IT'S TIME TO SHUT OUR SCHOOL FOR LATIN KILLERS
The Central Intelligence Agency is getting most of the heat for the
latest human-rights outrage to emerge from the ugly little wars that
continue to plague Central America. It should, since one of the spy
agency's Guatemalan "assets" has been implicated in the brutal
murders of a U.S. citizen and the Guatemalan husband of another U.S.
citizen. But the CIA is not the only culpit.
A little known Pentagon operation that trains Latin American military
officers also has blood on its hands in this latest tragedy. It's La
Escuela de las Americas, the School of the Americas. And despite a
highfalutin' name and idealistic-sounding mission -- which supposedly
includes teaching respect for civilian authority and human rights--it
should finally get a hard, critical look in Congress.
Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), the House Intelligence Committee
member who disclosed the CIA's Guatemalan scandal, says a CIA "asset"
named Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez is responsible for the June 1990
killing of Michael DeVine, who ran a tourist hostel in northern
Guatemala. DeVine apparently stumbled onto a smuggling operation at
a nearby army base under Alpirez's command.
Alpirez also has been linked to the 1992 death of Efrain Bamaca
Velasquez, a leftist guerrilla married to an American, Jennifer
Harbury. Of course, Bamaca -- however awful his death -- could be
written off as a casualy of Guatemala's long civil war, which most
experts date from 1954, when a CIA-inspired coup overthrew a leftist
president, Jacobo Arbenz. But Bamaca's widow, a Harvard Law School
graduate, wanted answers. She took her husband's case to Washington,
where it eventually caught the attention of Torricelli, and Rep.
Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass) who for two years has tried to eliminate
Pentagon funding for the the Ft. Benning, Ga. school.
The elite military training center offers courses in U.S. weaponry,
tactics and related skills to Latin American officers and cadets
chosen for their career potential. It was established in the Panama
Canal Zone in 1946 and moved to Fort Benning, Ga. in 1984. Its
stated mission is to foster military professionalism and cooperation
among the American republics. But the school also had a role in
keeping the communist threat at bay during the Cold War.
The notorious Col. Alpirez not only had close ties with the CIA; he
also attended the School of the Americas, in 1970 and 1989. As such,
he is on a list of alumni whose reputations are dubious. Among the
most notable: Gen. Raoul Cedras, the Haitian coup leader who was
ousted last year by U.S. forces; Gen. Hugo Banzer, dictator of
Bolivia from 1971-78; Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator
now imprisoned is this country for drug trafficking; Col. Roberto
D'Aubuisson, the death-squad leader in El Salvador who ordered the
1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Other Salvadoran
alumni include three of the soldiers who raped and murdered four U.S.
nuns in 1980, 19 soldiers who took part in the 1989 murder of six
sJesuits and 10 of the 12 officers implicated in the 1981 massacre of
900 peasants at El Mozote.
Alumni of the school also have taken part in military coups in Peru,
Ecuador, and Argentina. In fact, it is hard to think of a coup or
human-rightrs outrage that has occurred in Latin America in the past
40 years in which alumni of the School of the Americas were NOT
INVOLVED.
Pentagon and State Department spokemen have told me that the school
serves a useful purpose. After all, 50,000 Latin American soldiers
have attended over the years, and not all of them took part in coups
or massacres. But the Cold War is over; it's time to rethink the
School of the Americas.
Kennedy estimates that the Pentagon is spending $18.4 million on the
school this fiscal year, and he intends to introduce an amendment to
delete that funding from the next Pentagon budget. Two similar
amendments failed in 1993 and 1994. Perhaps with this latest
human-rights scandal in Guatemala, and a Republican-controlled
Congress looking for ways to save money, Kennedy's effort may finally
succeed. Here's hoping it does.