Tucson, AZ – Hundreds of activists from across the country convened in southern Arizona for this year’s School of the Americas Watch: Converge on the U.S./Mexico Border. The event was held on Oct. 7-8 to bring attention to U.S. wars and intervention in Latin America, the continued militarization of the Mexico border, the pressing refugee crisis, and the criminalization and incarceration of undocumented migrants.

Throughout the weekend-long mobilization, vigils, protests and workshops were held by various faith based, immigrant rights, indigenous, student, environmental and social justice organizations.

The opening event took place Oct. 7 at the Eloy Immigrant Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) runs many detention centers as private, for-profit businesses that are notorious for human rights violations. Due to inhumane conditions, these facilities are seeing many bold hunger strikes as poor people behind bars continue to fight for their dignity.

On Oct. 8, activists marched to meet each other at the border wall, kicking off on the U.S. side from the Hotel Americana in Nogales, Arizona and on the Mexico side from Plaza Ochoa in Nogales, Sonora. Speakers and musicians from across the Americas demanded the end to the destructive U.S. economic, military and political interventions in Latin America. People echoed the need to build bridges of solidarity between all oppressed peoples and their struggles for justice and self-determination.

School of the Americas Watch workshops included: Empire prisons: How the U.S. is spreading mass incarceration in Mexico; From Palestine to the U.S./Mexico border: Border militarization practices; Borderland Identity: Expectations and Realities. For those unable to attend the border protest, several workshops were held in the city of Tucson that addressed topics like gender, racism and international solidarity.

“I’m really glad this is being held in the Arizona/Mexico border because our immigrant and indigenous communities have suffered firsthand the effects of the militarization of the border and oppressive laws like SB1070. This event will bring national attention to the humanitarian crisis taking place at the border”, said Eduardo C. Tolentino, a Tucson immigrant rights activist.

The border convergence concluded Oct. 10 with a community celebration of Indigenous People’s Day, including music, dancers and speakers.

#TucsonAZ #SchoolOfTheAmericas #CorrectionsCorporationOfAmerica #EloyImmigrantDetentionCenter

Columbus, GA – A large group of anti-war and international solidarity activists passed out hundreds of flyers at the annual School of the Americas (SOA) protest at Fort Benning, Georgia on Nov. 21. The flyer calls to support the peace process in Colombia, freedom for Simon Trinidad and to close the SOA, where Latin American death squads and dictators are trained. The Colombian military trains regularly at the SOA and has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere.

Trinidad, a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is held in the Florence, Colorado supermax prison as a political prisoner of the U.S. government. The FARC say Simon Trinidad is needed to complete the peace negotiations with the Colombian government in Havana, Cuba. Activists are organizing a Thanksgiving week call-in day to President Obama to “Free Simon Trinidad!”

On Nov. 21, Florida members of Students for a Democratic Society, the Tampa Committee to Stop FBI Repression and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization rallied with hundreds of others to close a for-profit detention center holding undocumented immigrants, including many women and children. On Nov. 22, a memorial procession for the tens of thousands of victims of the SOA marches to the gates of Fort Benning.

The call-in day is on Tuesday, Nov. 24, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Organizers are asking people to call President Obama at 1-202-456-1111 and say, “I want President Obama to support peace for Colombia, and to free Simon Trinidad. Simon Trinidad belongs at the peace negotiating table, not in solitary confinement at the Florence Colorado Supermax prison.”

#ColumbusGA #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #Colombia #SchoolOfTheAmericas #SimónTrinidad

Chrisley Carpio with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) said, “College students from Florida, the South, and other parts of the country are coming together to protest the School of the Americas. This school trains soldiers to slaughter progressive activists, trade unionists, and dissenters in Latin America, especially in Colombia.”

Carpio explained her role, “Students are going to make the best of our time there. We're going to try to gain support for the Colombian peace process. We're going to demand that Simon Trinidad, a notable negotiator for the FARC-EP, be freed from the supermax prison in Colorado, so that he can resume his important work negotiating for peace.”

Colombia sends more soldiers to the SOA than any other country in Latin America and consistently has the worst human rights record. A Colombian general, who taught classes at the SOA, along with 23 other officers, many who took classes at the SOA, were forced to resign their posts a few years ago. In the ‘False Positives’ scandal, the Colombian military officers murdered over 3300 civilians, dressing them up as FARC fighters to claim victories in battle and to collect money and other rewards.

Thousands of anti-war and international solidarity activists come to the SOA protest every year. This year many are excited to join a Saturday, Nov. 21, morning protest demanding an immigrant detention center be closed, as well as the Sunday morning peace procession to the gates of Fort Benning.

Jessica Schwartz is traveling with a large group of students from University of South Florida in Tampa, and meeting up with students from Florida State University in Tallahassee. She explained, “I'm going to hand out flyers and speak with other anti-war activists, building support for the freedom of Colombian revolutionary Simon Trinidad and the peace process in Colombia. The U.S. has its hands dirty in conflicts all over the world, and Colombia is no exception. In fact, Simon Trinidad is imprisoned on U.S. soil. We must demand his freedom and liberation for Colombia!”

