Radio Internacional Feminista - FIRE

 november 1998

Carol Richardson & the Struggle to CloseThe US Army School of the Americas

By María Suárez Toro

Reverend Carol Richardson, Co-Director of School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) and recently released         "prisoner for change" as she has called herself, talked to FIRE's María Suarez Toro on the 28th of October, 1998, in Denver, Colorado, USA where she was granted an award by the Denver Peace and Justice  Committee.

SOA Watch in the United States has headed a campaign to close down the U.S. Army School of the Americas based in Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA has also been called the "School of Assassins" by many, because in the last 50 years it has  trained almost 60,000 Latin American soldiers to make war against their own peoples in the region.

On November  16, 1997 many people gathered outside of the School of the Americas in commemoration of the          assassination, by its graduates, of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador in 1989.  About 600 protesters crossed the line into the School to deliver almost one million signatures calling for the School to be closed. Carol was among the 13 women and 12 men to be sentenced to 6 months in jail for crossing the line. She was held in captivity in Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia between January and July, 1998.

She learned a different lesson than the one that those who imprisoned her intended. She will be back at Fort Benning this coming 20th of November, 1998. Prison is hard she told FIRE, but it creates and strengthens community.

Listen to Carol speaking to FIRE about community in prison, and community outside.

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Asked by FIRE about the role that the connections among women play in the struggle, Reverend Richardson talked about her own "Thelma and Louise" FREEDOM RIDE coming out of jail in July, 1998;  about some of the women she left behind in prison, some the letters of solidarity she recieved from women while in confinement, and about the connection she made with a Nicaraguan woman in 1989.

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Carol also talks to FIRE about the urgent need to close down the School of the Americas today, even though many might think it is no longer relevant.  She also describes for FIRE the vigil and actions outside of the School of the Americas in 1997, and also about the activities being organized for the 21st and 22nd of November, 1998, where more that 5,000 people are expected, of whom about 1,000 will "cross the line" in a conscious act of civil disobedience that Carol calls an "act of obedience."

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FIRE also asked Carol about the connection between the present actions to hold Chile's Pinochet accountable to the gross violations of human rights in his country in the 1970s and 1980s, and the struggle to close down the School of the Americas. For her, the connection is very clear.

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Jennifer Harbury, a USA lawyer and human rights activist, who spoke on FIRE in 1997, made the connection between the activities of the School of the Americas and the gross violations of human rights in Guatemala.  At present Jennifer is waiting for the veredict of  her case, presented to the O.A.S Interamerican Court against the Guatemalan authorities for the assassination of her husband Efrain Bámaca, a Mayan Guatemalan Indian disappeared in 1992 in the hands of the military in his country.

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UPDATE:
THE SOA WATCH ACTIVITY AT FORT BENNING, GEORGIA IN NOVEMBER, 1998.

FIRE´s María Suárez Toro interviewed Margaret Thompson on the 25th of  November 1998 in Costa Rica as she returned from  the SOA WATCH activity to close down the School of the Americas.  Margaret, a University professor in international and  intercultural communications in the U.S.A., was the FIRE correspondent at that 1998 SOA WATCH rally.

She spoke about an experience that went beyond any previous expectation.

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Read another FIRE feature on the SOA entitled,"Women of Conscience: Protesting Against the School of the Americas"
 For more information about School of the Americas Watch look at : http://www.soaw.org/