SOAW-W News for August, 2002
1) August 20th News.
2) August 27th News.
School of the Americas Watch–West ~ SOAW–W
August 20, 2002San Jose Website - http://teachers.bcp.org/llauro
Los Angeles Website - www.soaw-la.org
National Website - www.soaw.orgDetails below on:
1) Schedule of talks by Fr. Roy Bourgeois in September
2) Call to action on behalf of Stephanie Salter whose words may be moved from the editorial page of the San Francisco Chronicle at the end of August.
3) Fr. Louis Vitale of San Francisco and Fr. Bill O'Donnell of Berkeley have not yet heard where and when they will begin serving their sentences.
4) "A Survivor's Victory," SF Chronicle, 8/19/02, Page B1 by Rona Marech - featuring Carlos Mauricio, a plaintiff awarded damages in the case convicting two SOA-trained Salvadoran generals of responsibility for his torture.
5) Bay Area SOAW meetings
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1) Father Roy Bourgeois' Schedule - Sept. 28 - Oct. 1
Some arrangements are still being finalized.Saturday, Sept. 28
OAKLAND 8:30 - 11:00 am for Pax Christi Conference
St. Columba Church Hall, 6401 San Pablo (at 64th)
Contact: Faye Butler (510) 791-8186EAST BAY 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Place TBA
Contacts: Bob Nixon (510) 533-3120 or Rachel Montgomery (510) 205-3956VALLEJO 7:00 pm for Vallejo Peace and Justice Coalition
1035 Indiana Street
Contacts: David and Helen Mezzera (707) 552-2900Sunday, Sept. 29
WALNUT CREEK 10:00 am for Homily at St. Stephen's Catholic
Church
Keaveny Court off San Luis Road
11:30 - 12:30 pm Talk at St Stephen's (open to all in the area)
Contact: Natalie Russell (925) 934-0759SAN FRANCISCO Time TBA at St. Boniface Church, 133 Golden
Gate Ave.
Contacts: Jenny Wiley and David GarciaMonday, Sept 30
PORTOLA VALLEY 9:30 - 2:00 pm at Woodside Priory
Contact: Scott Parker (650) 851-6191SANTA CLARA Eve at Santa Clara University
Contact: Michael Colyer (408) 554-4727Tuesday, Oct. 1
NAPA 12:00 - 2:00 pm at Napa Valley College
Contact: Doug Dibble at (707) 253-3158
2) In praise of Stephanie Salter's columns, write to:
jdiaz@sfchronicle.com (John Diaz, Editor of Editorial Page, 415.777.7018)
letters@sfchronicle.com (Letters to the Editor for publication)
joppedahl@sfchronicle.com (John Oppedahl, Publisher)
pbronstein@sfchronicle.com (Phil Bronstein, Editor)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
www.sfgate.com
PHONE: 415.777.1111
FAX: 415.674.7338
901 Mission St. (at Fifth St.)
San Francisco, CA 94103
3) [Sorry -- this item got left out. I'm tracking it down now--please return later -- Ed.]
4) A Survivor's Victory: Salvadoran torturers are found guilty
SF Chroncile, Aug. 19, 2002 by Rona Marech[Source: http://www.sfgate.com/*/archive/2002/08/19/*. Click on photo below to view the Chronicle's photo gallery. (Carlos Mauricio chatted with a group of his friends at the celebration. Chronicle photo by Kat Wade)]
A century seemed to pass before the jury foreman read the verdict, Carlos Mauricio said. For two decades, he had been waiting for his day in court; waiting to point at the general who had ordered his kidnapping and torture in El Salvador. He had been waiting for this moment.
Silence, silence. Then the longest second ended. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia, retired Salvadoran generals living in Florida, [trained at the SOA in Panama] were found guilty in a U.S. federal court of atrocities committed during their country's civil war. Guilty for all of it: for Mauricio's brutal detention; for the rape and torture of Neris Gonzalez, a church worker, and Juan Romagoza, a physician. The three plaintiffs were awarded $54.6 million. The crowd gasped. Mauricio began to weep.
Recounting the story back home in San Francisco three weeks after the July 23 verdict, Mauricio's eyes grew wet. "That was overwhelming," he said.
"One of the facts from torture is that they make you not want to talk about it," Mauricio said. "It took me 15 years to be able to tell my story. I realized that telling my story to others is important, not only because it's important to know what happened in El Salvador, but also because in that way you are really out of prison."
Even so, Mauricio was reluctant when a friend asked him to join the case the Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco had set in motion. He was afraid for his safety and the safety of his family in El Salvador, including two grown children. He was worried about the emotional cost of retelling the painful story. But eventually he realized he wasn't opening old wounds because, really, he asked, "when were they closed?"
