I had the privilege to meet Father Roy during my participation at the SOA Watch.



On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, community workers and their families were massacred in El Salvador. There is evidence that those responsible were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

In 1990, Father Roy Bourgeois and a small group founded SOA Watch movement, a grassroots movement that works to stand in solidarity with the people of South and Central America, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the SOA represents.

Since the beginning of the movement, about 170 men and women have being incarcerated for protesting against the School of the Americas.

Ever since the foundation of the movement, groups gather at the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia. Now days, SOA Watch has expanded with simultaneous groups all over Latin America. Last November, 22, 000 people gather at the gate, and thousands more participated in similar events in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru.