Known as the "School of Dictators," it has instructed and trained hundreds of less than honorable graduates linked to military death squads throughout the world. Since its creation, it has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers, including 10,000 from Colombia. Results in that country are absolutely devastating and shocking. Thirty of the 33 brigade commanders of the Colombian Army were trained at the school and in those regions where they operated, extrajudicial executions almost doubled.
There is a direct relationship between the school's graduates and human rights atrocities through all of Latin America. They include over two-thirds of human rights violators named in a UN Commission report, the head of the central death squads and secret police in Guatemala, the military leader responsible for the disappearance of 20,000-30,000 Argentinians and many of the officers connected to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Costa Rica does not have an Army, but according to a 'watch groups', some 2,600 Costa Rican police officers have been trained at the school.
In Honduras, Gen. Romeo Velásquez had toppled Pres. Manuel Zelaya in a coup. The general who overthrew the democratically elected president of Honduras is a two-time graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Honduras remains one of the deadliest places on earth for journalists...(be sure and watch all of this chilling video). Continually attempting to shed light on what is happening in the country, Honduran journalists have watched 15 colleagues assassinated in 19 months under the new, but as equally dictatorial, Lobo regime, a government Barack Obama praises for its "strong commitment to democracy." (Behind the scenes supporting one of the wealthiest, most powerful, businessmen in the country).
In total hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been murdered, tortured, raped, disappeared and forced into exile by graduates of the SOA.
Under intense public pressure, it was coerced to release training manuals advocating torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations. Used in courses, the manual says that to recruit and control informants, counterintelligence agents could use fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum, according to secret summaries of the manuals compiled during a 1992 investigation of the instructional material.
Over the past 15 years, popular movements in Latin America have successfully stood up to imperialism and neoliberal economic policies, including free trade agreements. The governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica have all severed ties with this 'School.'
If you are not familiar with this 'school'... it is the infamous United State Army's School of the Americas (SOA) based in Fort Benning, Georgia. Originally established by the U.S. Army in the Panama Canal in 1946, the military training school moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984.
The SOA has remained a microcosm of US foreign policy. And that's why so many people have dedicated their lives to changing the culture of militarization, exposing the SOA's practices and, ultimately, shutting it down. Taxpayers' money has been used for physical abuse and torture.. and the school of the Americas, a Cold War relic, must be closed forever.
Why continue the public efforts to close it... when you don't have accountability, you have impunity and we've seen a dramatic spread of many of the tactics perfected and used at the School of the Americas. They have been revealed to be central to U.S. foreign policy elsewhere and now must be ended for all time.
