Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of Americas

by James Hodge, Linda Cooper, Martin Sheen (Foreword)

Disturbing the Peace tells the story of a controversial Cajun priest, a former gung-ho Navy officer injured in a bomb blast in Vietnam, who has tirelessly championed human rights and aroused the conscience of a nation. The fast-paced historical biography also profiles the movement he founded to close a notorious U.S. Army school whose graduates have committed atrocities across Latin America. The journey of this "spiritual hobo" has more twists and turns than the Mississippi from love affairs that ended in heartbreak to patriotic impulses that ended in disillusionment. From dreams of wealth to missionary work among the poor. From protests and prison terms to a cloistered monastery. From confrontations with church hierarchy to political battles on Capitol Hill. Bourgeois’ opposition to militarism began after a blind Vietnamese orphan opened his eyes to the realities of war. Since then, his human rights work has taken him to half a dozen war-torn To Bolivia, where U.S.-backed security forces kidnapped him after he spoke out against torture. To El Salvador, where he disappeared and two of his friends were killed by U.S.-trained death squads. To Nicaragua and Honduras, where the CIA was helping contra commandos overthrow a government. To Colombia, where he witnessed the human toll of the drug war, escorted by an Army general linked to terrorist bombings. To Iraq, where he met with desperately poor Iraqis just before the country became a bloodbath. The assassinations of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989 spurred Bourgeois to investigate the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, then a little known training installation whose graduates were later linked not only to the Jesuit massacre, but to gross human rights abuses throughout Latin America. The latter half of the book profiles the movement he founded to close the school; the Congressional battles over its funding; the Pentagon’s forced admission that the school used manuals advocating torture and assassination; and the courage of average Americans – including WWII and Vietnam veterans, students, union workers, professionals, clergy and elderly nuns – who have risked imprisonment each year at the annual November demonstration at Fort Benning, Ga., where the school is located. In documenting the sordid record of the school’s graduates – from dictators and intelligence agents to death squad leaders and torturers, Disturbing the Peace shines a light on the dark side of U.S. foreign policy – not only in Latin America, but in Iraq, where Bush administration policies on torture led to the disgrace of Abu Ghraib. While the Pentagon closed and then re-opened the school under a new name -- the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the SOA Watch movement has remained one of the strongest voices of dissent since Sept.11, 2001, winning court battles that have helped safeguard First Amendment rights at a time civil liberties are eroding. Time and again throughout the struggle, Bourgeois, along with his fellow provocateurs for justice, lend credence to Margaret Mead’s belief "that a small group of committed citizens can change the world."

Genres: Biography, Spirituality, History

244 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2004

Reviews

[Michael Adam Reale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review

Disturbing the Peace:
The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois
and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas
By James Hodge and Linda Cooper
Forward by Martin Sheen
Orbis Books, 2004
Softcover, 224 pp., $20.00

In “Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas,” James Hodge and Linda Cooper take us along on Bourgeois’ personal journey.

The School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” in 2001, is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located at Fort Benning, Ga.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca said that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

The book opens as Bourgeois, Father Larry Rosebaugh and Sister Linda Ventimiglia, masquerading as army personnel, break into SOA headquarters.

They not only managed to gain access to the SOA offices but also to smuggle in sound equipment that enabled them to play the last homily of slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. SOA-trained assassins gunned down Archbishop Romero in 1980.

The three protesters were eventually discovered. When found, Bourgeois was in a tree with the sound equipment. Although the Army was finally able to stop him from playing the tape, Bourgeois continued to shout the remainder of the homily in Spanish.

Bourgeois’ personal journey started in the killing fields of Vietnam where he met a priest who ran an orphanage. Working with the orphans, Bourgeois began to see the ravages of war and its effect on the poor — victims on two fronts.

Bourgeois joined the Maryknoll Fathers, a missionary order of the Roman Catholic Church. Once there, he was sent to Bolivia to minister to the poor. Once he heard their cry, there was no turning back for this courageous man.

The more he learned about U.S involvement in Latin America, the more compelled he was to “whistle-blow.” As his conscience was pricked he was compelled to act.

Bourgeois co-produced a documentary titled “Gods of Metal” with Father Paul Newpower that was nominated for an Academy Award. The documentary exposed the evils of President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. The film contrasted the trillions of dollars spent on war with the little for books and bread.

Bourgeois eventually joined the Trappist order. There he found the quietude of Trappist life helped him to clarify his own personal feelings, but he became even more convinced that he must act and returned to the missionary life.

He realized he was committed to working for the poor and the neglected as well as doing all in his power to protest the work of the SOA and to end the U.S. involvement with instigating wars in Latin America and throughout the world.

The book brings us to the present day, where we have George W. Bush in the White House and a bloated military budget that is once again causing instability and wholesale devastation.

This is a gripping account that shows one man’s gradual transformation from war to nonviolence, and from nonviolence to passive resistance and active suffering. It is also a compelling story of courage and passion of a man to close a school whose sole purpose is to train death squads and assassins in Latin America and possibly elsewhere. This book forces us to open our eyes and see what our government is doing with our tax dollars and in our names.

[Ariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far from being just a book that preaches to the choir, I found this work to be informative, unsettling, and inspiring. Even though so much of my personal and professional life is devoted to resisting U.S. imperial policies in Latin America, there is still so much I still need to learn or be reminded of. The end of the book - which focuses on Colombia (now the nation that sends the largest number of troops to the SOA) and Iraq reminds me of how much work remains to be done.

[Tim Franzen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book highlights the little known movement to close a school that has been held responsible for almost every state sponsored atrosity in latin america over the past 35 years.
The school is right here in Georgia!!
What a paradox. The country at war with terror also teaches in to latin american soldiers.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very exciting, fast-moving account of the life of Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran whose life was changed by a chance meeting a Catholic priest in Vietnam. Bourgeois has devoted himself to the cause of peace as a Maryknoll priest, first in Latin America, and then as the founder of the protests against the infamous School of the Americas at Ft. Benning.

[Marla · Rating 5 out of 5]

fr. roy is a hero.

my friends have gone to prison for this cause. i have been arrested. yet few americans really even know the school exists.

read it for awareness, if for nothing else.