An activist gave her perspective Thursday of the United States’ School of the Americas, and gave Cal State Long Beach students a preview of a study-abroad trip to Venezuela.
Lisa Sullivan is the Latin America coordinator of the School of the Americas Watch, a watchdog group that monitors the organization and wants it shut down. According to ciponline.org, School of the Americas – now Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation – is “the Defense Department’s principal Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military and law-enforcement personnel.”
In her first on-campus speech, Sullivan educated the audience about the School of the Americas by telling them what the organization has done, said Ronald Loewe, a CSULB associate anthropology professor who helped organize the events.
Things allegedly done by the School of the Americas graduates, according to Sullivan, included the killing of union activists and the support of dictators, Loewe said.
“[Graduates of the organization have] been used to kind of damage citizens in the countries where they operate,” Loewe said. “Some of the people that are presently in office … were actually tortured by somebody in the School of the Americas.”
During the second speech, Sullivan, who lived in Venezuela for 25 years, talked about the study-abroad program available for the country, Loewe said. Sullivan has led a lot of delegations to Venezuela, in which she tries to give people a different view of the country.
“She’s trying to give people the possibility of seeing Venezuela from a different perspective,” Loewe said. “The perspective of the people from the barrio, the poor people.”
Sullivan also talked about the social and political changes made during the presidency of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
