To what extent is the School of the Americas responsible for the human
rights violations in Latin America committed by its graduates? I have
been following the debate in the list, and it seems that there are two
distinct positions, neither of which accurately captures the
complexities of the problem.
The first position, associated with the Maryknoll film and its
proponents (though obviously not only with them), holds that the
School of the Americas was to a large extent responsible for
indoctrinating the various militaries of Latin America, and hence was
responsible for the actions committed by its students. The litany of
human rights violations throughout the continent is familiar to
everyone, and need not be repeated here. The countless examples of
military officers who went through the school and committed human
rights abuses in their home countries (whether they were prosecuted or
not) is the strongest evidence in favour of this view. The logic is
simple: these officers must have learned their actions somewhere, and
the SOA, as the highest-order training they received, must by simple
deduction be the culprit - the agency which taught them to commit
these various human rights abuses.
This argument sounds reasonable, but suffers from a serious flaw. The
main problem is that it tends to underdetermine the explanation for
the human rights abuses committed by the various Latin American
militaries. By blaming the US and suggesting an American-led
conspiracy for the bulk of these actions, it draws attention away from
other factors.
Human rights abuses were not unkown in Latin America before its
soldiers were trained in the US. In fact, many of the actual
practices adopted by various militaries have their origins in colonial
times. (For instance, if I am not mistaken the notorious "pau de
arara," or "parrot's perch" torture, was practiced upon slaves in
colonial Brazil.) It is not inconceivable that many of these
practices survived into modern times and were adopted (and adapted) by
various militaries. If this was true in at least some of the cases,
the problem of explaining the history of human rights abuses in Latin
America becomes much more complex than the proponents of the Maryknoll
position hold. One possible line of argument might be that Latin
American soldiers "learned" to commit human rights abuses in Latin
America, and that at worst, US training did not disavow them of this
behaviour.
That is a close approximation of the second major position in the
debate, that of Major Martel, and surely that of many other defenders
of the School. The main argument is that the School cannot logically
be said to have "caused" the human rights abuses, because a. it does
not teach its students anything different from what American soldiers
learn, b. most of its students did not commit human rights abuses, and
c. the school actually has courses on respect for human rights.
Martel also has a further argument: that the School to some extent was
responsible for bringing about democracy throughout the region. The
evidence is that when the school started operating there were very few
democracies, and now most of the region is governed by democratic
regimes. This last "argument" barely deserves the appelation. It is
not an argument as such but a bad syllogism. First, it ignores a
not-insubstantial period of time during which militaries in Latin
America put an end to democratic regimes. (Some countries have had
far more dictatorship than democracy in the post-war period.) Second,
by the same logic we could argue that because there were few
democracies in Latin America before television, and because there are
many today after television has been introduced, TV must have brought
about democracy in Latin America!
The suggestion that democracy in Latin America is the result of the
SOA is thus simply wrong and will not be given further attention here.
But let's examine each of Martel's other arguments in turn. The first
is that the Latin American students learn the same things as do the
American students. The US military does not take over Washington, nor
does it commit human rights abuses against its own poulation;
therefore, the argument goes, whatever "bad habits" the Latin
Americans have they must have learned at home, not in the school.
I see no reason to doubt Martel's assertion that the US and the Latin
American students have the same curriculum, and would gladly accept
his offer to receive more information on this. But his argument
suffers from a serious flaw. The fact that the US military does not
take over the White House or Congress (shady knoll-type conspiracy
theories notwithstanding) and that it does not commit human rights
abuses against its own people is largely beside the point. The US and
the Latin American militaries in the post-war years were not trained
to fight Americans. They were trained to fight Communists. It is
perfectly consistent to argue on the one hand that the US trained the
Latin Americans in its own image, and on the other that the Latin
American militaries, unlike the Americans, turned against their own
people and their own political systems. The reason is that both were
trained to pursue the same enemy. This enemy was largely external for
the US, and largely internal for Latin Americans. Under the "National
Security Doctrine," American strategists argued that in the post-war
period the enemy in Latin America would no longer reside beyond a
particular country's borders, but rather inside. This Cold-War
ideology formed the basis for training Latin America's military
leaders, and no discussion of the School of the Americas can be
complete without mention of it.
Major Martel himself does not really discuss the National Security
Doctrine, and I for one would be interested in his account of how it
shaped the training of both US and Latin American soldiers throughout
the past five decades. Telling us that both sets of soldiers followed
the same courses is a red herring of an argument. The real point is
not whether US and Latin American soldiers took the same course, but
the ideological principles which formed the foundations for these
courses. Giving us a list of course names as "evidence" is simply
beside the point. (Indeed, it might just as well serve as evidence
for arguments that run in direct opposition to his own - ie. for
explaining instances of human rights abuses by US troops abroad, such
as during the Vietnam war.)