"To close the seal of my healing, I needed to talk in front of a jury and tell them my story," he said. "How many were able to confront the generals? Very few. They couldn't because they were killed under torture, or they didn't want to .... In a way, I was the spokesperson for those who, for whatever reason, couldn't come."
Sandra Coliver, director of the justice center, said, Mauricio "has a great gift for being able to tell stories of pain in such a way as to motivate, to inspire hope and solidarity rather than pity or paralysis. I think that comes from his own great energy and his conviction that this twisted history can be repaired."
So Mauricio, a natural storyteller and a poet whom friends describe as dogged and passionate, faced the aging generals and told the courtroom what happened to him 20 years ago.
Born in Ahuachapan, El Salvador, in 1952, Carlos Mauricio was one of four children of a single mother who smuggled shampoos and other small items across the border for a living. Orphaned at 11, he worked his way through high school and college, eventually winning a scholarship to study in Mexico. When he returned with a master's degree in tropical animal science, he began teaching at the University of El Salvador.
Although friends and colleagues had been killed in the war, and he had seen horribly maimed bodies in the streets, Mauricio didn't believe it could happen to him. But he aroused the military's suspicion because he had lived outside the country and because, as an agricultural engineer, he worked with peasants.
In 1983, plainclothes officers kidnapped him from his classroom. Accusing him of being a leftist guerrilla, they beat him in the street before taking him to national police headquarters.
Day after day, they kept him blindfolded and handcuffed and beat him repeatedly. They deprived him of food for days. They forced him onto the tips of his toes, twisted his hands behind his back and hung him by his arms for long stretches. Through a crack in his slipping blindfold, he could see women with broken bones and children crawling on the floor.
When he wouldn't give them names of guerrillas, they beat him. When he wouldn't admit he was a guerrilla commander, they beat him. When he wouldn't confess that he'd trained in Cuba, they beat him. They broke two ribs; they permanently damaged the vision in one eye.
But he survived, unlike an estimated 70,000 people who were killed during the 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992. Mauricio's father-in-law, a retired army captain, and the university campaigned for his release. After nine days in a torture chamber and almost as long in a common cell, he was let go.
"Next time," an officer at the gate told him, "we will kill you." Three weeks later, Mauricio fled to the United States.
"I was completely destroyed," Mauricio said. "It really, really shattered me as a human being."
Desperate to be near family, he moved to San Francisco, where his sister lived, and found a job as a dishwasher. He quickly learned English and went on to study genetic engineering, get a job in a lab at UC Berkeley and receive a teaching certificate and a master's degree in education.
His wife joined him here from El Salvador, but they divorced, and he later remarried. At the end of the past school year, he began teaching science at Balboa High School.
Last week, the generals -- guilty under a chain-of-command doctrine that holds military leaders responsible for the actions of their troops -- filed an appeal. But the plaintiffs' legal team is confident that they will prevail and that the generals, who are suspected of having assets, some of them hidden, will produce at least a portion of the judgment. Mauricio hopes to use his $13.1 million award to expand Stop Impunity, the fledgling organization he founded to fight the broad amnesty that was given to all Salvadoran combatants after the accords. He dreams of one day opening an office in El Salvador, where no officers or troops have ever been imprisoned for wartime human rights abuses.
"Now that we have justice, others are asking for it," he said. "We're getting e-mails from around the world from people telling us that we raised their hopes for finding justice."
Some of the newly hopeful, along with friends and supporters, gathered at the Women's Building in San Francisco earlier this month for an exuberant party celebrating the verdict. The standing-room crowd sang and cheered and rose to their feet again and again.
Mauricio and Gonzalez, who had flown in from Chicago, embraced before the roaring crowd. Gonzalez's chest heaved; she was so emotional she could hardly breathe, she said in Spanish. Mauricio raised a fist.
"Today is a great, great day for me," he said. "The long journey has come to an end."
©2002 San Francisco ChronicleE-mail Rona Marech at rmarech@sfchronicle.com.
School of the Americas Watch–West ~ SOAW–W
August 27, 2002San Jose Website - http://teachers.bcp.org/llauro
Los Angeles Website - www.soaw-la.org
National Website - www.soaw.orgCorrections to previous e-mail:
***** The Pax Christi Regional gathering on Sat. Sept. 28 is from 8:30 am to 1:00 PM. Fr. Roy's talk will be followed by workshops. Laura Slattery will focus on Non Violence and Larry Lauro will focus on SOA Watch organizing.
***** Fr. Roy Bourgeois and Fr. Louis Vitale will speak in San Francisco on Sun. Sept. 29 at 4 PM at the Unitarian Church, Franklin at Geary. This replaces the event at St. Boniface Church previously mentioned.
