Fr. Roy Bourgeois at Ft. Benning
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Fr. Roy Bourgeois is a Maryknoll missionary who became an activist for peace after witnessing the violence committed in Latin America by graduates trained in torture and repression at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. In response he founded SOA Watch to document the atrocities, educate the public, and organize a non-violent grass roots movement to end government funding and shut down the School of the Americas.
Fr. Roy travels internationally giving talks for schools, churches, and peace groups, and his life's work is described in the biography: 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.
Nicole Sault: Some people would be surprised to know that before becoming a priest and an activist you were a high school football star, and then a Naval officer who was awarded a purple heart in Vietnam. In what ways do you draw on these earlier experiences in your current work?
Fr. Roy Bourgeois: They are very integral to my ministry now, to my activism. We are a product so often of our past experiences. I grew up in a very conservative area of the country, Louisiana, in a small town of some 3,000. We did not critique our country's foreign policy. I grew up as basically a Sunday Catholic. We would never really read and reflect on the Scriptures. It was mostly about just the basic going to church on a Sunday, not really struggling with social justice issues, foreign policy issues, or the war in Vietnam, or the sin of racism that was so alive and active in our community. Yes, I went to a public school there where sports were important, and then off to college where I got a degree in geology, hoping to get rich in the oil fields of Venezuela.
When I left college it was during the days of the Vietnam War. They were starting to build up the forces in Vietnam. Back then they said the enemy was Communism (now it's terrorism). But I thought the cause was noble. I did not question our leaders in Washington. They said that we were, "Gonna go to Vietnam and be the liberators." It's the same language basically we are using today toward Iraq. The leaders of our country are using the same language, that "the cause is noble, we're gonna be the liberators."
Vietnam was a turning point in my life. I had never seen anything like Vietnam. I had never been exposed to that kind of poverty and violence. Losing friends and wounded there, death being so close, it really forced me to look at my faith more seriously. My biggest fear was not so much dying, as what my death would do to my close-knit family in Louisiana. I knew that their lives would never be the same --that they would grieve for many years-- and I didn't want to put them through that experience.
That experience really forced me to turn to God, and I started praying that I just get home alive, back with family and friends. There was this grace at work, this mysterious divine grace in Vietnam that led me to a missionary near our base. He was from Canada, a Redemptorist priest by the name of Lucien Olivier, and he had been in Vietnam for many years. He was working at this orphanage. He was a healer, he was doing what Jesus had done. He was going around trying to be a peacemaker, a healer, to invite people all around the same table as sisters, as brothers, as family. I'd never met someone like him before. He was not trying to convert anyone, but filled with compassion and love for the over 300 children at this orphanage.
I would go there with my buddies to do volunteer work. And my buddies and I from the base nearby, we would go in and work on their orphanage, try and bring in food and supplies, dig a well, try to do what the missionary was doing to improve their quality of life. He made a big impression on my life --his deep faith, his love, his compassion for others, his being a healer in the midst of the madness and violence and death in Vietnam. He stood out as this sign of hope.
At the time I had little hope in my life. This is what war does --it kills hope, it destroys joy. Hope and joy were a big part of my life. But in Vietnam it fell apart. I was asking: How am I going to recapture this hope and joy that I once had? And I started thinking about doing missionary work as he was doing. I talked to an Army chaplain about this and he recommended that I write to the Maryknoll Community, headquartered in New York, serving the poor in 20 countries around the world.
So I wrote to Maryknoll for some information about their order. Then I started coming back to life in a sense, looking forward now to what I'm going to do when I get home, having been changed again by the war, by the violence, by the death I had seen, and by this wonderful missionary from Canada that I had met in Vietnam. It was the beginning of something that was very important in my faith journey, realizing I had so much to learn. But I was just beginning to question, to look at how important peace and justice were in my faith journey. I had never done that before.
