Common Ground: A Cross in the Road

January 2006 | Journeys

A Cross in the Road

by Joanne N. Cowan

Until recently, whenever I heard the word “torture,” I would imagine the depravations of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Soviet gulag or a dank, clammy cell filled with iron instruments from the Spanish Inquisition. Today, however, the word “torture” inevitably evokes horrifying images from U.S.-run prisons in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib.

On November 20, 2005, my growing opposition to the Bush administration’s use of torture led me to the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia, home of the SOA, the Pentagon’s notorious School of the Americas (better known as the “School of Assassins”). That Sunday dawned overcast and cold with rain sweeping in late in the afternoon as I joined 20,000 other Americans who stood vigil with crosses bearing the names of murdered Central Americans. Black-draped coffins passed in solemn procession, carried by hooded bearers in black capes as the names of the thousands of SOA victims were read aloud. Each name was followed by the raising of crosses and a chant of “Presente!” — a traditional recognition of the dead.

I was one of 35 nonviolent activists who crawled beneath the temporary fence erected to protect Ft. Benning from citizens armed only with flowers and faith. As I sat on the damp lawn holding a white rose, awaiting my arrest, I calmly repeated a prayer of protection and felt honored to further the movement to expose and close the SOA.

I now face up to six months in Federal prison and $5,000 in penalties.

Six Decades of Decadence

The School of the Americas was founded in Panama in 1946, as a training school for Central and South American soldiers. During its 59 years of existence, it has trained more than 60,000 soldiers in counterinsurgency, sniper skills, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. After it was kicked out of Panama in 1984, the SOA relocated to Ft. Benning.

Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Central and South Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, and “disappeared” by soldiers trained at the SOA. Abuses have been documented in Guatemala, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti. In 1996, pressured by critics, the Pentagon reluctantly released copies of the SOA’s training manuals. They advocated torture, extortion and execution.

SOA Watch (soaw.org) was founded 16 years ago by Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, following a rash of SOA-linked atrocities in El Salvador. These included: the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero; the massacre of more than 900 men, women and children in El Mozote; the murder of four U.S. church women; and the killing of six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her 14-year-old daughter.

Fr. Bourgeois’ first vigil (held on the November anniversary of the Jesuits’ assassination) drew only a dozen people. It now draws several thousand, including celebrities like Martin Sheen. To date, more than 180 priests, nuns, Buddhists and Quakers have “trespassed” onto the base. For this act of “moral witness,” they have collectively served more than 80 years in prison.

In 2001, the Pentagon responded to the SOA’s critics by changing the site’s name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The name change was only cosmetic. In February 2005, eight civilians were massacred in San Jose Peace Community Apartado, Columbia. Eyewitnesses reported that the Colombian Army’s 17th Brigade was occupying the area at the time. General Hector Jaime Fandiño Rincón, an SOA grad, commanded the brigade.

My Arrest

Why me? I’m a “regular” person with a graduate degree in Anthropology. I’m a Quaker and, most recently, a bookkeeper. I’ve a dog, a house, and an organic garden. I did undergraduate work at UC Berkeley in the late 60’s and early 70’s so, perhaps, it’s not surprising that I became an activist for peace and justice.

The journey towards my arrest began in August when I attended a Quaker gathering in New Mexico and heard a speaker explain that the work of prophets was not to foretell the future but to warn of the consequences of present actions. “Be patterns,” Quaker Founder George Fox wrote in 1656, “Be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations.” I felt challenged.

In September, I traveled to Washington, DC for the Call for Justice Weekend, which featured a mock trial of Bush officials for complicity in torture. I came away with a renewed distaste for how the U.S. “affects and exports” democracy. I was deeply moved by Jennifer Harbury’s account ( Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of US Involvement in Torture ) of how her husband Everardo was detained and killed in Guatemala by CIA-sponsored soldiers. My soul was deeply disturbed by the tales of torture-survivors who implicated the SOA in their suffering.

What put me over the top was Vice President Dick Cheney’s insistence that the CIA be allowed to conduct torture “legally.” I had attended the emotional SOA vigil once before, but now I was finally willing to serve witness to my concerns. But my willingness was ahead of my true readiness. I had responsibilities to cover, personal concerns to address, a job I wanted to keep, as well as research to do on how to commit civil disobedience and face the consequences.

I read Clare Hanrahan’s book, Jailed for Justice, a Woman’s Guide to Federal Prison Camp. I joined an affinity group for moral support and sought counsel from SOAW’s lawyers. I engaged in a Quaker process of “seeking clearness” to test the depth of my intent and strengthen its foundation.

My decision to face prison is deeply interwoven with my Quaker faith. The seasoning of my thoughts led me to walk to the fence — and crawl beneath it — with grace and peace of mind. I now know that wherever I am — whether standing in vigil or in prison — God is with me and all is well. It is with this conviction that I await my trial on January 30 with 35 others who followed the same path of nonviolent civil disobedience, “speaking truth to power” in hopes of ending America’s criminal use of torture — taught and exported from the SOA.

Joanne Cowan is a resident of Boulder, Colorado.

Note: The Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005 (HR 1217), introduced by Rep. Jim Mc Govern (D-MA), would investigate the SOA. The Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act of 2005 (HR 952) introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), would ban the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which sends captives to other countries for “torture by proxy.”

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