While over 20,000 people traveled to the gates of Fort Benning thousands more gathered in protests and vigils throughout the Americas. Coordinated actions protesting US militarism and calling for the closure of the SOA took place over the weekend of Nov. 18-19 in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru, as well as in Ireland, Canada and at other sites in the US.

This year’s vigil was the largest gathering in support of Latin American Solidarity since the 1980s as well as the largest protest at the gates of a military base since the Vietnam War.

The annual vigil has grown in size and scope every year, from about a dozen people to over 20,000 this year. What began as an attempt to expose the atrocities that were being committed by School of the America’s graduates, has grown into the nexus of US-based resistance to militarism in Latin American.

Despite harsh jail sentences of three to six months in prison, sixteen people – including two grandmothers and one priest – carried the protest on to the grounds of the military base and became prisoners of conscious.

Event organized by SOA Watch.

(Some of these pictures also appear on the SOA Watch website and Presente! newsletter.)


A Mayan Priest blesses the crowd Sunday morning


Actors, representing victims, symbolically died at the gates of Fort Benning


Small vestages of lives lost lined the road to Fort Benning


Two women honoring the memory of Oscar Romero during the symbolic funeral procession


No Mas, No More


Nuns with the Sisters of Christian Charity


Frankie Flores of TASSC, with an fmln flag


Rev. Charles Steele


The Oaxaca Puppet


Military Police watching over the crowd of non-violent protestors


The wall seperating the vigil from the base has grown more intimidating year after year. Now, the line is three fences topped with barbed wire and patroled by armed guards.


Those willing to surrender their freedoms to expose the torture and murders made it onto the grounds of the base and now face trial in January. Please consider writing to prisoners.