soa school of am bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">120 no lnx</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1120 generic for any US mil training overseas
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha war is cause and effect of chaos/ system fail, doom spiral?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/climate-change-future/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/climate-change-future/</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">war burkina faso, [tigre ...] more drown meditt</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<strong>War on (of and for) Terror</strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the most&nbsp;<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">dramatic drivers of displacement</a>&nbsp;over the last 20 years, according to researchers from Brown University's Costs of War project, has been that conflict in Afghanistan and the seven other "most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001." In the wake of the killing of&nbsp;<a href="https://fox8.com/news/on-19th-anniversary-of-9-11-attacks-death-toll-still-rising/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">2,974 people</a>&nbsp;by al-Qaeda militants that September 11th and the decision of George W. Bush's administration to launch a Global War on Terror, conflicts the United States initiated, escalated, or participated in -- specifically, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen -- have displaced between&nbsp;<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">37 million and 59 million</a>&nbsp;people.
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While U.S. troops have also seen combat in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/magazine/burkina-faso-terrorism-united-states.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Burkina Faso</a>&nbsp;and Washington has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of "security assistance" into that country, its displaced aren't even counted in the Costs of War tally. And yet there's a clear link between the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libya's autocrat, Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011 and Burkina Faso's desperate state today.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Ever since the West assassinated Qaddafi, and I'm conscious of using that particular word, Libya has been completely destabilized," Chérif Sy, Burkina Faso's defense minister, explained in a 2019 interview. "While at the same time it was the country with the most guns. It has become an arms cache for the region."</span>
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Those arms helped destabilize neighboring Mali and led to a 2012 coup by a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> U.S.-trained office</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">r. Two years later, another U.S.-trained officer seized power in Burkina Faso during a popular uprising. This year, yet another U.S.-trained officer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/mali-coup-leader-was-trained-by-us-special-operations-forces/2020/08/21/33153fbe-e31c-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">overthrew</a>&nbsp;yet another government in Mali. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">All the while, terrorist attacks have been ravaging the region. "The Sahel has seen the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/african-militant-islamist-groups-new-record-violent-activity/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">most dramatic escalation</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;of violence since mid-2017," according to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution...</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">format?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see soaw</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">eg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://soaw.org/news/organizing-updates/4337-exposed-fbi-surveillance-of-school-of-the-americas-watch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/el-salvador-murders-jesuits-uca-school-of-the-americas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">h goodfriend</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IN November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were murdered in their residence on the campus of the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. Thirty years later, the massacre remains emblematic of the indiscriminate savagery exercised by the servants of the Salvadoran ruling class, the impunity they enjoy, and the devastating legacies of US intervention in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Jesuit murders drew international outcry, but the victims were only eight of some seventy-five thousand killed and ten thousand more disappeared during the twelve-year civil war (1980–1992). Formally, the conflict pitted the US-backed military dictatorship against the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) leftist guerillas. But the Salvadoran state tortured and slaughtered civilians with abandon. At the war’s close, a 1993 United Nations Truth Commission report attributed only 5 percent of the bloodshed to the insurgents. The regime and its paramilitaries bore responsibility for the vast majority of the conflict’s deaths, disappearances, and displacements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Salvadoran security forces didn’t carry out these horrors alone. They were armed, trained, funded, and advised by the United States. The attack at the UCA was carried out by members of the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite counterinsurgency force trained at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Several members of the military high command who gave the orders and participated in the cover-up were also graduates of that illustrious institution. The best way we can honor the victims of the Jesuit massacre and US-backed atrocities worldwide today is to stop them from recurring by severing the global tentacles of US empire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The War</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">El Salvador’s civil war was the result of decades, indeed centuries, of dispossession and exploitation of the country’s impoverished majorities at the hands of a handful of landed oligarchic families. The military regime quashed a 1932 indigenous and Communist uprising with genocidal violence, and peaceful movements for democratic reforms and redistribution were met with brazen electoral fraud and escalating force throughout the 1960s and ’70s. Salvadoran students, unionists, and peasants increasingly turned to arms, eventually formalizing the FMLN in 1980.