My year came to an end. I was so grateful to be alive, to come home. At the same time I came home knowing I would miss the priest and the over 300 children that I had gotten close to at this orphanage. Many of them became friends. They were so powerless and helpless --all of them had lost their parents in the war, many of them wounded.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois
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When I came home I entered the Maryknoll community and this became my home, these seminaries out East. These were formative years. It was here that I was introduced to the Scriptures in more depth. I was also being challenged by my peers. The anti-war movement was really growing, and it took me three years after coming from Vietnam to go on my first protest demonstration, with other veterans and some of our seminarians, in front of the White House in Washington, DC. I look back on that first protest as a sacred moment. I had never protested before, but what I discovered that day was that I found kindred spirits. I found that it was a way to express my anger toward what we were continuing to do in Vietnam, which was killing more and more people and losing so many of our own, as is happening today in Iraq.
I felt I have a voice and I've got to speak. I joined other Vietnam veterans, and I got arrested. We blockaded the White House entrance, and I spent my first night in jail. That, I must say, was a good experience, meeting kindred spirits. And what I found that day was some joy. I realized that I'm not going to be able to go back to the person I used to be when I was in the University, when I was in Vietnam --that I was being called to something deeper. At the very core of who I am now is my faith. What my faith is saying is that working for peace, speaking out against war and killing --it's something that's very sacred.
Then the day came when my six years in the seminary had ended. My studies were now behind me. I was ordained a Catholic priest and assigned to work in Bolivia, which began a new chapter in my life where I was now being introduced to the poor of Latin America and my country's foreign policy in Latin America.
NS: In your work you talk about the call of the poor in Latin America. How do they speak to you?
FRB: They are at the core of why I am here, living outside a U.S. military base. The poor of Bolivia became my teachers. They really taught me --a very ignorant gringo, who knew so little about his country's foreign policy. They introduced me to my country's foreign policy and what it meant to them on the receiving end. They introduced to me their struggle for liberation. They helped me realize that their poverty, the way the vast majority of the people were living in Bolivia, which was on the edge, which was struggling for survival, which was seeing their children die before their time --that this was not only in Bolivia, this was throughout Latin America and throughout the developing world.
I began in the barrio to plug in to their faith communities where liberation theology was also giving hope to the people, not only in Bolivia, but other countries of Latin America. Just meeting in small groups with the poor, reading, reflecting on the Scriptures, we discovered that the way the people were living in the barrio was not the will of God. That this loving Creator gave us a world, a planet, gave us Mother Earth. The indigenous of Bolivia had such a wonderful spirituality, so connected to Mother Earth. They realized that Mother Earth had all these resources and blessings, more than enough for everyone to live comfortably, and in peace.
But what was put here by this loving God to be stewards of, and to care for, ended up in the hands of this small elite. Greed has set in. Power became the god now, and wealth. This is when I really began to realize, being taught by the poor --that poverty, struggle, seeing children die before their time, and the violence done by militaries and through foreign policy-- this is all a contradiction to what is the Divine Plan for us. It contradicts what God wants of us.
What has happened in so many countries, including the United States especially, is that our God has become these false gods that we read about in the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, where wealth and power have become our gods. I began to realize that my country, the United States, had a lot to do with how the people of Bolivia and many other countries were living --that our wealth and power were very connected to their poverty and struggle in life.
I have been doing a lot of traveling recently in Latin America. These last two years we went to 12 different countries, and heard so many people refer to our country, the United States, as "El Imperio," "The Empire." And they understand how our power is abused, how we use our militaries in this School of the Americas, how we go to these countries as the new Conquistadors --to exploit their natural resources and their cheap labor-- all designed to sustain our way of life here in the United States.
The majority are ignorant of what our country's foreign policy is doing in Latin America. I've come to believe that our greatest enemy in the United States is ignorance. There's so little that we know about what our country is doing in other countries, how we are there exploiting their resources and the cheap labor, and how little we know about their cultures, their histories and religious beliefs. That ignorance got us in trouble in Vietnam. It's getting us in trouble in Latin America. And having been in Iraq just before the invasion, I realize once again, how little we knew about this part of the world. That ignorance is now getting us in big, big trouble in Iraq.
But let me say in closing, I am so indebted to the poor, because they were in Bolivia, and in other countries, my teachers and continue to be my teachers.
