COLUMBUS, Ga. - Thousands of protesters filed into the military base housing the U.S. Army's academy for Latin American soldiers yesterday, in the largest demonstration to date against a school that critics call a training ground for dictators and assassins.
"We do not want this school of war," said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, founder of the nine-year-old movement to close the School of the Americas at sprawling Fort Benning.
"It can only be closed. It cannot be changed," Bourgeois said during a protest to mark the 10th anniversary of the killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests. Of 26 Salvadoran officers charged in the slayings, 19 were School of the Americas graduates or former students.
"We will keep coming back and back every year until this school is shut down," he said.
Protest organizers estimated that 10,000 people gathered at Fort Benning's main gate to demand the closure of the School of the Americas and that 4,800 people had made it inside the fort. They were herded onto school buses by base security; base officials said they had not decided whether to charge the protesters with trespassing or release them.
Police had not issued an official estimate. About 5,000 people attended a rally on Saturday.
Demonstrators chanted, sang, listened to speakers and held a memorial funeral procession for people they say have died or been tortured by former students of the school. Some carried cardboard coffins or white crosses.
Actor Martin Sheen, who plays the president in a popular television show, The West Wing, drew the loudest cheers when he made a mock proclamation closing the school: "As the acting President of the United States, hence the commander in chief as well, I do hereby decree that the School of the Americas . . . disband forever, effective immediately."
Critics say the School of the Americas, which moved in 1984 from Panama to Fort Benning, about 85 miles southwest of Atlanta, has turned out soldiers who violate human rights and are trained to battle their own people. The Pentagon has admitted that 1980s school-training manuals included torture.
Former students include former Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, who is now serving a U.S. prison sentence for drug trafficking, and former Argentine military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri.
Military officials say that the school has helped advance democracy in Latin America and that it has reformed its curriculum to stress respect for human rights.
"The school is unique, it's an absolutely precious commodity to the U.S. Southern Command," Marine Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said in a recent interview.
If it were closed, he said, "I would be left with no alternative other than to re-create it, perhaps under another name at another location, but I would be forfeiting well over 50 years of institutional experience."
The Army is reviewing the school, which has survived repeated efforts by Democrats in Congress to cut off its funding, most recently earlier this year.