“It is high time you recovered your consciences.”

Archbishop Oscar Romero, an American protestor against El Salvador’s US-backed dictator. spoke these final words just one day before he was assassinated.

Taking Romero’s final sermon to heart, Father Roy Bourgeois and his fellow activists played a recording of these words outside the School of the Americas, a military training facility in Fort Benning, Georgia. Through this demonstration, Father Roy sought to confront Latin American officers being trained in brutal torture tactics in the United States.

Almost 30 years later, Father Roy came to Cornell University to share his “lifelong struggle for justice.” The meeting, held yesterday in the International Lounge in the Straight, drew an audience of students, community members and club leaders. Father Roy was invited by the Committee for United States Latin American Relations to share his work in the SOA Watch.

The SOA, which was recently renamed the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, is an American-run institution that trains Latin American officers to confront “the emergence of new challenges to peace and stability [in] Latin America.” The SOA Watch is a non-profit organization headed by Father Roy dedicated to “actively keep tabs on the SOA” and “champion other social causes in Latin America.”

Father Roy wanted to unveil what he believed is this institution’s real modus operandi — “training killers.” By coming to Cornell and other universities in the area, Bourgeois hopes to inspire students to raise awareness of this and other relevant US-Latin American issues.

“Ignorance is the greatest enemy we face today,” Father Roy said.

CUSLAR member Emma Banks ’10 hoped “more students will attend events focusing on Latin American issues, since they remain relevant.” Bourgeois’ visit has already raised awareness among the student body. Students like Claire Stoscheck ’09 “did not know about the SOA before Roy’s visit.”

Father Roy’s struggle for social justice began as a soldier in Vietnam. During his service, Roy found fault with “the madness of his country’s foreign policies.” Upon his return, Father Roy was ordained a Catholic priest and went to Bolivia to serve the poor.

It is was in Bolivia where he “realized the United States was on the wrong side of things” in its support of governments that “tortured political prisoners.” He brought his struggle back to the United States and began working to shut down WHINSEC. Father Roy’s first campaign, which earned him a year and a half of jail time, was to “scale the walls of Fort Benning and broadcast [Father Romero's] message of peace.” Roy's subsequent incarceration attracted widespread attention to the issue, accomplishing some of his initial goals.

Father Roy urged students to demand that their representatives vote against funding WHINSEC. The success of Father Roy’s work depends on student activism, through which young people will learn that, as he said, “silence is the voice of complicity.”