NS: You have spoken on the power of solitary witness. How can small groups or even one lone individual witness for truth and peace, in the face of such overwhelming violence and destruction around the world?
FRB: I was in Minnesota with the Maryknoll community when I learned about the massacre of the six Jesuits and the young mother and her teenage daughter in El Salvador in November of 1989. A Congressional Task Force reported that those who killed them were graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas, at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
That's when I came here [to Ft. Benning] alone and started up the SOA Watch, and 10 friends came into town to join me. Our movement has grown since 1990 when we started. We now gather by the thousands in November. We started with 10, and each year the numbers grew. A hundred came the next year, then a thousand. Well, this last November over 22,000 came. More than half were university students. We had military veterans, senior citizens, parents with their children, and lots of clergy and nuns.
Let me say, though, I'm a firm believer in solitary witness. I live just across the street from the main gate of Ft. Benning. It's a huge army base, over 25,000 troops. Most of them are going to the war in Iraq. And many in our country, the majority, are saying that this war is wrong, it was a mistake, that we've got to bring the troops home, that the killing has got to stop.
So I made this huge sign that says "Support the troops, bring them home." Often on a Sunday I would just go there at the main gate and sit with that huge sign, alone, as a solitary witness. I'm amazed at how many people will stop or slow down and give the old thumbs up or toot their horn in support. I also am greeted by some critics who yell obscenities and tell me that we have to go and fight. But the vast majority, many family members who have their loved ones in Iraq want them home, and realize that this war is so wrong. It's so immoral. It's such a crime against humanity.
In solitary witness I find great meaning. Folks will stop, soldiers and others will stop, and we've had some wonderful conversations, one on one. What I have learned is that when we do these solitary actions alone or with a small group, we are not intimidating, we are approachable. That's why many people stop and talk with me, because I'm alone at the main gate. They know that I'm there because I believe in an issue very strongly, and they, like many, are questioning the war. When they stop I have some resources for them --a good documentary on Iraq called Ground Truth. I have a booklet we put together called "Warriors to Resistors," about twelve military veterans like myself, who went from warriors to peacemakers, to resistors. I give that as a gift to them when they stop.
It's important that we think about how to be creative peacemakers. We cannot wait for our spiritual leaders to speak out against war, because we will be waiting for the rest of our lives. The message of Jesus is a simple one --that we as followers, as peacemakers, as healers, we have a voice, and we have our faith. We can arm ourselves with love and do some good things in the world. When we speak out as individuals in solitary witness, or when we add our voice to thousands, like in November, it all contributes to something that is very important.
NS: Many in the United States are afraid to speak out against injustice. What would you say to them about their fears?
FRB: My question would be: What is the fear? When I was in El Salvador, I was very fearful there, because they were killing so many people. They were disappearing so many people, campesinos and university students. Over 30 priests were killed there, including Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was very fearful because he was getting a lot of death threats. He was speaking out against U.S. military aid and the slaughter of the innocents. He got many death threats. He had a reason to be fearful.
But here in the United States, I have a hard time to understand what is the fear. A lot of people fear they could be arrested, and I remember feeling that fear. I've spent over four years in federal prisons around the country in non-violent protest against U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. But what I learned is that prison is really nothing to be fearful of. It's a hard place to be, it's difficult. But once you face that and go to prison because of your faith, you realize that you can turn that experience into something very positive, that prison can become in a way a long spiritual retreat.
Over 200 of our people in the SOA Watch movement have gone to prison. And we have women and men in prison now, serving time because of last year's non-violent protest against the SOA. What we learned is that when they send us to prison they cannot silence us. The truth really cannot be silenced.
I've been personally very inspired and empowered by people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and others who did non-violent, civil disobedience, who broke the law of the state, of the country, to follow a higher law, the law that says: "Thou shall not kill, thou shall not oppress the poor." These have been my teachers. But we don't all have to go to prison.
As a Catholic priest, I reached a point where I had to leave the comfort of the pulpit, and the security of the classroom, just giving lectures. I felt that in order to sleep at night, in order to hold on to my integrity, I had to integrate with my faith these actions. That's why I began with these others to do non-violent protest, which lead to prison.
