The School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation (after a rebranding effort 24 years ago), is a U.S. Army training facility located in Fort Moore, Georgia, that has trained thousands of Latin American military and law enforcement personnel since its establishment in 1946. It has faced significant criticism for its graduates' involvement in human rights abuses, leading to ongoing debates about its role and impact on the region.
School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), began in 1990 to denounce the 1989 School of the Americas (SOA) graduate-led massacre at the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador. The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place.
Over the past 30 years, SOA Watch has grown to become the largest grassroots Latin America solidarity organization in the United States. After 26 years of holding vigils and demonstrations outside the SOA facility at Fort Moore, Georgia, SOA Watch moved to Nogales, Arizona/Sonora, Mexico in 2016 to call attention to the militarized US foreign policy as a principal root cause of migration, as well as the devastating impact US security and immigration policy has on refugees, asylum seekers and immigrant families all over the continent.
In 2016 I was invited by School of Americas Watch to attend their first Encuentro at the border wall. The event happened in November and took place on both sides of the border wall in Nogales. In 2017 I received another invitation to attend the Encuentro at the border wall but this time I was invited to do an installation on the Mexican side of the border wall in Nogales and to hold art workshops during the weekend long event. Thea Gahr accompanied me on these trips and led the printmaking workshops. The screen print that resulted from this project was a collaboration between Thea and me.
