The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the AmericasLocated at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, the School of the Americas (soa) is a U.S. Army center that has trained more than sixty thousand soldiers and police, mostly from Latin America, in counterinsurgency and combat-related skills since it was founded in 1946. So widely documented is the participation of the School’s graduates in torture, murder, and political repression throughout Latin America that in 2001 the School officially changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Lesley Gill goes behind the façade and presents a comprehensive portrait of the School of the Americas. Talking to a retired Colombian general accused by international human rights organizations of terrible crimes, sitting in on classes, accompanying soa students and their families to an upscale local mall, listening to coca farmers in Colombia and Bolivia, conversing with anti-soa activists in the cramped office of the School of the Americas Watch—Gill exposes the School’s institutionalization of state-sponsored violence, the havoc it has wrought in Latin America, and the strategies used by activists seeking to curtail it. Based on her unprecedented level of access to the School of the Americas, Gill describes the School’s mission and training methods and reveals how its students, alumni, and officers perceive themselves in relation to the dirty wars that have raged across Latin America. Assessing the School’s role in U.S. empire-building, she shows how Latin America’s brightest and most ambitious military officers are indoctrinated into a stark good-versus-evil worldview, seduced by consumer society and the “American dream,” and enlisted as proxies in Washington’s war against drugs and “subversion.” |
Contents
The Military Political Violence and Impunity I | 1 |
Georgia Not on Their Minds | 23 |
DeMining Humanitarianism | 43 |
Copyright | |
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activists Amnesty anti-SOA Argentine armed forces army's Battalion 3-16 Benning Bolivian brutal campaign career Central America CGS course Chapare civilian coca coca cultivation cocaine cold war Colombia Columbus commandant counterinsurgency countries Defense dirty wars economic El Salvador empire families Fort Benning Georgia global Ground School Guatemala Guatemalan guerrillas Honduras human rights organizations human rights violations imperial impunity institution instructors intelligence International Juan Ricardo Latin American Latin American militaries Lieutenant Colonel Liteky major massacre ment mili military training military's movement murder Nicaragua operations Pacello Panama Canal Zone paramilitaries participated peasant coca growers percent perpetrators political protest PSYOP Putumayo region relationships represented Rodríguez Salvador Salvadoran security forces SOA graduate SOA officials SOA students SOA Watch soa's social Special Forces Staff Officer course struggles tactics Tegucigalpa terror tion torture U.S. Army U.S. citizens U.S. military U.S. policies United Urbina violence Washington Weidner