Pedro Gomez Hernandez: !PRESENTE!

"All true revolutionaries are motivated by the profoundest feelings of love."

As I carried a cross bearing his name, I tried to imagine little Pedro. A little, three-year-old Guatemalan boy with a round brown face, big brown eyes, little hands and feet. I have had the privilege of carrying and playing with children like that. They are so sweet! Lively amongst their friends, yet shy with strangers; curious, funny, adorable. Unfortunately, too many of them are also hungry, sick, and fearful.

Tears slid down my face as I carried the cross bearing Pedro's name, walking slowly in a long procession with 600 others, each bearing a cross with a name, onto the grounds of Fort Benning in Georgia. To place the symbol of his life -- and death -- and hoped-for resurrection, before those who have been responsible for the suffering of so many innocents: the School of the Americas. And I wept as an MP took the cross from my hands -- I felt as if they tore his little body from my arms. Did they tear him from his mother's arms? Did she scream? Did he?

We were politely escorted by the soldiers to the waiting buses. Politely held, searched, photographed. Politely and generously fed. And politely escorted off the base. It was all very calm and orderly and civilized. Probably very unlike the night when Pedro was killed.

I, along with some 2,000 others, had come to Ft. Benning to protest against the U.S. Army's training center for soldiers from Latin America, the School of the Americas. Many of us have been working to close this institution, because we know that graduates of the SOA have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities carried out by the armies of nations like El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia. We are outraged that our tax dollars, and the power of the United States, have been used to train soldiers in torture and assassination tactics, and to support the murderous regimes which employ them. We have heard the testimonies of those who were victims of the violence promoted by the SOA, and shared their stories in schools, churches, synagogues, and community meetings. We have organized campaigns of citizen pressure -- phone calls, letters, visits to Congress -- as well as demonstrations on the steps of the U.S Capitol and the Pentagon, calling for the closing of this "School of Assassins."

Now, on November 16, 1997, the time had come for us to use our very selves, our bodies, to say "!BASTA! ENOUGH! This must stop NOW!" People from all across the U.S. gathered at the entrance to Ft. Benning on Sunday morning, for a worship service to commemorate all victims of the SOA. We especially lifted up the lives and witness of the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her 15-year-old daughter, who were assassinated by graduates of the SOA on November 16, 1989, in El Salvador. With songs, speeches, street theater, and prayers, we joined our hearts and raised our voices on behalf of those who do not have the privilege of speaking out against the terror and violence. In response, representatives of the Army informed us that if we entered the base "for purposes of political speech," we would be subject to arrest.

We and our supporters had collected over one million signatures calling for the closing of the SOA. These petitions were placed in eight "coffins," and carried by those leading our procession. As the names of victims of SOA violence were read out over the loud-speaker -- with the crowd singing out "Presente!" after each one -- we began to walk, silently, two-by-two, across the line, onto the base. Each of us carried a cross, bearing the name of one of the victims. Mine said: Pedro Gomez Hernandez, 3 anos, Guatemala.

Of the 600 who were detained by the U.S. Army that day, the majority were given a letter forbidding entry for one year. Some of the "recidivists," who had been there before, will have to appear for trials next June, and three have already been sentenced to 6 months in jail. All of us are hoping that there won't be a "next year" for the SOA protest: we invite you to join us as we continue to hope, and pray, and work so that Congress will vote to close the school before next November 16. If that doesn't happen, we invite you to join us at Ft. Benning once again, until there are so many voices that we cannot be ignored any longer by the media, the Congress, the Army. Until at last the cries of the victims and their supporters will be heard, and the School of the Americas will be closed. No more shall men, women, and little children be tortured and murdered by soldiers trained in the United States.

You can join the effort to close the School of the Americas! Call, write, visit your congressional representatives and urge them to vote for HR-611 or S-980.

For more information, contact SOA Watch at PO Box 3330, Columbus GA. 31903 (706/682-5369).

Return to the Index of Synapse 42, Winter 1997/98