The second argument - that because most of the SOA's students did not
commit human rights abuses, the school cannot be blamed for the ones
that did - does not really make logical sense, nor is it acceptable in
our contemporary moral universe. It does not make sense because even
if we accept Martel's statement that the School did not directly teach
its students to commit human rights abuses, it is still possible that
indirectly its students learned this at the School. Major
institutions in our society are held responsible for indirect causes
as well as for direct ones. Think of a large corporation that never
actually promotes sexual harassment, but does not actually condemn it
either. There might be countless acts of omission, if not comission,
that would make the corporation responsible. Even more so if its
leaders know of the problem and do nothing to stop it. Negligence is
as much a source of complicity as is direct promotion of the offending
activities. In the case if the SOA, it is plausible that
counter-insurgency courses that taught students to pursue Communist
enemies implicitly, if not explicitly, condoned some sort of "by
whatever means possible" principle. That, especially with the
imprimatur of an elite institution, would be enough for the students
at the school to get the idea: pursuit of internal "enemies" was the
most important goal, no matter what the methods.
Major Martel's third argument anticipates this line of critique. It
holds that the School actually has courses on respect for human
rights, democracy, and the civic virtues. Again, I see no reason to
doubt this, but the logic of Martel's argument is faulty here as well.
A few courses here and there do not a doctrine make. It is perfectly
consistent with the Maryknoll position that the School have such
courses. It might still be possible for its students to go back to
their countries and commit human rights abuses, completely
contradicting everything they supposedly learned in the civics course.
The reason is the same as I mentioned above: the problem is not the
particular course but the principles which form the foundation for the
overall training. If the main idea of the training is to go after
insurgents, a few courses on respect for human rights might not have
any effect whatsoever unless these principles are integrated into the
general structure of the training. With all due respect to business
people and lawyers, business schools and law schools might have ethics
courses but that does not guarantee that their graduates will actually
follow the courses' recommendations if the main thrust of the training
leads them to do otherwise.
Major Martel might reply that following this logic, "Harvard" (to use
a shorthand for designating a very large number of schools) is also
responsible for its own graduates' actions. The answer to this
argument is that to some extent Harvard does take responsibility.
Institutions with a high degree of ideological unity (such as some
business, law, or even medical schools) are often open to debates
about the effects their training has on its graduates and on the world
at large.
Still, Martel does point to an interesting historical problem. Are
schools responsible for the subsequent actions of their graduates?
Not all of Harvard's graduates turn out to be Yamamotos, and not all
of the SOA's graduates turn out to be D'Aubissons, Martel would argue.
Thus, it is as misguided to hold the SOA responsible for its
D'Aubissons as it would be to hold Harvard responsible for its
Yamamotos. But while Harvard can believably argue that it did not
teach Yamamoto how to attack the United States, it is highly unlikely
that the D'Aubissons among the SOA's alumni did not learn anything
about counterinsurgency at the SOA. It would not be necessary for the
SOA to teach them exactly how to massacre innocent civilians. All the
school would have to do would be to give its institutional imprimatur
to the fight against communism, and maybe sprinkle that with a variety
of courses on how to fight insurgents. The D'Aubissons could
improvise the rest.
We thus again return to the National Security Doctrine. If the
strongest ideological basis of the school was to teach its students
how to fight against communist insurgents, that alone implicates the
SOA in much of the subsequent human rights violations committed by
some (though not all) of its graduates. Anti-communism also has deep
roots within Latin America, but the US role in promoting these ideas
is hardly a secret. And if a central purpose of an institution is to
train its students to kill people, its responsibility for
self-critique should, under any reasonable moral standard, be that
much greater than for a business, law, or medical school.
A central problem with the Maryknoll position (and that of many other
Left-wing critics of US policy in Latin America) is that it depends on
conspiracies. There are undoubtedly numerous examples of overt or
covert actions where US agents taught or even helped Latin American
militaries to commit atrocities against their own populations. The
more these actions can be brought into the light of day, the better.
But the existence of these acts is not a prerequisite for countering
the arguments made by the Major Martels of this world. I, for one,
see no reason to doubt Martel's statement that US and Latin American
students learned the same things, but as I argued above, that
statement is largely beside the point.
The history of the SOA has yet to be written, but it is not necessary
to rely on the existence of actual conspiracies to say "j'accuse" to
the SOA, as well as to other agencies of the US government (such as
the CIA) directly or indirectly responsible for human rights abuses
throughout the region. US involvement in Latin America is not the
only cause of the human rights abuses, though it is certainly one of
the causes in many places.
There are of course plenty of home-grown factors that also "caused"
these tragedies. (Though saying this does not imply anything about
Latin American "culture," as one critic suggested. The point is not
culture but politics.) So long as the Left looks for American
conspiracies to explain human rights abuses, it will keep chasing its
own tail and allow its critics to point out that following the same
logic of argumentation, it can equally be said that the US "caused"
democracy in the region. It is not necessary to dig up conspiracies
in order to establish causalities and implicate US institutions in the
atrocities that have taken place throughout our region. Let's hope
that after the accusations cease, we can all take a good hard look at
the history of human rights violations, understand what happened, and
reform the institutions - in Latin America as much as in the United
States - that made these tragedies possible.
Pablo Policzer
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
policzer@mit.edu