October 8, 2002 - Albany Times Union: Guatemala RPCV Andy Johnson says Shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Headlines: Peace Corps Headlines - 2002: 10 October 2002 Peace Corps Headlines: October 8, 2002 - Albany Times Union: Guatemala RPCV Andy Johnson says Shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue

By Admin1 (admin) on Monday, October 14, 2002 - 12:41 pm: Edit Post

Guatemala RPCV Andy Johnson says Shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue





Read and comment on this story from the Albany Times Union that Guatemala RPCV Andy Johnson says shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue at:

Shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue*

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Shutdown of School of Americas is long overdue

Oct 8, 2002 - Times Union-Albany NY

Author(s): Andy Johnson Decatur, Ga.

Caption: Army Secretary Louis B. Caldera speaks Friday during a special ceremony at the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia

Thanks for Kate Gurnett's article on Rich Ring and his stand of conscience against the School of the Americas (Sept. 22). I went to college and grad school with Rich, and I can attest that his social conscience wasn't really "awakened" in Guatemala. Deepened, reinvigorated, saddened maybe, but it was always there.

He was always a leader in doing what is right, and I suspect he always will be.

I also have spent time in Guatemala. As a Peace Corps volunteer from 1994 to 1997, I saw some of the horrible effects of the 30- year civil war and the atrocities committed by graduates of the School of the Americas. This story is one small, small, example:

I lived high up on the side of a mountain. About once a week, I would walk up and over a pass and work in the tiny primary school of a tiny indigenous village. The village was so small because it was made up of the remnants of families who had fled after their home villages were massacred by the army in the 1970s.

I taught the kids simple activities related to conservation. We planted a school vegetable garden, and started a community tree nursery. On one of those days with the school kids, I decided we had better organize a watering schedule, as I was about to be gone for a couple of weeks. I asked a couple of the more-involved kids if they would be the leaders.

Their reaction remains with me to this day. They froze up. They clammed up. They wouldn't talk, and they wouldn't look at me for sure. Here were these 8- and 10-year-old kids all enthusiasm and smiles and laughter, and all of a sudden they were almost paralyzed by fear.

The teacher set me straight. In their old village, the leaders were the first to be assassinated. Those leaders were the granddads of these kids. In some cases, their uncles, or even their own dads. It was only later that entire villages were attacked.

The article mentioned that Rich's parents would be picking up the torch this fall at the November protest. He will be joined by many others inspired by his actions, including myself and my family. I am hoping that my 3-year-old daughter will grow up to value the wonders of this country of ours. I am also hoping she will have the courage to call a spade a spade.

We do indeed have a terrorist training camp right here in Georgia, and it's high time it was rooted out. I hope to see y'all in November.




School of the Americas closes to undergo name change

Read and comment on this story from CNN on the shutdown of School of Americas:

School of the Americas closes to undergo name change*

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School of the Americas closes to undergo name change

Army Secretary Louis B. Caldera speaks Friday during a special ceremony at the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia

Critics call it 'School of the Assassins'

December 15, 2000
Web posted at: 7:10 p.m. EST (0010 GMT)
In this story:

'Not a rogue school'

Protesters arrested

Defense Department to run new school

RELATED STORIES, SITES icon

FORT BENNING, Georgia -- The Army held closing ceremonies Friday for its controversial School of the Americas, known among its critics as the "School of the Assassins."

The school will reopen in January under a new name: The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Critics allege the school has provided military training for leaders responsible for human rights abuses in their own countries. Some of Latin America's most notorious human rights abusers are among the school's 65,000 alumni, critics have said.

Army officials hope that changing the school's name and making sure its curriculum stresses civilian control of the military and respect for human rights will blunt some of the criticism that has dogged the school for more than a decade.

Opponents of the school have said the changes will be only cosmetic. They vow to continue protests.
'Not a rogue school'

Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, who spoke at Friday's ceremonies, said the School of the Americas was "not a rogue school."

"Let me say very clearly that any soldier in Latin America who had even the most remote connection to the School of the Americas who has ever committed a human rights violation did so in spite of the training they received... and not because of it," Caldera said.

Caldera conceded that the school's closing was precipitated by growing protests.
Protesters arrested

Last month, police arrested 1,700 protesters after they marched through the school's gates and demanded that the facility be shut down.

Those arrested included actor Martin Sheen, star of the television drama, "The West Wing." An estimated 3,000 other demonstrators protested outside the school's gates.

Most of those arrested were charged with trespassing, given a warning and released, Army officials said.

The protests have been held every year since 1989. They commemorate the November 16, 1989, killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, to which some of the school's graduates have been linked.

Military officials have dismissed critics' charges as absurd.

"I'd characterize it as false and as propaganda," Maj. Gen. John LeMoyne, the post commander, has said.
Defense Department to run new school

The School of the Americas was founded at Fort Amador in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946 as the Latin American Training Center. Four years later it was renamed the U.S. Army Caribbean School and Spanish became its official academic language.

In July 1963, the school was renamed the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Under the provisions of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, the school was relocated to Fort Benning in October 1984.

The school's annual student enrollment was around 1,000. It graduated more than 57,000 officers, cadets, noncommissioned officers and government civilians from 22 Latin American countries and the United States during its 54-year history.

The new school will be run by the Defense Department, under the guiding principles of the Organization of American States.

But Ray Bourgeois, a leading critic of the school, has said opponents will not let up.

"We see this as cosmetic," Bourgeois, a co-founder of School of the Americas Watch, said last month. "It's like taking a bottle of poison and writing 'penicillin' on it."

CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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