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following in the footsteps of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, the guerillas would have soon overwhelmed the antidemocratic regime were it not for US intervention. Reagan and his neocons, determined to prevent another revolutionary victory in the region, propped up the embattled dictatorship to the tune of up to $1 million per day. All the weight of the US empire could not defeat the rebels, who fought the regime to a draw in 1992.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The prevailing wisdom of Latin American insurgent strategy held that El Salvador’s small, densely populated terrain could not sustain guerilla warfare, but the FMLN proved otherwise. The insurgency’s remarkable success among rural peasants was made possible in part by the gains of radical, new forms of Catholicism in the countryside, with clandestine organizing made possible often by close coordination with local clergy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Martyrs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The UCA’s Jesuits were among some two dozen priests assassinated throughout El Salvador’s civil war by Salvadoran security forces or their associated death squads. Prominent victims included Father Rutilio Grande, murdered with two parishioners in Aguilares in 1977; Saint Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, gunned down while delivering mass in 1980; as well as Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donovan, and Maura Clarke, four US churchwomen raped and murdered later that same year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of these martyrs were practitioners of the Catholic doctrine of liberation theology, which emerged following the 1959 Second Vatican Council and 1968 Medellín Conference of Latin American Bishops. Inspired by the emancipatory struggles of the time, liberation theology advocated a “preferential option for the poor” and critiqued the “structural sins” of capitalism and colonization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Latin America’s bloodthirsty cold warriors, liberation theology was a synonym for communism. In El Salvador, “Haga patria, mate un cura” (“Be a patriot, kill a priest”) was a popular right-wing slogan. As the UCA emerged as a center of emancipatory thought and dissent to the dictatorship, it became a target for harassment by the military and the ultra-conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party that took power in the spring of 1989.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Certainly, in deeply religious countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua, many revolutionaries were formed by their experiences in Christian base communities, and some clergy did take up arms. But like Archbishop Romero, the UCA’s Jesuits were leading voices against violence. The priests were men of extraordinary dignity and courage, renowned intellectuals and public figures, respected in their fields and beloved in the communities they served.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ignacio Ellacuría, born in Basque Country, was a philosopher and theologian. Dean of the UCA at the time of his assassination, he was an outspoken critic of the military regime and its US backers, and a constant advocate for peace and for the poor. Ignacio Martín-Baró was a Spanish theologian and social psychologist. Head of the UCA’s psychology department and founding director of the UCA’s public opinion polling institute IUDOP, Martín-Baró was known for his Freirean emphasis on consciousness-raising and pioneered the field of “liberation psychology.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Segundo Montes, also Spanish, led the UCA’s sociology department and directed the university’s Human Rights Institute (IDHUCA); he was also known for his work with refugee communities displaced by the war. Amando López, Spanish, had served as dean of the UCA in Managua, Nicaragua following the Sandinista revolution from 1979–1983. He was a professor of philosophy and theology at the time of his murder. Juan Ramón Moreno, Spanish, had years of experience throughout the region. He was serving as assistant director of the UCA’s Monseñor Romero Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joaquín López y López was a Salvadoran who taught at the Externado San José, the prestigious San Salvador Jesuit high school, and founded the Fé y Alegría community arts and education extension program. Elba Ramos, also Salvadoran, worked as a cook and housekeeper for the Jesuits since 1985. She lived on campus with her husband, who was employed as a gardener. Their daughter Celina Mariceth Ramos, fifteen, was a high school student.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Murders</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The events took place during the FMLN’s November 1989 “final offensive,” which brought the war from remote mountain regions to the doorsteps of the wealthiest neighborhoods in San Salvador. But it was in the working-class communities surrounding the capital where the guerillas formed their bastions, and where the Salvadoran Air Force conducted a massive bombing campaign to drive them out. The dramatic show of force failed to overthrow the regime, but it confirmed the FMLN’s formidable military capabilities and resolve, setting the stage for the UN-brokered negotiations that would eventually end the conflict.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the first days of the insurrection, the army took over radio transmissions nationwide, broadcasting state propaganda. In an unusual move, the military opened the phone lines to callers. Denunciations and death threats poured in against union leaders, NGO representatives, and clergy, with messages like, “Ellacuría is a guerrillero. They should cut his head off!” The vice president himself accused the priest of “poisoning the minds” of Salvadoran youth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the offensive began, the Atlacatl Battalion was in the midst of a training by US Special Forces at their western headquarters. One commando unit was dispatched to the military command center in San Salvador, located within blocks of the UCA. They arrived on November 13, and were immediately ordered to search the Jesuit residence on the university campus. The soldiers turned up nothing. They would return two days later with a far more sinister task.