To:

Zcom_simple
Home » ZMag » Ari Paul » School’s Out?
?1295269164

June 2007

Volume , Number


NOTE: Z Magazine subscribers and sustainers have access to all Z Magazine articles here and in the archive. The latest Z Magazine articles available to everyone are listed in the Free Articles box at the top of the table of contents, and are starred in the list below. Questions? e-mail Z Magazine Online.

School’s Out?

By Ari Paul
PDF Version
Printer Friendly Version
June 2007
 Change Text Size a- | A+

The fight to close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas or SOA) at Ft. Benning in Georgia has been an uphill battle. But the dramatic leftward political shift in Latin America might be giving the activist group SOA Watch something to be optimistic about. 

The School of the Americas, founded in 1946 in Panama and relocated to Georgia in 1984, has trained soldiers from Latin American countries for more than half a century in the arts of psychological warfare and counter-insurgency. An integral institution during the Cold War, when Washington supported the brutal measures of anti-communist regimes in Latin America, it now focuses on the campaigns to “fight drug trafficking and production.” Many of its graduates have gone on to commit atrocities throughout South and Central America, including acts of torture and extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians. Its graduates include death squad leaders in various countries. It is believed the assassin who killed Oscar Romero, a Salvadorian monsignor known for aiding the poor who pleaded for peace in his country, was an SOA graduate. General Manuel Noriega of Panama studied there. The list goes on. 

A delegation from SOA Watch, a group dedicated to closing the school and known for holding large annual protests outside Ft. Benning that include acts of civil disobedience, recently visited 12 countries in Latin America. They met government officials and activists in an effort to convince leaders to stop sending soldiers to Ft. Benning. “It’s amazing how many people will listen to us,” says Lisa Sul- livan, a member of the delegation. 

Venezuela was the first country to pull its students out of the school, followed by Argentina and Uruguay. Bolivia has indicated that it will dramatically decrease the number of students it will send over time. SOA Watch expects Nicaragua, now under the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega, to soon announce the same. 

However, according to Sullivan, even in countries such as Chile and Ecuador where left-leaning political leaders have taken control of the government, it is still difficult for these civilian leaders to force the military to stop interacting with the school, as the military has sizable economic and political power. 

The group is gearing up for a delegation to Mexico. While President Felipe Calderon, a conservative, will not pull students out, SOA Watch believes reaching out to him and his Administration may not be in vain. 

The big fish SOA Watch has yet to catch is Colombia. None of its government officials agreed to meet with the delegation on its recent tour, says Father Roy Bourgeois, SOA Watch’s founder. Colombia accounts for 50 percent of the school’s student body. The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that there are between 1.8 and 3.8 million internally displaced peoples in Colombia as a result of the conflict involving right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing insurgents and drug traffickers. “At the SOA, the student body reflects where there is the most conflict,” says Sullivan. 

“Can a military — an inherently hierarchical, authoritarian machine — install democracy?”

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) has introduced a bill in the House Armed Services Committee to cut funding to the school while Congress investigates it. SOA Watch’s legislative director Pam Bowman has hope for the bill. The way she describes it, the last time the House voted to cut funding to the school it lost by 15 votes. Since then 35 Republicans who voted in favor of funding the school were replaced by Democrats in the last midterm election. Since February, SOA Watch has engaged in lobbying efforts to persuade the new members of Congress to vote in favor of the McGovern bill. SOA Watch representatives have visited more than 200 Congressional offices, Bow- man says. SOA Watch also organized nearly 60 groups to hold public fasts around the country in April to highlight the McGovern bill and the movement to close the school in general. 

The school’s advocates say that the dirtiness of the past is over and that the school, with a reformed curriculum, one that teaches “democracy,” is necessary for security cooperation. But Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran, isn’t buying it. Can a military—an inherently hierarchical, authoritarian machine—install democracy? Moreover, a school training combat soldiers with a long history of producing human rights violators cannot address the real needs of much of the Latin American people, who lack proper education and medical care, he insists. “It’s an obstacle to democracy,” he says of the school. “It’s an obstacle to their liberation process.” 

Z 


Ari Paul is a contributor to Citizen Culture, Z, and Time Out Chicago. 

Loading_border