A Reflection on the LASC Education and Strategy Conference

From April 12-14, over four hundred students, solidarity activists, artists, community organizers and academics gathered at American University to rally against militarization of the Americas for the fifth conference of the Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC). The weekend's goal was to raise consciousness about escalating militarization throughout the Americas – from seven proposed U.S. military bases in Colombia to police collaboration with Homeland Security through the “Secure Communities” program – and to develop solidarity strategies to accompany anti-militarization movements in Latin America.

Movement leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean shared the analysis, images and stories guiding their movements. Testimony from Honduras, where over three hundred resistance leaders and LGBT activists have been assassinated since the 2009 coup against President Zelaya, from Mexico, where nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the first four years of the U.S.-sponsored “War on Drugs” and from Haiti, where UN “peacekeeping forces” continue their repressive occupation, exposed the extent of and linkages within the aggressive U.S. agenda throughout the hemisphere. The U.S. currently spends an estimated $1 billion every year in police and military “aid” to Latin America (AFGJ).

Most importantly, speakers and workshop facilitators highlighted the economic and political reasons why the U.S. continues to push its military might throughout region. During his opening address, Jesus Emilio Tuberquia, a leader in the San José de Apartadó peace community in Colombia, held up a dollar bill and a Colombian peso, declaring, “This is the reason for all the violence we must live through!” before tearing up the bills into tiny pieces and exhorting the participants to seek cooperative alternatives as his community has done.

Dan Kovalik, Assistant General Counsel for the United Steelworkers, also emphasized this when discussing the pending U.S. free trade agreement with Colombia, where, since President Uribe took office in 2002, more union organizers have been murdered than in the rest of the world combined. Over the weekend, a broader analysis emerged around the corporate economic agenda that fuels most of this militarization. First, militarization creates tremendous financial benefits to U.S. weapons manufacturers and private security contractors. Second, the regions and communities that are the sites of the most intense militarization, from Colombia to Guatemala to Mexico, are typically home to valuable natural resources, including gold, oil and land itself.

Hector Aristizábal, Colombian artist and organizer, opened Saturday’s full workshop schedule with a dynamic storytelling of a Cherokee creation legend. He eventually directed the full auditorium in singing operas to one another, tapping into the healing and powerful artistic centers necessary to fuel major political change. Saturday featured skills-based workshops to build a stronger grassroots movement, from using FOIA requests to do research for anti-militarization campaigns to building multilingual and multiracial movements for social justice. Much of Sunday was spent caucusing by sector – students, labor, women, faith – to define collaborative strategies and priorities to fight U.S. militarism in its multiple forms.

Despite the enormous challenges to organizing against the military-industrial complex, we left the conference in high spirits. Special thanks are due to the artists and activists who shared their music and poetry with us throughout the conference, further emphasizing the importance of integrating our cultures into the heart of our campaigns and movements. We also gained incredible inspiration from the powerful resistance movements throughout Latin America, from the Continental Campaign against Military Bases to the No Más Sangre movement being led by women and youth in Ciudad Juárez, México against the “War on Drugs.”

Perhaps the greatest reason why we left the conference with the spirit of struggle was Sunday’s exciting mobilization to the White House, where twenty seven people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience to demand an end to militarization and closure of the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Led by solidarity activists, religious leaders and incredible puppets – from anabuela trailed by floating handkerchiefs, representing the mothers of the disappeared, to the four horsemen of the apocalypse led by Uncle Sam on stilts - we marched together to the gates of the White House for a spirited, bilingual rally to show our commitment to the on-going struggle for social justice and lasting peace.