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the evening of November 15, as the FMLN’s assault continued full force, the entirety of El Salvador’s military leadership gathered at the command center, accompanied by US advisers. President Alfredo Cristiani was also on hand, signing off on the areal bombings. The UN Truth Commission would subsequently conclude that General René Emilio Ponce, chief of staff of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, gave the order to assassinate Ellacuría that night — and to leave no witnesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early hours of November 16, dozens of soldiers with the Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus. They faked an attack, damaging parked cars and detonating a grenade. As some monitored the perimeter, others surrounded the Jesuit residence. After the soldiers began to force their way in, the priests opened the doors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The soldiers lead the five Spaniards into the garden in their pajamas. They were ordered to lie down on the lawn. Elba and her daughter were held at gunpoint inside. The commanding officer gave the order, and all seven were executed in a hail of gunfire. Joaquín López y López, hidden indoors, was discovered, then shot.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before withdrawing, the soldiers ransacked the nearby Monseñor Romero Center, scrawling “FMLN” on the walls and outside the campus gates. In the following weeks, the<b> Salvadoran</b> government would claim that the guerillas had committed the murders. In a statement, the Cristiani administration declared that the crime was “intended to destabilize the democratic process and increase even more the climate of anguish created by the FMLN.” It wasn’t until January 1990 that, in the face of overwhelming evidence and international outcry, the Salvadoran state was forced to admit the military’s responsibility.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thirty Years of Impunity</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice for the material and intellectual authors of the massacre has been consistently distorted, deferred, and denied. From the legislature, the courts, and the military, the loyal servants of the right-wing extremists that continue to dominate the country’s capitalist class have sought every possible means to avoid a reckoning with this and other emblematic wartime atrocities. They have been aided by the US military and intelligence establishment, which colluded with the Salvadoran high command to shield top officials from investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The massacre sparked an international firestorm. Cristiani, who found himself under immense pressure from US allies to restore faith in his faltering administration in order to justify ongoing military aid, eventually convened a military commission to investigate. The commission promptly named nine men, all but one of whom were lower-ranking soldiers who directly participated in the murders. None belonged to the high command. Facing threats and obstruction from within the Cristiani administration and the Armed Forces, members of the state prosecution team resigned in protest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The trial was a sham, conducted by a militarized regime at war with its own people. Despite multiple confessions, only two men were ultimately convicted on homicide charges: Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides, the director of the Military Academy who communicated the orders to assassinate Ellacuría to the Atlacatl Battalion, and Lieutenant Yusshy Mendoza, who helped lead the unit that perpetrated the massacre. A 1992 report from the International Commission of Jurists concluded that “justice was not achieved in this trial; indeed, justice probably could not have been achieved” in such conditions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both were sentenced to the maximum of thirty years. But in a matter of weeks, the legislature, dominated by Cristiani’s quasi-fascist ARENA party, forced through an amnesty law shielding perpetrators from prosecution for crimes committed during the war. The 1993 legislation amounted to a mass self-exoneration by the Right, disproportionately threatened by potential suits, and it would remain on the books until the Supreme Court’s reversal in 2016. The men served only a few months in prison before the amnesty law triggered their release.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For years, the UCA pursued the “intellectual authors” of the crime — those who planned and ordered the massacre — in Salvadoran courts, seeking not their imprisonment, but a process of truth, justice, and forgiveness. Nevertheless, the attorney general’s office refused to investigate, invoking the amnesty law. A 1999 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States found that El Salvador had violated the human rights to life, due process, and knowledge of the truth. The following year, a court ruled that the massacre was not covered by the amnesty law but rejected the UCA’s suit against the military high command, claiming that the statute of limitations had expired.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, international solidarity reactivated the case. In 2008, the US-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the Spanish Human Rights Association filed suit in Spain under the country’s doctrine of universal jurisdiction against Cristiani and nineteen former military members for their role in the massacre. These included former defense minister general Rafael Humberto Larios; former Air Force chief general Juan Rafael Bustillo, also implicated in the infamous 1981 El Mozote massacre and known for running a joint US supply operation for the Nicaraguan Contras out of a Salvadoran air base; former vice minister of defense general Juan Orlando Zepeda; former Armed Forces chief of staff general René Emilio Ponce; Colonel Benavides; and the improbably named Colonel Inocente Montano, former vice minister of public security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2011, at the request of the Spanish court, INTERPOL issued arrest warrants for eighteen Salvadoran former military officials implicated in the massacre. Nine of the perpetrators, including the former defense minister and vice minister, the former Air Force commander, and the