***** The web site for the article about San Franciscan Carlos Mauricio and the successful civil suit against Salvadoran generals Vides and Garcia is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/19/BA154424.DTL&type=news
News Items with details below:
1) News from the Federal Bureau of Prisons for Fr. Bill O'Donnell and Fr. Louis Vitale
2) Wed. 8/28 Noon Rally in support of Stephanie Salter's columns on the Chronicle's Editorial Page
3) Going to Ft. Benning this November? Want to coordinate travel plans?
4) Updated schedule for Fr. Roy.
1) Fr. Bill O'Donnell has been ordered to start his 6-month sentence on Tues. Sept. 10 at the Federal Prison Camp, Atwater (between Modesto and Merced), CA. Fr. Louis Vitale has been ordered to start his 3-month sentence on Wed. Oct. 16 at Nellis Federal Prison Camp, North Las Vegas, Nevada. The prison camp is part of the complex at Nellis Air Force Base. Fr. Louis served in the Air Force, has lived and worked in Las Vegas, and has protested at Nellis Air Force Base.2) After tomorrow (Aug. 28), award-winning journalist Stephanie Salter will no longer speak from the Chronicle's editorial pages. Urge the Chronicle to continue Salter's work as a columnist.
Protest Wednesday the 28th, noon at:
the Chronicle Building
901 Mission St. at 5th Street, San Francisco
Transportation: Powell St. BART/MUNI
For information about the demonstration: call Media Alliance, 415.546.6334, ext. 309Send emails in support of Salter's columns to CEO & Publisher John Oppedahl: joppedahl@sfchronicle.com
3) COME TO FORT BENNING, NOVEMBER 15 - 17, 2002Sadly, we must once again commemorate the murder of six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her 13 year old daughter in El Salvador by nonviolently protesting the continued existence of the School of Americas/WHISC. Please join us and speak out against continuing SOA/WHISC violence.
We would love to know if you are coming, so that we can keep one another updated, rent cars together, and support one another when we are in Ft. Benning. Please let Kathy at kgehlkentang@hotmail.com know if you plan to go.
Please make your hotel and flight reservations as soon as possible.
The recommended lodging is the Econo Lodge (Historic District), across the street from the Howard Johnson, where most of the
meetings are held.Econo Lodge
1024-1034 Veterans Parkway
Columbus, Georgia
(706) 324-3694Reservations can be made on line: www1.choicehotels.com
10% discount for AAA members or Mature Travelers (over 50).The recommended airline is Delta, from which SOAW gets a discount. Delta's phone number is 1(800) 241-6760 and the SOA Watch code is #188283A. If you make your reservation before September 16, 2002 you will get a 10% discount; after that, if you make your reservation before October 16, 2002, you will get a 5% discount.
There are two flights which leave from SFO on November 15: #314 leaves SFO at 7am and arrives in Atlanta at 2:34 pm OR #1960 leaves SFO at 8:30 am and arrives at 4:02 pm. For either flight, the round trip cost is currently $372.80 with the 10%
discount.4) Father Roy Bourgeois' ScheduleSaturday, Sept. 28
OAKLAND 8:30 am for Pax Christi Conference until 1:00 PM
Fr. Roy is the keynote speaker, followed by workshops led by Laura Slattery and Larry Lauro.
St. Columba Church Hall, 6401 San Pablo (at 64th)
Contact: Faye Butler (510) 791-8186BERKELEY 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Place TBA
Contacts: Rachel Montgomery and Bob Nixon (510) 533-3120VALLEJO 7:00 pm for Vallejo Peace and Justice Coalition
1035 Indiana Street
Contacts: David and Helen Mezzera (707) 552-2900Sunday, Sept. 29
WALNUT CREEK 10:00 am for Homily at St. Stephen's Catholic Church
Keaveny Court off San Luis Road
11:30 - 12:30 pm Talk at St Stephen's (open to all in the area)
Contact: Natalie Russell (925) 934-0759 or Russell1626@juno.comSAN FRANCISCO 4:00 - 6:00 pm at Unitarian Center, Franklin at Geary
Fr. Louis Vitale will speak as well as Fr. Roy.
Contact: Dolores Priem at (415) 387-2287Monday, Sept. 30
PORTOLA VALLEY 9:30 - 2:00 pm at Woodside Priory
Contact: Scott Parker (650) 851-6191SANTA CLARA Eve at Santa Clara University
Contact: Michael Colyer (408) 554-4727Tuesday, Oct. 1
NAPA 1:00 - 2:00 PM at Napa Valley College
Contact: Doug Dibble at (707) 253-3158For our Fair Use of Copyrighted material Notice, please click on the ©.
[For archived news from previous month,
click on: July.]
