For Sacred Heart High School senior Ambar Lopez, 17, going back to the 18th annual protest against the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia - which has trained the likes of Latin American military tyrants Manuel Noriega of Panama, Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala and Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador - was personal. Very personal.

Her father fled the horrific violence of the civil war in El Salvador that raged from the late 1970s into the early '90s, barely escaping with his life. Eight of his uncles and cousins, killed at the hands of government-sponsored death squads, weren't so lucky.

"I wanted to protest for the closing of the school that trained those soldiers that killed our family members," said Ambar.

Another senior, Analissa Mejia, 17, learned about the secretive school within a U.S. army base when she was a freshman at Sacred Heart. In talking about it with her family, the teenager discovered that her own uncle, Juan Marquez, who served in Vietnam, was not only stationed at Fort Benning but was actually a former SOA trainer.

Surprised that the school was still open, Marquez told his niece he was behind her "200 percent," and even started writing letters to U.S. senators. "He looks back on it now and says, 'I was young and naïve. They told me what to do and I trained,'" said Analissa. "And it was his encouragement behind me that really gave me more strength to go."

Valerie Medina didn't have any family ties to the School of the Americas, which in 2001 was renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." The 17-year-old senior simply believed it was her duty as a citizen and Christian to help close it.

"I wanted to go just because I wanted to see justice being served," she said. "And I wanted to see all the youth together. 'Cause I think that since we're young, we're the future. And I want everyone to be mindful and know what's really going on. I want everyone to know the truth."

The upper-classmen were sitting in a semi-circle of desk-chairs at the Lincoln Heights all-girls' secondary school with two other Sacred Heart students who had protested at last year's SOA demonstration, sisters Sarah and Elizabeth Acosta. Near the center was religion teacher Patricia Contreras. More than five years ago, at the urging of Dominican Sister of San Jose Mary Diane Scott, Sacred Heart's principal, Contreras started the yearly social justice trips to Georgia.

'Cool' Father Roy
The 2007 SOA action, drawing more than 12,000, was more powerful and personal for the Sacred Heart group, according to Contreras. They met Father Roy Bourgeois, the Maryknoll priest who first fasted and prayed at Fort Benning's front gate with some friends in 1990, and the Los Angeles woman who scaled the fence this year in a pubic act of nonviolent protest and was one of 11 persons arrested.

Moreover, the local students went to a compelling presentation by torture survivors, where victims mingled with the audience, telling their stories.

The weekend event culminated in a funeral procession Sunday morning and the nearly three-hour reading of names of persons killed in violence reportedly orchestrated by SOA graduates. Later, they watched a reenactment of the Nov. 16, 1989, murder of six Jesuit priests at Central American University in El Salvador along with their housekeeper and her daughter.

"All of this made the experience really, really powerful," Contreras stressed. "It just felt like we were drawn in at a different level and a deeper involvement this year. Like we weren't just there and then we came home. We were there, we did something, and we're going to come home to finish what we started. So we're going to start an SOA chapter at the school."

One of the biggest impressions Ambar Lopez took home was how enthusiastic and "pumped up" everyone was outside Fort Benning, especially the thousands of college students. What struck Analissa Mejia was how united, and loud, all the protesters were for a single cause - to finally shut down the School of the Americas for good. Valerie Medina liked meeting a lot of people, especially Father Roy. "He was cool," she said.

All three agreed the experienced changed them. Ambar was "really hit" by the funeral procession of people holding up white crosses with the names of victims. Analissa left learning more about the war in Iraq at a teach-in and realizing the importance of world peace if the human race is to survive.

Waterboarding workshop
Valerie was still emotional over the fact that so many infants and kids were killed during the bloody wars in Latin America. She was also taken by a demonstration on waterbording, the controversial simulating-drowning technique used by U.S. interrogators on terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons.

"I learned that our government has a lot to hide, and they're not always truthful with everything they say," she said. "Everything can be a lie."

The Acosta sisters, who went to last year's SOA action, agreed the changes were likely to last. Before going back to Fort Benning, Sarah said she didn't understand how she could have any effect on anything, never mind U.S. foreign policy.

"But when I saw how big of a group it really was and how they had helicopters trying to drown us out but they couldn't, it made me feel like, 'You know, if I truly believe in something, I can do that, too,'" she said.

Elizabeth was likewise moved by seeing that the demonstrators were just ordinary folks standing up against what they believed to be morally wrong. It made her realize she could do that, too.

"The fights not over," the teenager pointed out. "And since we started out so young being aware of everything, it's really important to spread the knowledge of what we know is right. You can't, like, turn a blind eye to things. So it's really important for people just to speak out. And despite any obstacles you may be facing, you can make a dramatic change."

Patricia Contreras, who had chaperoned Sacred Heart High School students on four SOA actions, was smiling and nodding.

"I always talk about SOA in my classes, because it's something that very few people are aware of, but the depth to which I can talk about it now is more concrete." acknowledged the young educator and mother, who teaches a class called "Social Justice and Morality."

"Before," she said, "we talked about social justice and we talked about what could we do to make justice. Now we do things."