by persons trained here at Ft. Benning in a program funded by U.S. tax dollars." This is why the school must be shut down.