Some friends and others felt it was a waste of time. However, when we are arrested we expose an injustice. We call attention to an issue that normally people wouldn't pay attention to. Then when they bring us to trial we put our country's foreign policy on trial. We talk about Bishop Romero, the churchwomen, and the landless campesinos of Latin America who are being made to suffer because of our foreign policy.
When they send us to prison we don't go with any regrets. We have interviews with the media, and we educate and try to break down this ignorance that's such a big enemy in our country. Many people have been awakened in the process, including ourselves.
What's important is for all of us to ask a basic question. For example, when the School of the Americas was discovered at Fort Benning, Georgia, I had to ask: what can I do? I could request from my order and get their blessing to come here and start organizing against it. On the war in Iraq, what are we to do in the midst of so much suffering and death and madness, in the midst of such a contradiction to what God is calling us to? What are we to do when our religious leaders are silent? Does that mean we can't do anything? Are we going to wait for the President to change his mind? For our members of Congress? No. We have to ask that question which is most important.
It might mean going out to a street corner with a sign by ourselves, or perhaps with a couple of friends, to hold a sign that says: "Bring the troops home!" "Stop the Killing!" It might mean circulating a petition in our workplace, with our family. It might mean knocking on some doors.
As Archbishop Oscar Romero said, just days before he was assassinated by one of the Salvadoreans trained at the School of the Americas: "We can all do something for peace, and we can do it well." He also said: "Let those who have a voice speak for those whose voices have been taken away." That's what he did in El Salvador and that's what got him killed.
He has become for us a real inspiration in our movement, and to me personally. As people of faith, no matter what our faith tradition might be, we are really called to be peacemakers. That should be at the core of our faith. We can all do something for peace and we can do it well, as an individual, as a small group, or as joining a group of thousands.
We have to speak out and break the silence. It's not only the war I'm talking about. Here in the United States there are many people being discriminated against because of their race, the color of their skin, because of their standing in society, because of their sexual orientation, because of their beliefs. We have to address those issues, wherever someone is being hurt or done harm or discriminated against.
We have to step forward and say "not in my name." We can do that wherever we are. I give lectures against the war in Iraq, having learned from my experience in Vietnam. We all have choices to make and we can say no to war. We can say to the architects of the war and all these macho-talking people that we meet: "Hey look, if you believe in the war so much and have so much passion for this war what are you doing here in town? What are you doing in the comfort of your home? What are you doing living in this wealthy lifestyle? Why are you sending other people to die for your cause? If you believe in this war so much why aren't you there?" People have to be challenged, in loving ways.
It is cowardly of politicians and others to send the youth of our country to die for their cause, a cause that they're not willing to go and put their bodies on the line for. I have told people recently that I think they are cowards for using all this macho talk and getting our youth to go and fight and die in Iraq while they remain in the comfort of their homes. There's a grave injustice here.
What's important is simply to be peacemakers --to use our voices, energies, and skills. We all have gifts that God has given us, and we can use those for peace and we can do it well.
NS: When you reach a decision point, especially one with serious consequences, what do you call upon to know how to address a problem, what action to take or whether to act at all?
FRB: Discernment is important in our actions. When we came here in the early days, at the height of the massacres and the death squads in El Salvador, this was right after Bishop Romero was assassinated. Four Churchwomen from the United States, three of them nuns, and a Catholic lay worker, were raped and killed by the Salvadorean military. I had just come back from El Salvador. Now two of the women were good friends, Maryknoll sisters --Maura Clark and Ita Ford. They were friends, so that of course brought El Salvador closer to home, knowing two of the victims.
When I went to El Salvador what I saw was my country deeply involved, giving guns and training to those who were doing the killing. That was immoral. That was a crime. When I came back from El Salvador and learned that 525 soldiers from El Salvador had just started their combat training at Ft. Benning, I had to ask a basic question. I called friends to join me and they came. The basic question was: What are we going to do? How are we as persons of faith going to address this situation that is so wrong?
