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.

"We do not want any more assassins trained [at the SOA] to come and assassinate people in Latin America," Linares said.

"Graduates of the school have assassinated Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, and the Jesuit priests, and the four churchwomen," Linares said.

Nicholas Britto, public affairs officer for SOA, responded to similar charges last year in the Los Angeles Times by saying that the school "does not condone violence" and challenges those making the allegation "to show us evidence that this is happening."

According to Linares, U.S.-sponsored military intervention often brutalized left-leaning social reformers along with rebels.

Linares said: "We have been working for over 30 years as members of the teacher union and the social movement. We have been witnesses to violation of human rights committed against members [of our] movement, and many teachers have been killed."

The organizations voiced a variety of concerns related to U.S. policies regarding Latin America besides the SOA. These included: U.S. military exercises at Vieques in Puerto Rico; a $1.3 billion military aid package to Colombia; and construction of U.S. military bases in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

David Grosser of CISPES explained the inclusion of such a wide range of issues.

"We are united around the understanding that U.S. intervention in Latin America is used to maintain an economic system that ensures corporations prosper while millions of people live in poverty," Grosser said.

Audience members said they hoped local residents would get involved in the issues.

"People here can help [if they] get more information out of the government. I hope that [people will see] that this is just one small fight in a larger picture," said Wellesley College student and Bogota, Columbia native Mariana Mejia.