Protesters congregated in front of the Ann Arbor Federal Building Saturday to show solidarity with protests nationwide calling for the closing of the School of the Americas.

The military institute, located in the military base of Fort Benning, Ga, is the U.S. Army’s principal Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military personnel, according to its website.

But it has trained a long list of notorious alumni in combat, sniper training, interrogation tactics and counter-narcotic techniques. Gen. Hector Gramajo, Col. Pablo Belmar and Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez compose only a sample of whom the school’s critics call past Latin American strongmen trained by the SOA over the past 60 years. Because of this perception, many protesters refer to SOA as the “School of Assassins.”

The institute changed its name in 2001 to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to represent a new focus on human rights. Yet some of the protesters at the rally said this change has only nominal value.

Abby Schlaff is a staff member of the Ann Arbor-based Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, said, “Most of us feel (the changes) would be as if they went around the corner, changed their clothes and came and said they were a different person.”

The protest in front of the Ann Arbor Post Office, which also serves as the Federal building, was part of a larger web of protests. As the 11 protesters carried their signs at South Fifth Avenue and East Liberty Street to the occasional approving honk of passing cars, a crowd of 10,000 assembled at Fort Benning, according to estimates by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The protest against the school takes place annually in the town of Columbus, Ga., where Fort Benning is located.

Veterans for Peace and the Interfaith Council organized Ann Arbor’s first-ever protest of SOA.  Bob Krzewinski, president of the Washtenaw county chapter of Veterans for Peace, said he believed the event brought attention to what he called the U.S. government’s own hypocrisy. “We want people to take action. We talk about terrorist training camps, and we have one in our own backyard funded by our own tax dollars,” he said.

While the SOA website acknowledges that tactics listed in the school’s manuals during the 1980s violated human rights, supporters of the school say it does not “teach abuse, and ... today the curriculum includes human rights as a component of every class. (Supporters) also argue that no school should be held accountable for the actions of only some of its graduates.”

Built in 1946, the original school was described by Krzewinski as a “Cold War relic” built in Panama to combat the threat of communism. The school moved to Georgia in 1984.

With the threat of Communist world domination gone, the school now serves unethical purposes to the United States, Krzewinski said. The leaders and soldiers it trains have become autocrats under the sway of U.S. officials and have committed several human rights violations, opponents of the school said.

To demonstrate the casualties for which some graduates are responsible, Krzewinski read a portion of the names, ages and professions or relations of the 767 people that were murdered at the at El Mozote, El Salvador. in 1981.  Krzewinski explained to the protesters that many of the soldiers and officials in this batallion were SOA graduates. After each person’s information was read, the protesters responded with the Spanish word “presente” to symbolize that the deceased were with them in spirit.

The ages and backgrounds of these victims ranged from infants to the elderly.

Schlaff, who had previously attended the larger protest in Fort Benning, explained over a bullhorn the importance of a quote by assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero. “It is not on us to bring peace to the world. What we need to think about are things we can do and things we can do well,” she said.

Donning a U.N. helmet with a matching flag, RC senior Ed Atkinson said he was unimpressed by the student turnout. “I thought more students would be here. You can’t just vote for John Kerry and think you did your part,” he said.