The School of Americas Bites Back

A recent issue of Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009) contains an article entitled “What’s Wrong With Our Prisons?” written by Senator Jim Webb (D. VA) which focuses on two consequences of the drug trade in Mexico and the United States. Curiously, however, just one of the consequences deals directly with our prisons, while the other concerns the enhanced danger to American citizens created by Mexican drug cartels.

First up, Senator Webb tells us that persons imprisoned for drug offenses rose from 10% of the inmate population to about 33% between 1984 and 2002. Moreover, 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses, and nearly 60% of those serving time in state prisons had no history of violence or of any significant drug selling activity. On top of it all, there’s a well-known racial bias built into the system of prosecuting drug offenders in this country in that African-Americans, who comprise about 12% of the U.S. population, account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of drug offenders put in prison.

What this adds up to is that the United States now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, by far. With 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prisoners. We currently imprison 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, more than five times the average worldwide — resulting in the fact that one out of every 31 adults in the US is either in prison, in jail, or on supervised release.

This said, Senator Webb then segues into the second problem — the increase in crime along our southwestern border caused by the traffic in drugs masterminded by Mexican cartels, the profits of which are said to reach $25 billion annually. The cartels, which exert absolute control over certain parts of Mexico and took the lives of more than 6,000 Mexicans last year alone, are also said to be running operations in 230 American cities. With 370 kidnapings last year, they have turned Phoenix, Arizona, into the kidnaping capital of the country, second to Mexico City in the hemisphere. Moreover, according to Senator Webb, the cartels “are known to employ many elite former soldiers who were trained in some of America’s most sophisticated military programs.”

Senator Webb reaches two conclusions which, when combined, create a rather strange tandem. He declares, first, that “we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life,” and, second, that “we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail.” The remedy for this? The best the Senator can do is: “American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problem of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.”

While I sort of admire Senator Webb, it seems to me that, like a lot of politicians, he’s long on problems and short on solutions. With all due respect, however, when it comes to solutions, partial or otherwise, here are two: First, regarding the drug trade and the high prison population in this country — legalize marijuana, then regulate it and tax it. Second, regarding the involvement of American-trained “elite former soldiers” now working for the Mexican drug cartels, stop training them, Senator — which means closing the School of the Americas where those “elite former soldiers” undoubtedly received their training.

The School of Americas was initially established in Panama in 1946, but was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. In 1984 it was re-established at Fort Benning, Georgia, where, ever since, Latin American security personnel have been trained in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics tactics and strategies. The purpose of the School for the most part has been to train “elite” forces which would support American interests by supporting Latin American dictators.

By now it’s clear that graduates of the School of Americas are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower level graduates of the School were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and hundreds of other human rights abuses.

On November 16, 1989, a US Congressional Task Force issued findings that those responsible for the massacre in El Salvador of the six Jesuits, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were trained at the Army School of the Americas. In a tiny apartment in Fort Benning a year later, the SOA Watch designed to monitor the School of Americas was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois. Father Bourgeois is an American Maryknoll priest, former US Naval officer, and a veteran of the war in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart. He became a Catholic priest in 1972 and went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and SOA graduate General Hugo Banzer. Father Bourgeois had become involved in the US policy in El Salvador years before he started SOA Watch after four US churchwomen — two of them Maryknoll sisters and friends of his — were raped and murdered by Salvadoran soldiers in 1980.

Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” Then Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, a supporter of SOA Watch and a friend of Father Bourgeois, said, “the U.S. Army School of the Americas became a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." Over the years, the School has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators. In 2001, the Pentagon renamed the SOA the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHISC) because of the bad publicity caused by the SOA Watch which, among other things, had effectively renamed it the “School of Assassins.”