A growing number of countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela and Nicaragua, no longer send troops to train at the SOA/WHINSEC.

#TampaFL #AntiwarMovement #Colombia #SDS #SchoolOfTheAmericas #SimónTrinidad

Fort Lauderdale, FL – 20 antiwar and international solidarity activists gathered in Pembroke Pines, Nov. 25, to hear two leaders of the Colombian human-rights movement speak about their country and U.S. intervention. The event was the final stop on a nationwide speaking tour.

The guest speakers are well known in Colombia. Gustavo Gallardo is the International Relations Coordinator of La Marcha Patriotica and July Henriquez is a human rights lawyer. La Marcha is one of the largest and most active social justice movements in Colombia and it continues to face heavy and deadly repression by the Colombian government. In fact, because of their involvement in the leftist movement, Gallardo and Henriquez were forcibly displaced from their home city of Barranquilla to the capital of Bogota.

The two brave activists spoke about the thousands of political dissidents displaced, disappeared and assassinated by American-trained Colombian forces. They also explained the history of Western imperialism in South America and how the U.S. continues attempting to impose its political and economic will on the Colombian people. They also talked about how most of the military officers who direct the Colombian paramilitaries are trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia. Thousands die at the hands of the Colombian government death squads every year, including as many as 4000 trade unionists over 25 years.

The School of the Americas trains thousands of South American military officers in deadly tactics, including torture and assassination, in order to do the U.S. government’s bidding throughout Latin America. The Colombian leaders both spoke at the annual protest outside of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia two days earlier.

In his speech, Gallardo referred to Colombia as “the Israel of Latin America.” Like Israel, Colombia is a strategic base for the U.S. to launch economic and military warfare against the people and governments in the surrounding countries.

Gallardo expressed how many of the destabilization protests and killings that occurred in neighboring Venezuela over the last year were actually conducted by Colombians trained by the U.S. Gallardo compared this to the destabilization efforts in Syria, where so-called rebels were trained and armed by the U.S. in order to take down a government resisting U.S. domination.

After Gallardo spoke about the U.S. military and economic agenda, July Henriquez focused the discussion on “U.S. prison imperialism.” She explained how the U.S. seeks out new markets for its private prison industry. She said Colombia and several other countries in Latin America are being used to expand this industry. Hundreds of private prisons, run by American-based companies, are emerging throughout Latin American and Africa as places to dispose of political dissidents and social justice activists.

Henriquez argued that these private, for-profit prisons are designed by the U.S. and used in the countries it dominates. In Colombia, where death squads and political repression are severe, private prisons are used to dispose of the poor and the displaced in society. In Colombia the prisoners are being used as cheap labor for private businesses as well.

Members of the audience asked what they could do to express solidarity with activists in Colombia fighting for change. Gallardo and Henriquez responded, “Make sure the right information permeates American society; protest your legislators and demand that they stop creating and funding policies that further U.S. imperialist aims in Colombia.”

A great bond of solidarity was felt between the activists from the two countries. Feelings of hope were expressed as young people of the U.S. and Colombia continue to struggle for peace and justice.

People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism and Racism (POWIR) sponsored the talk and the national tour was organized by the Alliance for Global Justice.

#FortLauderdaleFL #Colombia #Americas #SchoolOfTheAmericas #USImperialism #LaMarchaPatriotica

The School of the Americas opened its doors in 1946 with the purpose of training Latin American military personal in anti-communist counter-insurgency training. This amounted to lessons in torture, extra-judicial killings, death squads and in general the skills involved in going to war against the masses of workers and farmers.

Throughout the 1980s the SOA trained hundreds of Latin American personnel including some of the continent’s most notoriously repressive, notably Argentina’s military regime, Colombia’s death squad-linked military and even the founders of the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico. In 2000, SOA was forced change its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. It receives its $14 million budget from the federal government. More recently their trainees have had a hand in the failed coup attempts in Venezuela.

A group of nine activists from Tampa, Florida went to the SOA protest, as representatives of the immigrant rights group, Raices in Tampa. They were among few immigrant rights groups that attended the protest and they made the connection between imperialism and the migration from Central and South American to the U.S.

Having trained police, military, government and narco elements alike in Mexico and Colombia, the SOA is a good target for immigrants rights groups. “It was a great experience for me because I got to meet a lot of dedicated individuals like myself who are willing to go anywhere to defend the oppressed,” said Oscar Hernandez, local organizer with Raices in Tampa.

Individuals were present from all over the world, including the Latin American countries most affected by SOA’s doctrine of state-sponsored instability. Raices in Tampa attended a workshop given by representatives of Colombia’s popular movement Marcha Patriotica. Here connections were made between the U.S. prison system and its plans to export this prison system to Latin America and Africa. The majority of prison personnel trained at SOA are Mexican and Colombian.

“As a Honduran is very hard to see how my country is used by the U.S, how they are training my people to kill each other. I'm hopeful that one day this will stop. I was glad of being part of SOA protest and see so many people that shared my emotions,” said Alicia Gazga, also with Raices in Tampa.

#ColumbusGA #SchoolOfTheAmericas #SOAWatch #FortBenning #RaicesEnTampa