MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1999

School of Americas dangerously current

I have written the following in response to one of your editorials, which I found was outstanding.

I was moved by the March 15th 49er editorial, "Who are the good guys?" exposing the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, which for many years has trained Latin American military in counter-intelligence, counter-insurgency and commando tactics used against its own citizens.

My attention was riveted by the S.O.A. several years back when I discovered that its graduates had masterminded the assassination of the Archbishop of San Salvador, who annoyed El Salvador's elite power structure by condemning the U.S.-sanctioned death squads and other intervention that marked the Ronald Reagan years.

Then came news of the Jesuit faculty martyrdom from the University of Central America for teaching Liberation Theology; Two-thirds of the conspirators were S.O.A. grads.

To experience the situation first-hand, I accepted a call to be international observer of the crucial 1994 elections in El Salvador, where I felt the terror induced by the same grads. Two years later, I risked two months in federal prison by protesting the school by "crossing the line" at Fort Benning.

Last year, I attended my third protest with 7,000 other citizens from the U.S., especially many from its colleges and universities. The 2,300 protesters risked arrest by marching in a funeral cortege carrying coffins and crosses with the names of S.O.A. victims.

However much I abhor what the school has done - training dictators, teaching torture techniques and specializing in subversion of peaceful and religious organizations perceived as opposed to the status quo - the S.O.A. threat is dangerously current.

Last summer, I spent part of July and August on a fact-finding human rights delegation to Honduras and Guatemala. I found witnesses who concluded that the biggest obstacle to democracy, justice, and peace is their armies, whose leadership is invariably trained at the school.

Historically, the Latin army has been in place to protect the interests of the elite families who control the countries' wealth. The army's strength is a stranglehold. They control the population's movement, airports, highways, imports and exports.

They are often interchangeable with the police who are shock-troops for heartless Neoliberalism and Globalization. They aim at marginalizing the indigenous people, blocking legislative power, dismantling the already debilitated court system, and in countless ways, making democracy a shadow.

Let us find other ways to empower our southern neighbors such as offering youth scholarships and monitoring U.S. companies which mercilessly exploit their labor.

The drug war is a cover for Uncle Sam's real intention: Control. Let us not pursue American interests at the price of others' suffering and disenfranchisement.

- Robert J. Brophy,

English professor