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Over the last several decades, the United States has repeatedly interfered in Latin American countries, overthrowing democratically elected governments and supporting brutal military dictatorships that replaced them.
As I’ve covered in my previous investigations into the history of U.S.-backed coups throughout Latin America and the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected government, these interventions have had devastating consequences for millions of people.
But there’s another part of this history that I think every American needs to know about.
Our government didn’t just help overthrow these governments and support the dictatorships that replaced them. We also trained some of the very military officers who went on to torture, rape, massacre, and murder their own people.
Since 1946, the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) has trained military officers from countries throughout Latin America. The school provides training in sniper operations, commando warfare, psychological warfare, military intelligence, and interrogation tactics, including the use of torture, rape, disappearances, assassinations, and mass killings.
And when some of the school’s training manuals were declassified in 1996, they revealed something absolutely horrifying.
CIA and U.S. Army training materials used at the school contained detailed torture techniques and advocated torture, executions, blackmail, intimidation, and the targeting of civilian populations.
A former political prisoner in Paraguay even described instructions explaining how interrogators could keep victims alive and responsive while subjecting them to electric shocks.
And we’re talking about training materials produced by the United States government, paid for with American taxpayer dollars.
Throughout Latin America, hundreds of thousands of people were tortured, raped, murdered, “disappeared,” or forced to flee their homes by military dictatorships and death squads, including forces commanded by officers who had received training at the School of the Americas.
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Here are just some of the criminals who graduated from the School of the Americas and the horrific crimes they committed:
Emilio Massera, Argentina: One of the leaders of Argentina’s military dictatorship during the late 1970s, when as many as 30,000 people were declared “enemies of the state” and then kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, dropped from airplanes, thrown into the ocean while still alive, and murdered in other horrible ways.
Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala: Remember how the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected government in 1954? Well, decades later, Ríos Montt ruled the country as a military dictator with the backing of the Reagan administration. His military carried out mass executions, rape, torture, and acts of genocide against tens of thousands of Indigenous Mayan communities. Entire villages were massacred and destroyed as part of a “scorched earth” campaign to eliminate anyone suspected of opposing the government.
Roberto D’Aubuisson, El Salvador: A notorious death squad leader who ordered the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero. The military and death squads terrorized the population throughout El Salvador’s civil war, including the 1981 El Mozote massacre, in which 900 civilians, including women and children, were slaughtered.
EL SALVADOR: Inside a Cathedral after the killing of mourners at Archbishop Romero’s funeral, San Salvador, March 30, 1980. Raoul Cédras, Haiti: Led the 1991 military coup that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and established a brutal military regime responsible for widespread killings, torture, and political repression.
Luis Alonso Discua, Honduras: Founder of a notorious death squad known as Battalion 3-16, responsible for kidnapping, torturing, “disappearing”, and murdering people accused of opposing the government.
And if you’re wondering how a U.S. military “school” responsible for training so many of Latin America’s most notorious dictators and mass murderers was allowed to continue operating, you should know that the U.S. government eventually did shut it down. Or at least, that’s what they wanted the public to believe.
This school for mass murderers and torturers was originally established in Panama in 1946 as the U.S. Army Caribbean Training Center. It was renamed the School of the Americas in 1963 under President Kennedy and eventually moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984.
By 2000, the school had become so notorious for its connections to murderous dictators, death squads, and some of the most horrific atrocities in Latin American history that it was finally “shut down.”
Except it wasn’t really shut down at all. Just one month later, in January 2001, it reopened under a different name: the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC.
And apparently changing the name was supposed to make decades of torture, rape, massacres, and political assassinations disappear from its history.
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BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES ARE IMPLICATED
And before anybody tries to turn this into another argument about Republicans versus Democrats, understand that this has been going on under administrations from BOTH political parties for decades.
Every U.S. administration since World War 2 has relied on the School of the Americas to train military officers from Latin America. More than 65,000 military officers have undergone training at the SOA.
And we’re not talking about a few soldiers who went on to commit isolated crimes. We’re talking about military officers who rose through the ranks to command entire armies, overthrow elected governments, and enforce brutal dictatorships responsible for terrorizing their own populations.
For decades, the United States has been training military officers who went on to help maintain oppressive regimes throughout Latin America, often with the political, financial, and military backing of our own government.
And this isn’t some secret operation carried out by a handful of rogue intelligence agents. This is an official U.S. military institution, operating for decades, funded by American taxpayers, and supported by successive administrations regardless of which political party controlled the White House.
So the next time someone tells you, “The United States government would never do something that horrible,” I hope you’ll remember what you’ve just read. Because not only would our government do something this horrific, it already has. And the School of the Americas is just one example.
I’m curious, how many of you had even heard of the School of the Americas before reading this article? And please share this with a friend because this is a part of American history that far more people need to know about.
Relevant reading:
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I have never heard of the school before today.
Happy Veterans Day Maddie!
Thank you for your service, Ma’am!