School of Americas

To the Editors:

Oberlin students are once again gearing up to lend their voices to the growing cry to close the School of the Americas. The SOA is a military training school on Fort Benning, GA which has trained Latin American military officers for the past 54 years. The school was founded to strengthen ties between the United States military and various military regimes fighting communism, and to give those regimes training and assistance in techniques ranging from counter-insurgency to torture to interrogation.

Hundreds of graduates of the School have been implicated in human rights violations, including a massacre of the village of El Mozote (370 people) in El Salvador; the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero; the murders of four Ohio church women working in El Salvador; and the current military repression and ongoing violence in Colombia. Members of the Oberlin chapter of School of the Americas Watch, an organization committed to closing the school and bringing justice for its victims, have traveled to Georgia each November for the past five years to participate in the annual vigil to close the SOA.
Thousands of people from all over the U.S., the Americas, and around the world, will spend the weekend of November 15-17 at the gates of Fort Benning in rallies, marches, song, prayer, and nonviolent direct action to close the school. The Oberlin Peace Activist League is planning this year’s trip. If you would like to get involved, be a part of this inspiring event or would like more information, check out SOAWatch’s website at www.soaw.org.

–Kate Berrigan
College senior