What we came up with was, we are going to take the last sermon of Archbishop Romero that he gave in the cathedral, the day before he was assassinated, where he made his special plea to the men in the military to stop the killing, to lay down their weapons, to disobey their superior officers who were telling them to kill their fellow campesinos, and obey a higher law, that law of God that says: "Thou shall not kill." His words were so powerful. The next day he was assassinated, after this special plea to the men in the military.
Now we had his last sermon now on tape, in Spanish, that friends had sent to us here. So we asked, what are we going to do with this last sermon of Archbishop Romero that we now have? Out of that discernment it came that three of us who believed in this action would dress as high-ranking army officers. We would go into Ft. Benning at night near the barracks of the Salvadorean soldiers. There were over 500 being trained here. And we would broadcast Bishop Romero's last sermon to these Salvadorean soldiers now on U.S. soil at Ft. Benning, being trained in the art of killing.
Before we did that we had to think it through. This was a serious action, because we would be impersonating officers, and we would also be charged with criminal trespass. We could get ten years in prison for this action. We thought it through. We discerned, we prayed over it, and we felt so strongly about this issue. It would be such a powerful action, bringing the words of Bishop Romero, who is such an inspiration to us, onto the base and playing his last sermon to the Salvadoreans here. No one could convince me not to do it.
We went through with that action. It was so clear. You could have said we could have gotten 20 years in prison. But I felt, as a result of some weeks of prayer in silence and solitude and discernment, that the reasons not to do it to me made no sense. We did it. And I never did regret that I went to prison. Three of us went to prison for a year and a half. Prison was hard, but prison turned out to be this very long spiritual retreat. I saw that as our most creative action. Because of the discernment process that I had been through with others, I've never regretted a protest that lead to prison. It always made sense.
But while it made sense to me, it didn't make sense to some friends and relatives. When I first started to do protesting, to integrate protest as an integral part of my faith, it was upsetting to my dear parents, to my brother, one of my sisters, and to some friends. I listened to them, and I simply had to say that my experience in the military in Vietnam and my experience in Latin America are part of why I'm doing this. I have to be true to my experience. I hear what you're saying. But my experience is not your experience. That's why we cannot say to others what they have to do. I can only say look: This is rooted in my experience and my faith and what I have seen and what I have heard.
That's what it comes down to, discerning, following that inner voice, praying, spending quiet time with our thoughts. And something happens. There's this clarity that arrives, and we know that what we're doing is the right thing. No one can talk us out of it. If we do go to prison, we are free, and we are at peace.
I've heard other veterans say, "I'd rather go to prison than going to Iraq and killing some kid and struggle with demons for the rest of my life."
NS: They say you know a man by his enemies, and you have enemies who are dictators, mercenaries, drug dealers, torturers, and political schemers. They are dangerous people without shame. How do you deal with fear when confronting your enemies?
FRB: I've gotten death threats here, especially in the early days. I think about them, and the fear is short-lived. What I went through in the military or in Bolivia --these have been good experiences to help me deal with fear. They've been good preparation. If we are to be warriors for peace we've got to deal with our fear.
For most of us it's not the fear of dictators or assassins. We're afraid to be criticized, to be called names, to be not loved. That is what I think we have to come to grips with. I've been hurt on a number of occasions. I've lost who I thought were good friends, because when I went to prison, it was an embarrassment. But if we're going to be warriors for peace we're going to lose friends, we're going upset people.
There are times when the fear was there, of course. In Bolivia, when I couldn't stay in that little room I had in the barrio because they were picking up people at night, and I was on that list. Or in El Salvador. I was more fearful in El Salvador than I was in Vietnam. I mean that was a dangerous place. There were so many people being killed there. I've never seen such brutality. There have been nightmares and death threats. I just feel that through my faith, somehow I've come to the conclusion that I cannot let my fear take over. I cannot allow my fear to paralyze me.
When we first started here [at the SOA protests outside Ft. Benning] I would get some death threats. "If you leave your apartment and attend this here protest, you gonna end up in one of those coffins!" We carry these makeshift coffins, during our protests in November. For example, this last November 22,000 people came. We have a solemn funeral procession. We hold the white crosses bearing the names of the victims [of repression committed by SOA graduates] and we process to the main gate, and after each name is called in unison everyone would say "presente," this person is present. We carried the symbolic coffins. I remember getting calls that if I participated that I would end up in one of those coffins. It's something you have to think about, but it cannot prevent me. I couldn't stay in my little apartment. I had to join the protest.