lieutenant who led the massacre took refuge in a Salvadoran military barrack. The Salvadoran Supreme Court, however, rejected the warrants. Only Montano was arrested, in the United States, where he had been living for some ten years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, El Salvador’s Supreme Court reversed its decision, allowing the arrests to go forward. In February 2016, the same day that US courts authorized Montano’s extradition to Spain, Salvadoran police detained four of the defendants, all lower-ranking soldiers, with the exception of Benavides. The court, however, again denied extradition. On the grounds that they had been acquitted in 1991, three of the defendants were released. Only Benavides was imprisoned. No longer protected by the amnesty law, he was ordered to complete his original thirty-year sentence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three decades later, the walls are closing in on those who conspired to kill Ellacuría and his cohort. Montano was extradited from the United States to Spain in 2017, where he faces up to 150 years in prison. Two of the lower-ranking officers, Lt Mendoza and Lt Colonel Camilo Hernández, opted to collaborate with the Spanish prosecution. The rest, fugitives from international law, remain protected by the Salvadoran Supreme Court from extradition. But their long-standing immunity in the Salvadoran judicial system may at last be wearing thin: in 2018, the UCA’s case against the military high command was finally reopened by a Salvadoran court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The halting, circuitous march toward justice for the Jesuits advances as the trial for earlier victims of the Atlacatl battalion moves forward in El Salvador. In 2016, a Salvadoran court ordered the reopening of the case against seventeen high-ranking former military officials for the 1981 massacre at El Mozote, which left nearly one thousand civilians dead, half of them children. Exhumations at the site of the massacre are ongoing. A generation of cold warriors who seemed to have escaped justice now finds itself in the crosshairs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Many Thousands?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In El Salvador, the United States joined forces with some of the most brutal reactionaries in the region to repress popular movements for equality, justice, and self-determination. US financing, weapons, strategy, and political support sustained the scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaign for years. US intervention helped ensure that it was Cristiani’s ARENA party that dominated the postwar transition, implementing sweeping neoliberal structural adjustment and free trade policies that favored US capital at the expense of millions of Salvadoran workers who, displaced and dispossessed in peacetime, were forced to migrate north.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But just as US imperialism made these horrors possible, international solidarity has been key in the struggles for justice. US advocates have secured broad caches of declassified army and intelligence documents from the war period. The Spanish suit was aided by a trove of materials obtained by the National Security Archive confirming key details of the case as well as the US role in obstructing the search for the truth. The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights was the victim of a break-in and theft of a computer and hard drive after it filed suit against the CIA for records pertaining to the war and the role of high-ranking Salvadoran officials in the Mozote massacre.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The veteran US solidarity organization School of the Americas Watch was formed in response to the Jesuit massacre and hosts an annual vigil at the gates of Fort Benning to denounce the US role in crimes across the hemisphere. The group estimates that over eighty-three thousand Latin American state security forces have been trained at the site, which now bears the deceptively benign title of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). These graduates have carried out coups, massacres, assassinations, torture, disappearances, economic destabilization, and mass displacement. Recently, ICE revealed that agents will train in domestic “urban warfare” at Fort Benning, bringing SOA’s counterinsurgency project full circle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 1983 text called “The Truth About American Intervention in El Salvador,” Ellacuría wrote: “History shows that Yankee intervention, far from favoring the peoples of Latin America, far from promoting their democratic self-determination, has put them in the position that so many find themselves in today, by favoring genocidal antidemocratic regimes (Somoza, Argentine and Uruguayan military officials, Stroessner, Pinochet, among others) and by allying with oligarchic sectors that have maintained the underdevelopment and exploitation of the vast Latin American majorities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facing the Reagan administration’s determination to escalate the war, Ellacuría wondered, “How many thousands will have to flee their homelands or simply be displaced from their homes and workplaces, which American weapons have now turned into places of death and destruction?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The priest’s words remind us that the UCA martyrs take their place among millions of victims of the US-backed wars on communism, on drugs, and on terror worldwide. Even as the struggle for truth and reparations in El Salvador moves forward, the US imperial machine continues to churn out death, displacement, and authoritarianism. The top military officials involved in the unfolding coup against leftist indigenous President Evo Morales in Bolivia are graduates of the SOA and Washington police training programs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the Jesuits abandoned the safety of their homeland to serve in solidarity with the exploited and oppressed in Central America. They offered their lives in pursuit of peace and a more equitable world, free from the dictates of oligarchs, generals, and imperial overseers. As long as the monstrous military-industrial complex — its surveillance networks, military bases, international training programs, and weapons markets — casts its shadow across the globe, true justice for the casualties of US foreign policy in El Salvador and beyond will remain incomplete.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/el-calabozo-massacre-remains-returned-38-years-200124210105414.