On September 20, 1996, after lying about their existence for years, the Pentagon was compelled to release seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used in Latin America and in intelligence training courses at the SOA between 1987 and 1991. The manuals — one of which was entitled, “Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla” — taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America; they contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnaping a target's family members. Joseph Kennedy said "These manuals taught tactics that come right out of a Soviet gulag and have no place in civilized society." The Pentagon admitted that they were a "mistake" and were merely the product of an unknown lower-level military operative’s excessive zeal. They had never been “officially cleared for publication” declared the Pentagon, so no one was to blame. Appeals to President Clinton, with the weirdest of logic, were referred back to the Pentagon. The SOA manuals were, in a sense, the moral equivalent of those that would later govern the treatment of prisoners at Abu Gahrib and Guantanamo, and their exposure was treated with similar denial and obfuscation by the military.

Protest demonstrations — which are actually peaceful, nonviolent vigils — are conducted every November by the SOA Watch. Over the years, they have grown considerably; a friend of mine who was there reports that 22,000 persons were at the gates of Fort Benning in 2006. As a result of arrests of SOA Watch protesters, usually for trespassing on a federal military installation or “disturbing the peace,” 237 human rights defenders have collectively spent over 98 years in prison, and more than 50 persons have served probation sentences. The protest held this past November resulted in six more arrests, six more convictions, and six more persons serving time in federal prisons.

To give you a flavor of who does the protesting, the “2008 SOA Six” included Father Luis Barrios, an episcopal priest and college professor who teaches courses on gangs, criminal justice, US-Latin American foreign policy, and Latin Studies at City College of New York; Theresa M. Cusimano, a lawyer and public interest advocate for twenty years from Colorado; Kristin Holm, 21, a first year student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago; Sister Diane Therese Pinchot, of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, a school teacher and sculptress; Al Simmons, 64-year-old retired pre-school teacher and Vietnam vet who has been involved in peace and social justice campaigns “for the past forty years;” and Louis Wolf, 69 years old, a conscientious objector, author, and third-world traveler.

From our area, Kay and Randy Bond have protested the SOA in Fort Benning twice (arrested once), and Sally Neal has been there and done that five times. There may be others. In 2007, Valerie Fillenwarth of Indianapolis, the wife (of 45 years) of a Notre Dame law school classmate of mine, a former Maryknoll sister, the mother of seven and grandmother of 17, served 100 days in the Danbury Correctional Center in Danbury, Connecticut, for trespassing at Fort Benning (a Class B Misdemeanor), though she’d never before received even a traffic ticket. And, of course, Father Bourgeois himself has been imprisoned many times for nonviolent protests at Fort Benning, just as he has been imprisoned many times in many countries throughout Central and South America.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, that creating a facility like the School of Americas to train soldiers to do the dirty work of American-sponsored dictators south of our borders would result in a situation in which those very soldiers, or others like them, began performing the same kind dirty work for vicious criminal cartels that threaten our own national interests today. The saying may be trite, but it applies: What goes around, comes around.

In 2007, a bill in the US House of Representatives designed to close the School of Americas was defeated by just nine votes, 203 to 214. Representatives Bart Stupak and Dave Camp from northern Michigan voted in favor, and Peter Hoekstra voted against the measure. Overall, with just 76.6% of House Democrats and 11.4% of the Republicans voting in favor two years ago, it’s hoped that a similar bill will pass in the new Congress this year.

By the way, one of the consistent supporters of the effort to close the School of Americas in the United States Congress is Dennis Kucinich. However you may have voted in last year’s primary, Mr. Kucinich has to be the friend of every person in this country who calls him- or herself a liberal.

Anyway, with thanks for his article on the prison problem, as far as it goes, I do have some free advice for Senator Webb — Close the School of Americas, Senator. And have a talk with Dennis. Soon.

Quote of the Day. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel

Joke of the Day. How many watched the president’s news conference last Tuesday night? He got a little testy there, you know. When he was asked why he waited three days to speak out against the AIG bonuses, President Obama said he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks. So, yet another reversal of the Bush policies. — Jay Leno