Essay No. 2

We are fast approaching lights-out at Federal Prison Camp Lexington Atwood, named both for its proximity to a city and for one of its earliest wardens. But I have decided to indulge in a little historical revisionism while here, preferring to consider us the namesake of the feminist poet and novelist Margaret Atwood. After all, it was she who stated in an early poem: “The facts of this world, seen clearly, are seen through tears.”  And I doubt a single woman in this facility would disagree with her, estranged as we all are from loved ones, and many from their young children.

My sister inmates here in Kentucky might be surprised to know that for me this prison conjures up vivid memories of Central America!  The facility, sadly decrepit yet cleaned with an almost obsessive ferocity, reminds me of numerous aging hotels and hostels where I have stayed in
El Salvador and Nicaragua.  And the cluster of picnic tables where I often write-- shaded by a simple, open structure-- takes me back to an open-air kitchen outside of Managua.  It was there that I would drink cafe con leche with other international brigadistas well before dawn, and then we'd head out for a day of labor in the cotton fields. 

That was in 1984, when Nicaraguans-- who would have been very happy to harvest their own cotton and coffee--  instead were being mobilized to defend their borders from the contras.  These were the U.S.-backed militias that then-President Reagan preferred to call “freedom-fighters.”  Contra militias apparently thought their freedom was being compromised by clinics, daycare centers and the rapidly rising literacy rate, because they consistently trained their weapons on physicians, nurses, daycare workers, literacy promoters, and the adults and children served by them. When not terrorizing civilians, the contras also engaged Sandinista troops, who were intent upon protecting a fragile, evolving social order. 

That particular war of attrition against the people of Nicaragua and their popular Sandinista government persisted into the Bush Administration, when a beleaguered populace chose to lift the U.S. boot from their collective throat by electing the U.S.'s  preferred candidate, Violeta Chamorro. Under the fledgling Sandinista government, Nicaragua had been deemed a model country by the World Health Organization (WHO) for its reduction of infant mortality. But Chamorro and successive governments have been far more amenable than the Sandinistas to neoliberal policies which favor U.S. business interests. Consequently infant mortality has risen again, while indicators of a reasonably good life have plummeted.

Yes, the fact of U.S. intervention throughout Latin America, seen clearly, must be seen through tears. And the current situation requires our tears no less than the past.  Today the indigenous people of Colombia and the southern Mexico provinces of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas feel the repression most acutely. But once again corporations are taking that repression all the way to the bank.

I and eight colleagues are currently incarcerated in federal minimum-security prisons throughout the U.S.  We are prisoners of conscience, stubborn and nonviolent resisters of this war against the poor. With many others, including Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), we oppose the existence of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which is located at Ft. Benning, Georgia. The SOA's core curriculum is so-called Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) and it is taught to approximately 1000 Latin American soldiers per year, at considerable taxpayer expense.

But make no mistake: the repression which issues from this training in psychological operations and commando tactics is no more “low intensity” for the people of Colombia and southern Mexico than it has been for the people of Nicaragua and many other countries throughout the region. Indeed more than 600 SOA graduates have been implicated in the rape, torture, “disappearance”  and murder of many thousands of victims. This harsh fact has been documented cumulatively by numerous human rights reports from a wide array of sources, including the U.N. and even the U.S. State Department!

Yet to the extent that U.S. citizens remain unaware of this persistent reign of terror, it remains “low intensity” for us.  And that, of course, is the real intent behind the LIC doctrine.  U.S. taxpayer and military resources are used to train Latin American soldiers in the art of implementing U.S. foreign policy objectives in their home countries. This keeps both casualties and consciousness at bay in the U.S.

SOA officials object to this characterization, as one might expect. They claim that those 600-plus graduates named as human rights abusers have strayed from their training in the rule of civil law. They proudly point to their recently beefed-up human rights curriculum. But the fact remains that SOA officials have never officially censured any of those 600 graduates, and indeed many of them are still treated with the considerable prestige that comes with having their portraits displayed in the SOA's library, and being invited there as instructors and commencement speakers. Arguably, SOA students mentor under those very abusers !

From my new vantage point in this prison population, I cannot help but observe a startling irony.  The majority of these women are doing their time -- for some, sentences of many years -- for drug offenses. None of them are violent offenders, and in fact I don't know when I've seen greater kindness per capita.  I myself am in here for participating in nonviolent, mock funeral processions onto Ft. Benning  By contrast, the vast majority of the known SOA abusers have never even been in custody, few if any have served sentences, and some are living comfortably in the U.S.  Lastly, many SOA graduates have themselves been linked to the very narco-trafficking trade which the SOA claims to be fighting.

Consequently it is hardly surprising that the SOA has failed to convince most rational observers that their reforms are meaningful. Indeed legislation in both the House and Senate which would finally close the School -- H.R. 732 and S. 873-- has been gaining momentum. And so this past May the SOA survival strategy shifted. The Department of Defense proposed within the Defense Authorization Bill that the SOA be closed (and presumably its historical record forgotten), and a brand new, seemingly blameless program instituted. Names under consideration are The Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation and The Western Hemispheric Institute for Professional and Educational Training.

But critics understand this for the sleight-of-name it is, and have promised to re-double their efforts to close the school. By any  name, it will still be the SOA -- long-dubbed throughout Latin America the School of Assassins -- and it will still serve the interests of U.S. corporations at the expense of the economic and political rights of so many Latin Americans. More information about the SOA, the effort to close it, and where your Congresspeople stand on the issue, is available at <www.soaw.org>, or by calling (202) 234-3440.

Margaret Knapke

Federal Prison Camp Lexington Atwood

August 5, 2000