 SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the US Army School of the Americas, under whatever name it is called, through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work.
 On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were massacred in El Salvador. A U.S. Congressional Task Force reported that those responsible were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
In 1990 SOA Watch began in a tiny apartment outside the main gate of Ft. Benning. While starting with a small group, SOA Watch quickly drew upon the knowledge and experience of many in the U.S. who had worked with the people of Latin America in the 1970's and 80's.
Today, the SOA Watch movement is a large, diverse, grassroots movement rooted in solidarity with the people of Latin America. The goal of SOA Watch is to close the SOA and to change U.S. foreign policy in Latin America by educating the public, lobbying Congress and participating in creative, nonviolent resistance. The Pentagon has responded to the growing movement and Congress' near closure of the SOA with a PR campaign to give the SOA a new image. In an attempt to disassociate the school with its horrific past, the SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in January of 2001
In 2007 David Cook wrote an open letter to his member of Congress urging him to vote to close the SOA. Each vote in congress has gotten closer to the needed majority to close the school. Here is Cook's letter reprinted from The Chattanoogan saying:
First, let me thank you for the work you have done for the people not only in Chattanooga but throughout America. To help you help them further, allow me to introduce you to a man named Oscar Romero.
Oscar Romero was the archbishop of El Salvador in the 1960s and 1970s. On an early morning in 1975, the El Salvadoran National Guard stormed his village, using governmental machetes to butcher and kill his parishioners. The government claimed the Guard was punishing communist rebels; Romero knew instead they to be the poor peasants taking communion from him each week, and suffering daily under the heels of tremendous economic inequality and governmental abuse.
In their death, Romero saw the death of Christ.
 At this time, he was supported by the Council of Latin American Bishops, who in 1968, had declared that God indeed had a preference, and His preference was for the poor of the earth.
"At the last judgment we shall all be judged according to the treatment we have given Christ, Christ in the person of those who are hungry, thirsty, dirty, sick, and oppressed,'' writes Dom Helder Camara, the deceased archbishop of Brazil who once called upon his fellow Catholic bishops to sell away all their gold ornaments to help the poor.
God's "preferential option for the poor'' gave revolutionary hope to the millions of ditch-poor folks in central America, yet immediately put bishops like Romero, and Camara, at enemy-odds against the established power, namely the government.
The story is a sad one. Throughout central America, totalitarian governments have been the enemy of freedom, the enemy of poor people, the enemy of God. Dictators, assassins, death squads and paramilitary groups all waged acts of terrorism against their own people. Against this, Romero fought his holy war, using the weapons of his Christ-God: forgiving his enemies, feeding the poor, speaking truth to power even as pamphlets were distributed throughout San Salvador saying, "Be patriotic. Kill a priest.''
It is these assassins that I ask you to consider today.
For the last five decades, the US government has funded, sponsored, financed and operated an organization called The School of the Americas. Situated in Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) is the premier training facility in the Americas, as Latin American dictators, rulers and paramilitary groups send their men to SOA to receive instruction on torture, execution, assassinations and fear-based terrorism.
"Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics,'' writes School of the Americas Watch, the leading opposition to SOA/WHINSEC. ''These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.''
From Bolivia to Colombia to El Salvador to Uruguay, SOA graduates have become the messengers of death to the poor, the widowed, the priests, the children of Latin America. Were we to line up the dead and decapitated outside the SOA gates, the bodies of those whose murderers once walked its halls, the line of death would stretch and stretch and stretch longer than one could imagine.
In 1989, SOA graduates murdered six Jesuit priests, a woman working alongside them, and her teenage daughter. Within months, a group called School of the Americas Watch formed in Georgia with the single goal of working to shut down the SOA/WHINSEC.
Seventeen years later, the movement to shut down the SOA/WHINSEC has reached tremendous, international attention. Beginning Wednesday, thousands of Americans will participate in a three-day fast and call to action, drawing the world's attention to the histories of the SOA/WHINSEC and the things we can do to stop it.
Currently in the House of Representatives is Bill HR 1707 (sponsored by Jim McGovern with 72 original co-sponsors) which would suspend any and all US governmental funding of the SOA/WHINSEC and also investigate its maddeningly long list of human rights violations. This bill is available immediately for your co-sponsorship, and will soon reach the voting floor.
Your vote and co-sponsorship in favor of this bill will show your solidarity with the poor and oppressed people of the Americas; those whom the SOA graduates assassinate, rape, torture, threaten and murder are eerily similar to the same folks that Christ himself associated with: the poor, the widowed, the radical priests, the oppressed, the outcast, the dissidents.
I ask you today to cast your vote, your whole vote, in their favor. To do otherwise is to continue to support an exportation of violence that allows totalitarian governments to do what they do best: suffocate freedom from their people through terrorism.
As an example, when SOA/WHINSEC students in Georgia practice simulations with empty bullets, the village priest, played by the US Army chaplain, is often either killed or abused.
As an example, SOA graduates were responsible for the military violence, freedom-less dictatorships and terror reigns in Bolivia and Chile, Argentina and Guatemala, Uruguay and Colombia, the last of which has sent more troops to SOA than any other Latin American country (perhaps because the US is its biggest investor).
Before his death, Oscar Romero wrote then-president Jimmy Carter, whose administration funneled millions of dollars to El Salvador, which in turned promised death to Romero's beloved poor.
"You say that you are a Christian,'' Romero wrote to President Carter. "If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they only use it to kill my people.''
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RFHALL Students & Staff Journey to SOA
Since 2004, RFHall has travelled by bus to attend the SOA protests outside the gates of Fort Benning Georgia. Here are a couple of the videos put together over the years which describe why high school
students from Canada think it is important to travel to FT. Benning in Georgia to demand that this school, which has trained people to torture, should be closed down. It also shows excerpts from the Orbis show "Guns & Greed".
For a number of years RFHall students have led the funeral procession, dressed in black robes, leading 10 of thousands in this
memorial to all those countless victims who have been tortured, died and disappeared by graduates of the SOA, now known as WHINSEC.
What is the SOA?
 The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.
Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.
Pusla aquí para leer en español: La Escuela de las AmericasClic ici pour lire en francais: L'Ecole des Ameriques
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San Jose Massacre |
| On February 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Uraba, Colombia were brutally massacred. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military's 17th Brigade, commanded by an SOA graduate. |
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SOA/ WHINSEC Background |
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| On January 17, 2001 the School of the Americas was replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Read more about the school here. |
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SOA/WHINSEC Graduates |
| Visit the SOA Graduate section to learn about notorious graduates of the School of the Americas. In this section you will also find a complete list of SOA graduates sorted by country. |
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SOA, Labor & Globalization |
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| From its beginning, the mission of the SOA has been to train soldiers to protect the interests of multinational corporations and maintain the economic status quo for the few rich and powerful in the US and their cohorts in Latin America. Labor leaders and union organizers have always been among the primary targets of SOA violence. |
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Colombia |
| In Colombia and the Andean Region, our taxpayer money is paying to escalate a civil war, displace hundreds of thousands of civilians, strengthen a military with a horrible human rights record, damage critical bio-diversity in the Amazon basin, and more. Learn about recent events and the connections between the SOA/ WHINSEC and Colombia. |
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Reports Citing the SOA/ WHINSEC |
| Read a variety of reports from international human rights organizations and agencies citing the SOA/ WHINSEC and its graduates. |
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SOA Manuals |
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| Read the actual text of a variety of SOA training manuals. Manuals on topics such as Counter Intelligence, and Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla are available here in English and Spanish. |
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Victims Names |
| Learn about massacres committed by SOA graduates and read the names of their victims |
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