We have to try and muster up the courage and not allow others to paralyze us with fear. I've been gifted in that, while I have experienced many moments of fear, I have been blessed in that God has always somehow given me the courage not to allow it to dominate me.
NS: When do you feel closest to God?
FRB: I've come to appreciate more solitude and silence in my life. I travel a lot, visiting all these countries in Latin America, and most of my ministry in the United States now is going to give talks. I get a steady flow of invitations, mainly from colleges and high schools, peace groups, and church groups to talk about U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, to talk about this war in Iraq, to talk about peace and justice, and issues of faith. So I'm with people a lot.
But I live in this tiny apartment. I'm looking outside of the window now. There's this big American flag right at the main gate of Ft. Benning. There's this big sign that says: "Welcome to Ft. Benning. U.S. Army," with two big chain-link fences that say "No Trespassing."
But when I come here to my little apartment I really appreciate the silence, the solitude. I love this time of the year. It's summer, everything's green. The hummingbirds have arrived. I just look forward to the arrival of these little hummingbirds and lots of other little birds around. As I've gotten older I've become more appreciative of nature and how it's so good for my spirit.
I got out of prison, a few years ago, after I was in solitary confinement. Prison is very noisy, that's the biggest challenge, and sometimes there's the violence. But I went on a work strike. I just didn't work in prison. You've got to work. If not, they put you in the hole. They send you to solitary confinement, which they did. I spent the next couple months in this six-by-nine cell. They would simply bring me my food.
I was allowed three books, one of them being the Scriptures. Friends would send me a steady flow of spiritual books by the mystics --John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila and others. And these spiritual giants, the mystics, in that cell for two months, simply being alone, nourished my soul. I went through some dark nights of the soul, but I felt God's presence in a very deep way in that cell, in the hole in solitary confinement. It turned out to be such a good experience.
When I got out of prison I wanted more solitude. I thought perhaps God was calling me to the contemplative life, to be a monk. Every year I make a retreat at a Trappist Monastery near Atlanta, Georgia, and I thought maybe God was calling me to be a Trappist monk, to be a full-time contemplative, to leave the world of activism.
So I was discerning. My friends were telling me that they could never see me as a monk. But somehow God was leading me in that direction, I felt, and I went through this discernment process. I felt I had to go to that monastery, to test the waters. I got the blessing and support from my Maryknoll community. They knew me as an activist, but they really understood that perhaps I'd been called in that direction. So I went to this Trappist monastery in the pines of Georgia. I was there for five months, and it was a wonderful experience.
What I found was that I was not called to be a full-time contemplative --that my life really was in the world, working for peace, struggling for justice. What I learned that was so important is that I am a contemplative. That I need in my life of activism, solitude and prayer, and silence and nature. But it's got to be integrated into my active life.
Most of us need that quiet time, the solitude. Some of us need more than others. I love talking about this in groups because it comes up a lot. How do we sustain our hope in this work for peace as activists? What's important is that we withdraw each day, even if it's for 10 minutes or a half hour. Try during the course of the week, to be alone, to be quiet, to be in solitude, to nourish our souls. That's where I think the peace and joy will be sustained --by integrating with our activism, solitude and prayer.
To keep that balance, that's the challenge. We have to find: What is that balance for me? Some of us need more solitude than others, more quiet time than others. I realized that I am not a full-time monk, but like many, I'm a spiritual hobo, who's really struggling to hold on to my hope, my joy --to try as best I can to live in the presence of God.
Dr. Nicole Sault is an anthropologist who works with farmers and indigenous peoples of Mexico and Costa Rica, doing research on godparents and birds as symbolic messengers. Currently she teaches at Santa Clara University in California. Her publications include: Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations (Rutgers University Press). www.sallyglean.org/sault.
The photographs of Fr. Roy Bourgeois are courtesy of SOA Watch.
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