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">San Vicente, El Salvador - Six white caskets sat in a row before an altar set up on the patio of a house in the Salvadoran community of Amatitan Abajo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They held the remains of six people who were killed alongside 200 others by Salvadoran soldiers in what has been labelled the August 1982 El Calabozo massacre.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We have a lot of emotions today," said Margarita Realegeno Bonilla, who waited nearly 38 years to finally lay to rest her six family members, including her parents and siblings, the youngest who was eight.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ex-Salvadoran soldiers confirm El Mozote massacre victim accounts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">El Salvador judge expands 1981 El Mozote massacre case</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">El Salvador's brutal civil war: What we still don't know</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Realegeno Bonilla joined a small congregation of mainly elderly men and women who gathered to hold a burial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Now that God gives us the opportunity, we feel better knowing that they are going to be buried safely," Realegeno Bonilla told Al Jazeera.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Friday's ceremony was one small step forward in a decades-long crusade for justice and reparations for victims of the El Calabozo massacre, which included women, children and the elderly.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A University of Wisconsin graduate thesis demonstrates that the defenders of SOA are wrong. Studying data on individual SOA graduates over a 40-year time span, Kate McCoy found that "students who took multiple courses at the School were more almost four times more likely to violate [human rights] than their counterparts who took only one course. ... [G]reater exposure to the School of the Americas training makes trainees more likely to engage in human rights violations ..." [Emphasis in original text].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published on Tuesday, November 18, 2003 by Americas.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">School of Assassins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Mary Turck</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What do Col. Byron Lima Estrada of Guatemala, Lt. Josê Espinoza Guerra and General Juan Orlando Zepeda, both of El Salvador, and General Juan López Ortiz of Mexico have in common?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They are all murderers. They were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and because of thousands of others like them, many people call U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Assassins."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And what do Panama's Manuel Noriega, Argentina's Leopoldo Galtiere, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado, Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez, and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer have in common? They have all been dictators in their countries, and they were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and others, many people call the U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Coups."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The School of the Americas (SOA) is a military training school for Latin American soldiers. SOA is an official program of the U.S. government, funded by the government and run by the U.S. Armed Forces since 1946. SOA graduates have long been implicated in terrorism, human rights violations, coercion, and atrocities committed against civilian populations across Latin America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until now, evidence against the SOA has been mostly anecdotal. Sure, its supporters say, SOA graduates brutally murdered six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989 and took part in the massacre of 900 people in El Mozote, El Salvador. Yes, they acknowledge, SOA alum Byron Lima Estrada was convicted this year of murdering Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. And it's true that another SOA graduate commanded the unit that carried out the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico. When pressed, they will even admit that, during the 1980s, SOA manuals recommended blackmail, torture and execution of political dissidents. But these were aberrations, SOA supporters insist. Most SOA grads do not torture. And SOA doesn't even exist any longer. Now it's called WHISC and everything is better.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A University of Wisconsin graduate thesis demonstrates that the defenders of SOA are wrong. Studying data on individual SOA graduates over a 40-year time span, Kate McCoy found that "students who took multiple courses at the School were more almost four times more likely to violate [human rights] than their counterparts who took only one course. ... [G]reater exposure to the School of the Americas training makes trainees more likely to engage in human rights violations ..." [Emphasis in original text].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its 57 years, the School of the Americas has trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers in combat techniques, command tactics, military intelligence, and techniques of torture. These graduates have left a trail of blood and suffering in their own countries. Today, SOA/WHISC trains about a thousand soldiers each year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCoy's study also addresses SOA supporters' claims that the school changed during the 1980s, and now gives better training in human rights. Her statistics show that "contrary to the Army's claims that the School of the Americas has corrected past faults and that professional standards have been raised over time to promote the highest respect for human rights, there is no statistical evidence that students who attended the School in the 1990s were less likely to engage in human rights violations than those who graduated in the 1960s."