Resistance and Martyrdom

As Dominican men and women committed to life and the defense of human rights of our peoples, gathered in Guatemala City, land bathed with the blood of martyrs, we join once again with all of you who are currently raising your voices to repudiate that place which for decades has promoted hatred and death for people of Central America.

The School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has manipulated harmfully and irrationally the minds and hearts of political and military leaders in order to carry out the brutal destruction and extermination of campesinos and indigenous people in many rural villages and urban neighborhoods; these crimes have caused unspeakable grief for thousands of families, forcing them to live with the sorrow of kidnappings, disappearances, and assassinations of their family members.

As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the massacres of Maya people in Guatemala, including the assassination of the Dominican Friar, Carlos Morales, and in memory of all the men and women martyrs of Latin America, we declare our repudiation and indignation at the continuation of this school of death which today remains a real sign of a culture forging death and impunity against human life.

We also call upon the international community, solidarity groups and especially to the United States of North America, to terminate totally and definitively this institution which causes through military involvement the shedding of blood of innocent victims involved in political struggles in their countries and violates and destroys their right to sovereignty and dignity.

As our martyr bishops of El Salvador and Guatemala, Oscar Arnulfo Romero and Juan Girardi, we also raise our voices today to cry out unanimously:

Cease all that provokes pain and death…in Guatemala and in the entire world.  Never again!!!