James Hodge and Linda Cooper take us along on the personal journey of Roy Bourgeois. The book opens with Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Fr. Larry Rosebaugh and Sr. Linda Ventimiglia who, masquerading as army personnel break into the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. At the SOA they are training Salvadorian guerrillas to go back to El Salvador where they will fight to keep the progressives out of power. Where Salvadorans will fight fellow Salvadorians in order to keep the flow of goods coming into the United States and keep the poor utterly destitute.

They not only manage to gain access into the SOA but also are able to smuggle in sound equipment to play the last homily of the slain archbishop Oscar Romero. Archbishop Romero was assassinated by guerrillas who where trained at the SOA. They are eventually discovered. When found, Bourgeois was up a tree with the sound equipment. When the military finally are able to stop the words – Bourgeois continues to shout the remainder of the homily in Spanish in the hopes that it will stop even one man from going back to El Salvador with the purpose of killing his fellow countrymen.

His personal journey started in the killing fields of Vietnam where he met a priest who runs an orphanage. Working with the orphans he began to see the effects and the ravages of war on the poor – victims on two fronts. Bourgeois’ personal journey takes him to the Maryknoll Fathers, a missionary order of the Roman Catholic Church. Once there he is sent to Bolivia where he is introduced to the poor of Bolivia. Once he heard the cry of the poor, there was no turning back for this courageous man. U.S. meddling in Bolivia makes it difficult for this young priest to reach the local people whom he so longs to help. He leaves the relative comfort of the Maryknoll Mission house and lives in a barrio in Villa El Carmen. While in the barrio, he helps the local people with basic necessities and helps the local indigenous people to start a cooperative.

The more he learns about U.S involvement in Latin America the more compelled his is to 'whistle-blow.' As he makes many people in the United States aware of the U.S. government’s involvement in Latin America the more his personal struggles increases. As his conscience is pricked he is compelled to act.

He co-produces a documentary entitled Gods of Metal with Fr. Paul Newpower that recieved a nomination for an Academy Award. In this documentary he exposes the evils of Reagan’s 'Star Wars' program. They illistrate the trillions of dollars spent on war but none for books and bread.

Through hunger strikes and a variety protests he confronts the complexity of the Roman Catholic Church and of the United States. In these pages we meet friends and colleagues of Bourgeois who are murdered in El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America. Whilst in jail for a protest he wonders if he is doing the right thing.

His personal journey leads him to join a Trappist Order. He finds that not only does the quietude of Trappist life helps him to clarify his own personal feelings he also finds that he cannot function in the way he feels lead. He leaves the contemplative life to return to the missionary life. He realizes that he belongs working for the poor and the neglected as well as doing all in his power to protest the work of the SOA and to end the U.S. involvement with instigating wars in Latin America and throughout the world.

Bourgeois continues to struggle to end senseless death and destruction by actively protesting the School of the Americas. We are taken into the present day where we have another Bush in office with a bloated military budget once again causing instability in a region and wholesale devastation to a people.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE is defined as: 'Challenging an injustice by refusing to support or cooperate with an unjust law, action or policy. The word ‘passive’ is misleading because passive resistance includes pro-active nonviolence, such as marches, boycotts and other forms of active protest.'

This is a gripping account which shows one man’s gradual transformation from war to non-violence and from non-violence to passive resistance and active suffering. It is also a compelling story of courage and passion of a man to close a school whose sole purpose is to train death squads and assassins in Latin America and now in the Middle East. In this book, we are forced to open our eyes and see what our government is doing with our tax dollars and in our names.



Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. By James Hodge and Linda Cooper Forward by Martin Sheen Orbis Books, 2004



--Michael Adam Reale can be reached at mreale@cpusa.org.



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