US delegation against SOAW visits Bolivia

Three members of the Organisation School of Americas Watch are set to visit Bolivia from 8 to 15 March to call on the Government to withdraw Bolivian army officials from the School of the Americas, a military college in the US which has been responsible for thousands of cases of torture, rapes, disappearances and massacres in Latin America.

The popular non-violent movement in the US has been campaigning for 15 years to close the military school. The School of the Americas (now called the Institute of Cooperation for Hemispheric Security)has trained more than 70,000 Latin american soldiers since its founding in 1946. Its students are responsible for the most notorious cases of human rights abuses in the Continent. Amongst the hundreds of Bolivian graduates are General Hugo Banzer Suárez  and Luís Arce Gómez.

The delegation will be led by Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the movement. Father Roy worked as a Maryknoll priest and missionary in Bolivia in the 1970s and 80s and later spent 4 years as a prisoner of conscience in US prisons due to his efforts to close the school. He will be accompanied by Carlos Mauricio, a Salvadorean professor who was tortured by Salvadorean graduates of the School of Americas and by Lisa Sullivan who was a Maryknoll lay missionary in Bolivia and Venezuela for 21 years and who together with Father Roy succeeded in persuading President Chavez to withdraw Venezuelan troops from the School in 2004.

The struggle to close the school has become one of the biggest social movements in the US. Every year tens of thousands of people from all over the country come to its base in Georgia to demand its closure. More than a hundred people have been imprisoned for their actions of civil disobedience in attempts to close the school.

The delegation plans to meet with various members of civil society and the Bolivian Government with their petition for the withdrawal of Bolivian soldiers from the school. The aim is to unite the forces of the Bolivian and North-American people to help close the school, which represents a policy of death and destruction for both peoples.

For more information about the movement and the delegation, please contact:

Lisa Sullivan (Lisavenezuela AT gmail dot com) or visit School of Americas Watch