>
> Yes, grave human rights abuses occurred in Latin America before the
> existence of the SOA. Yes, Latin American regimes are quite capable of
> torture, etc on their own. But the SOA and the CIA, especially toward
> the beginning of the '60s -- starting really with the coup in Brazil
> ('64) --
> introduced (pioneered, really) forms of torture like electro-shock, etc.,
> that were then taught to other regimes throughout the southern cone. The
> evidence is quite plain, and available at any library.
>
Two comments:
(a) Advice on torture methods was not restricted to U.S. sources (e.g.
the U.K. secret service recommended the methods they were using to
extract information from the IRA.
(b) The generation of general officers responsible for the 1964 coup in
Brazil were too old to have been sent to the School of the Americas,
although of course U.S. citizens did teach at the Brazilian
Staff College: the Brazilian generals' main predisposition to intervene in
politics derived from what they had been taught as young tenentes by the
French military missions of the 1920s in which incidentally that
fine anti-communist General Gamelin (he of the 1940 catastrophe) was a
prominent participant. Let us not put all the blame on the U.S. Any
military, given half a chance will intervene in politics whenever they
disapprove sufficiently of what the civilian politicians are up to.
Britain's Ulster problem, for instance, is the end result of the Curagh
mutiny of the British general staff in 1914 when it insisted the Asquith
governemnt not carry out the Irish Home Rule Act.
Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? Let us tear away the hypocrisy of
military denials of dirty wars and their pretensions to believe in
democracy or civilian rights, by all means, but let us not suppose
anyone short of a Bismarck or a Cromwell can stop
them when they have made up their minds: violence is their profession.
L. Hallewell.