SOA

Dan and I left Thursday night in the middle of a beautiful snowfall, the first of the season, and the first ever for my housemate Megan. We joined the Philly JVs on a bus full of students from St. Joe’s University. It was a 15-hour ride down to Columbus, Georgia: we got there at 1pm. At the Ignatian Family Teach-In that night we heard Father Roy Bourgeois (the founder of SOA Watch) speak and defend his pro-women’s ordination stance which a month earlier had earned him the threat of ex-communication.


On Saturday morning, I made sure to get to the teach-in in time to hear Father Jon Sobrino speak. I met him in El Salvador during my semester abroad when he spoke to our group, and I remember thinking he looked like a small version of Mr. Rogers. But this time he struck me as much taller and broad-shouldered than I recalled, even though I was much farther away from him. As soon as he began to talk, I also remembered that for all his fame for being a radical liberation theologian and the one who survived the massacre of his six colleagues by pure luck, he also is not very gifted in public speaking. I don’t really remember a thing he said.

I spent Saturday afternoon at the gates of Fort Benning. It was a great day to be outdoors: warm and sunny! Along one side of the road, there were lots of organizations with tables and booths set up handing out information and selling things. Musicians were performing on the main stage, interspersed with speakers. Some people were laying on the ground doing a demonstration of the massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador. The other side of the road was lined with little booths at the end of people’s driveways selling food. People sure know how to make the most of a money-making opportunity when they see one! I was glad to support the local economy… I wandered around and ran into people, including: my liberation theology professor/academic advisor from college, Leah the campus minister from Corvallis, other JVC East-ers, one of our Camden support persons and his staff, students from St. Olaf…

That evening was the Ignatian Family Mass, which was really cool. There had to have been more than a thousand (?) people there. The music was good and I really liked the homily, and I even took communion. The room was just very lively and vibrant. Afterwards, I avoided the commotion of the crowded JVC gathering and instead had an hour-long conversation with Leah.

Sunday morning was the vigil and procession at the gates. It was a pretty powerful experience. After the names of people who had been massacred/assassinated by graduates of the SOA were chanted, everyone lifted the cross they were holding and responded with “Presente.” This went on for two full hours, until the whole procession of over 20,000 people had walked to the gate and placed their cross in the fence. I made a cross with Rutilio Grande’s name on it, and squeezed it extra firmly when his name was read. My voice was tired at the end! And you couldn’t see through the fence any more because it was filled not only with white crosses, but also flowers, slips of paper, photographs, etc.

I am so glad I finally got to participate in this. I’ve known about it ever since the first liberation theology class I took my sophomore year of college, and really really wanted to go after spending a semester in Central America, meeting Jon Sobrino and seeing the site where the six priests were killed in 1989, which is why the whole SOA vigil got started…but I was never able to go until this year.