Father Roy Bourgeois, WSH 414, Cornell

Father Roy Bourgeois from the SOA Watch speaks Thursday September 24th, 1 pm in Willard Straight Hall 414.

Fr Roy Bourgeois has lived in a small apartment next to the main gate of the world’s largest military training base for the past 18 years. His concern is the US Army training of Latinos at Ft Benning, Ga. . SOA Graduates (renamed WHINSEC) are trained in combat arms with a sprinkling of ‘new’ human rights courses. Graduates have gone back to their own countries to commit horrendous crimes against their own people. A blood trail left by graduates of the US Army School of the Americas extends from Central to South America. America tax payers subsidize the horror.

Long before Abu Ghraib, Roy Bourgeois knew well the tactics of teaching torture by the US Military. When Americans began to realize that our claimed moral superiority was a false assumption, Roy Bourgeois and others had long pointed to our history of terror teaching at the US Army School of the Americas. Back in the 1990’s Roy spent a total of over four years in federal prison in his attempt to publicize the crimes of American foreign policy in Latin America.

Long a supporter of human rights, Roy has also taken the struggle of women within his church to a controversial high in American Catholicism. His support for the ordination of women has made him a target of derision by church hierarchy.

See: http://www.soaw.org/ for more details.

Sponsored by the Latin American Studies Program, COLA and CSAS with SAFC funding.