A group of about 40 Boston area residents and college students gathered in Copley Square last evening to protest U.S. military involvement in Latin America.

Specifically, they called for closure of the School of the Americas (SOA) in Georgia, which, they said, was designed to train counter-revolutionaries to fight rebels in Latin America.

"The SOA has for decades trained 60,000 troops. {Some of them] have been responsible for massive murders, tortures, rapes. They are also responsible for stifling social movements and assassinating those involved with those movements," said Amanda Watson of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization committed to social justice.

The protest was organized by a conglomeration of small social action organizations, including the Latinos and Latinas for Social Change and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

"We are just very concerned that [these harmful activities] take place while Americans are ignorant that this goes on," said Steve Fernandez of Latinos and Latinas for Social Change.

Watson said the protest was held in conjunction with similar demonstrations in Latin America and in Georgia.

The annual protests began in 1992, "after the murder of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter by El Salvadoran troops trained by the SOA," she added.

Elsa Miriam Linares, a member of Asociacion de Educares Salvadorenos, a Salvadoran teacher union, discussed the situation in her native country in Spanish. Her speech was translated by Lena Entin of CISPES.