ROCLA
ROCHESTER COMMITTEE ON LATIN AMERICA

What: “Peace, Justice, Equality and Conscience in Latin America,” a presentation by human rights activist Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch.
When: Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 7 PM
Where: Downtown United Presbyterian Church 121 North Fitzhugh Street, Rochester
For information: Grania Marcus, grania_marcus@yahoo.com, (917) 579-0199.
Roy Bourgeois served as a Catholic priest in Bolivia until he was expelled for standing with the poor in their struggle for human rights. In 1980, Fr. Roy became involved in issues surrounding U.S. policy in El Salvador after four U.S. churchwomen–two of them friends of his–were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Roy became an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. In 1990, he founded School of the Americas (SOA) Watch to shut down the school where the military perpetrators of repression and torture in Latin America were trained to conduct low-intensity warfare campaigns against democratic movements in the 1980s. He has cumulatively spent more than 4 years in Federal prison for his nonviolent protests against the SOA. He produced a documentary about the SOA, called “School of Assassins,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. Roy Bourgeois and the SOA were nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2010 for his human rights activism. Recently, Roy and an SOA Watch delegation of traveled to El Salvador where they met with the El Salvador President Ceren, human rights leaders and others who inspired them to keep working to close the SOA/WHINSEC.