BACKGROUND:
On March 15, 1993, the United Nations Truth Commission released
its Report on El Salvador and cited over 60 Salvadoran officers
for ordering, executing, and concealing the major atrocities of
ten years of civil war. At least 75 percent of the censured
officers during their military careers trained at the U.S. Army
School of the Americas (SOA) located in Ft. Benning, Ga. School
commandant Jose Alvarez denied the involvement of SOA graduates
in war crimes and called critics "ignorant" and "uninformed".
One of this nation's most secretive schools, SOA was established
in Panama in 1946 to promote regional stability and train U.S.
soldiers in jungle warfare. It evolved to teach low intensity
conflict, psychological operations (PSYOPS), and intelligence
gathering to some of the worst dictators, war criminals, and
violators of human rights in the hemisphere. In their heydays
of military abuse, Bolivia in the '60s, Nicaragua (under the
Somozas) in the '70s, and El Salvador in the '80s, were all
primary clients of the SOA.
As the notoriety of its alumni grew, the school earned the
nickname "Escuela de Golpes", or "School of Coups." In 1984,
when Panama finally ousted SOA (under a provision of the Panama
Canal treaty), the Panamanian daily La Prensa added another nom
de guerre: "The School of Assassins".
Four years after relocation to Ft. Benning, SOA established a
"Hall of Fame" to honor distinguished alumni. Honorees were
flown from Latin America for award ceremonies attended by local
VIPs, military brass, and occasional Congress members. "If SOA
held an alumni association meeting," said Rep. Martin Meehan (D-
MASS) in 1993, "it would bring together some of the most
unsavory thugs in the hemisphere."
For its premier Hall of Fame inductee, SOA chose ex-Bolivian
dictator Hugo Banzer Suarez. Having come to power in a violent
coup, he developed the "Banzer Plan" in the 1970s which
"brutally suppressed tin miners and church workers" and
effectively silenced critics of his regime. Other recipients
included: a drug trafficker (Gen. Humberto Regalado Hernandez),
a notoriously corrupt dictator (Gen. Policarpio Paz Garcia), and
a chief of intelligence who oversaw the assassination of
thousands of suspected dissidents (Gen. Manuel Antonio Callejas
y Calleja).
Today, SOA has a basic budget of $5.8 million. While there are
currently no Salvadoran or Guatemalan trainees, officers from
those nations serve as guest instructors. The $5.8 million
budget does not include salaries or living allowances (up to
$25,000) paid to Latin American officers attending the Command
and General Staff College (CGSC).
The core of SOA's curriculum, Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), is a
deliberately misnamed warfare strategy designed to maintain U.S.
military influence in this hemisphere without using (or losing)
large numbers of U.S. troops. Instead, U.S. military personnel,
aided by a handful of guest instructors from various SOA client
nations, train surrogate Latin American and Caribbean soldiers
in "dirty little war" techniques, including: counterinsurgency
and urban counterinsurgency; irregular warfare and commando
operations; sniper and sapper techniques; combat arms and
special operations; and military intelligence and PSYOPS. SOA
graduates who go home and adequately perform their duties can
look forward to returning to the SOA again and again, to receive
more training, an assignment as guest instructor, or induction
into the SOA Hall of Fame.
In this way, SOA functions not only as a training and
indoctrination center, but also as a reward to select soldiers
for a job well done. Like any elite school, SOA builds an old
boys network. When it comes time for the U.S. to choose one or
another faction in an internal power dispute abroard, it has
highly placed allies whose politics it helped shape and whose
loyalty it claims.
Former SOA commandant, Jose Feliciano, who oversaw the training
of hundres of Salvadoran soldiers during his tenure, staunchly
maintained that the human rights records of SOA client nations
were beyond reproach. "A nation that wants to receive SOA
training," he said, "has got to have a strong human rights
record. We talk to people in terms of values." Col. Jose
Alvarez, another former SOA commandant, maintained the same
line. "SOA probably does more in the area of teaching human
rights than any other school in the world." The Colonel must
have been on leave every time the 1989 murders of six Jesuit
priests, their housekeeper, and her 16 year old daughter, in El
Salvador was mentioned. The Truth Commission implicated 27
soldiers and the Salvadoran courts convicted four in that
massacre; 19 of the soldiers were SOA graduates. Yet, even
after the U.N. report made headlines, Alvarez maintained
unabashed ignorance on what is undoubtedly the most publicized
case in recent memory of human rights abuse involving SOA
graduates. Alvarez said that as far as he knows, no School of
the Americas graduate has ever been formally charged in
connection to the killing of the priests and the women who died
with them in El Salvador. He said, "he doesn't know if the
accused had been students."
Thus the U.S. Army School of the Americas -- by honing the
military skills and rewarding the atrocities of this
hemisphere's most brutal armed forced -- undermined the human
rights it purports to instill. At best, the low intensity
conflict it teaches maintains the status quo in nations with
large, impoverished populations plagued by unfair labor
practices, poor living conditions, and lack of education; at
worst, it is a tool for achieving and legitimizing fascism.
As the U.N. Truth Commission Report clearly demonstrates, SOA
training does not alter the patterns of traditionally abusive
militaries -- it only makes the alumni more mindful of hiding
their atrocities.