SOAW Vigil

It is decided, I am headed to Ft. Benning, GA for the SOAW Prayer Vigil

Below I have included an article I wrote for my church newsletter to raise awareness and
support for this event.

There are many people that have influenced my life, but two Salvadorian men have challenged the way I see United States policy in El Salvador. The first is Miguel, pastor of a Church in El Salvador. And the second is Isidro the director of the Oscar Romero Society in Vancouver.

Miguel came to our graduate school to share about El Salvador as a part of Oscar Romero Week. He began his talk with these words, “Thanks for your invitation to speak to you, but I would like to have a dialogue. I do not want to be the only one talking and answering questions because it reminds me of my integration when I was in jail.” Pastor Miguel spent time in a Salvadorian jail during the civil war.

From 1970 to 1992, El Salvador suffered a civil war that claimed the lives of 75,000 to 80,000 and 1.5 million people were exiled to foreign countries. El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America. It is about the size of Massachusetts, and to loose this many people as a result of war caused extensive damaged all sectors of life in the country.

During the civil war, the government claimed to be fighting communism by suppressing guerilla groups. After the Cold War ended historians and popular culture agrees that this was war lead by the wealthy elite to maintain their grip on the bulk of the countries wealth. The Salvadorian military sponsored paramilitary groups, known as deaths squads, which would kill and torture Salvadorian civilians. Miguel Castro and the members of his church were labeled as communist because they ran programs that helped the poor. Many of the members of Emanuel Baptist Church were jailed, tortured and raped. Tragically twenty members of the church were executed merely for helping the poor. Miguel was nearly killed if it was not for an Australian pastor who advocated for Miguel’s life. The Australian pastor called everyone he knew and had them call the jail to ask for Miguel’s freedom. At the last minute before he was killed, a general came into the jail and pulled out Miguel and said, “You must know a lot of people because I have gotten calls from all over the world. We can’t kill you.” Miguel barely escaped death, but he retains the scars of the inhumane treatment in the Salvadorian jail.

The second man I met was named Isidro. During the civil war he grew up in a middle class village in rural El Salvador. He did not know much about the abuse or impunity of the Salvadorian army until he moved to a poor rural village to teach. He began to notice the way people in authority could do anything they wanted, especially abuse women. One day he grew tired of the lawlessness and stood up for a young woman. A few days later a death squad showed up to the school. They brought him to a van to take him away. He was a Christian and told the soldiers, “God sees what you are doing.” The soldier was surprised and told him, “You have 30 seconds to run.” Immediately he took off and did not stop until he got to Guatemala. From Guatemala he miraculously was accepted as a political refugee to Canada.

Many of the 1.5 million people that fled El Salvador ended up in America. One of the Salvadorian papers runs a column called the 15^th department (equivalent to state) that reports on US news and news about Salvadorians in the US because of the large numbers of Salvadorians in the US. Why do so many of the people come to the US? Some come to look for a better future for their families and others come fleeing political persecution. Mostly people come because the US does not allow their citizens to be abused or treated less than human.

Ironically, the very people looking for a place of safety come to the perpetrator of oppression and impunity in their own country. There is a school called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas) at Fort Benning, GA that teaches terror tactics to soldiers to repress and intimidate the civilian population. This school teaches torture tactics to Latin American military leaders and soldiers. On Nov. 16, 1989, a14-yearold girl named Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and six Jesuit priests were slaughter in El Salvador. A US Congressional Task Force reported that most of these soldiers were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. This school continues to be responsible for the worst human rights abuses in Latin American.

As a result of my friendship with Miguel and Isidro I have been drawn to Fort Benning, GA. Every November the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) holds a vigil in solidarity with victims of the violence of Latin America and especially of the six Jesuit priests and 2 women killed in El Salvador. The goal of the vigil is to close down the WHISC. This year the vigil will be held November 21-23. I would like to invite you to join me for a couple days at the SOAW vigil. I am drawn to the vigil because of my friends from Emmanuel Baptist Church and Isidro who have suffered from the military aid and education that we in the US provided the Salvadorian military. It is my hope that we in the US will speak out and take action against this school. May we join together with our Latin American brothers and sisters and say, “We do not want a school of repression and torture in our back yard!” On November 9, I will be showing a documentary on SOA. If you want more information I encourage you to visit http://www.soaw.org/. Lastly, I recommend the movie Romero directed by John Duigan to see a small glimpse of the situation described above.