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On January 21, 2001, SOA's name was changed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). But only the name was changed-its mission and its shame continue. No one really believes that makes a difference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCoy's study did not include data from the WHISC years of 2001 and later-the Bush administration insists that this data will not be released because of "national security" concerns. That means future researchers will not be able to reveal such embarrassing statistics about SOA/WHISC. McCoy observes regretfully that the Bush administration's move means "studies such as this one could not be updated, and it may become increasingly difficult for researchers to apply their tools to vital social and political questions."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every November, opponents of the School of the Americas gather for a massive demonstration outside the gates of this school for terrorism. They carry crosses and banners with names of people murdered by SOA graduates. They sing and pray and chant. Some cross the line painted on a street outside the gates of Fort Benning, committing civil disobedience.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dozens of the demonstrators-like a 68-year-old Sister Caryl Hartges from Wisconsin-end up serving time in federal prisons. She crossed the line last year, on her fifth trip to the demonstrations at Fort Benning. Sister Caryl served her time. And she's coming back to SOA this November 22. She explains that, "It has do with the call of the Gospel, which is a call for justice, which sometimes takes precedence over the law of the land."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mary Turck (mturck@americas.org) is the editor of Connection to the Americas, a publication of the Resource Center of the Americas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=762</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Research Findings Further Incriminate The Notorious SOA/WHINSEC<span style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Introduction –</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 1990, Latin American human right and justice advocates have worked to make known the human rights violations committed by graduates of the US Army School of the Americas. These include the high profile killings of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, the 4 U.S. Churchwomen in El Salvador, the 6 Jesuit priests and their coworkers in El Salvador, the El Mozote Massacre in which 801 people were killed in one day, the assassination of Bishop Gerardi in Guatemala following the release of his truth commission report linking the Guatemalan Army with the vast majority of human rights abuses.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the mounting campaign to bring the truth about foreign military training to Congress and to the public, and in connection with the revelation of the so-called “torture training manuals[1]” that were used at the SOA, in 1999 the US House of Representatives voted 230-to-197 to close the SOA. In response, the Department of Defense (DoD) mounted its own campaign and convinced Congress that the school, which it previously stated needed no reform, could be reformed by teaching human rights and democracy. On January 17, 2001, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (known by the acronyms WHISC and WHINSEC) was opened in the same facility with virtually the same curriculum as the SOA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Continuing in our efforts to close the SOA/WHINSEC, today we bring important new data. They provide more detail about the superficialities of reforms at the school, the implausibility of real reform in the future, and the continuing pattern of support for human rights abusers in Latin America. We bring these finding along with a Dear Colleague letter by Rep. McGovern, inviting Members of Congress to join him in co-sponsoring H.R. 1258, “"The Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005," which calls for the suspension of the SOA/WHINSEC and the investigation of training needs in Latin America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Point 1 - "None of the fundamental issues raised around the need to close the SOA have been addressed in the renamed WHISC - not its training methods, nor its lack of oversight, nor the school's record of graduating human rights abusers."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Words from a 1995 Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) study undermine the claim that the Army planned to close the SOA and create a completely new institution --the WHINSEC-- with a new mission. The main objective was to have the public forget about negative publicity surrounding recent horrifying public revelations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the infamous "torture manuals" used by the SOA became public knowledge in 1996, Congress ordered the General Accounting Office (GAO) to look into the SOA and a DoD initiative to strengthen institutions involved in defense and security activities in Latin American countries.&nbsp; That GAO study referenced the earlier TRADOC study and developed recommendations concerning the future of the School of the Americas[2].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TRADOC acknowledged “concerns about the School in the post-Cold War period have surfaced, driven in part by adverse publicity over human rights violations associated with past students of the School.”&nbsp; The study determined “that negative publicity about the School would probably continue and that a new name for the School may be an appropriate way to break with the past.” It also suggested that the Departments of Army and State study the desirability of establishing a Western Hemisphere Center for research, study, and instruction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GAO report was done as a result of grassroots pressure on the U.S. Congress and on the Army to be accountable for the SOA, but the Army's response was to view these serious concerns as a “public relations” matter and to paper over the problem. The fundamental issues of human rights abuses have never been addressed.&nbsp; The Army has been able to keep the SOA open under a new name, never being accountable for the first 50 years when over 60,000 soldiers were trained at the School and an unknown number of human rights violations were perpetrated by these graduates when they returned to their nations. For this reason it is important to request the establishment of a new, joint congressional task force to conduct an assessment of the kind of education and training that is appropriate for the DoD to provide to military personnel of Latin American nations (as called for in HR 1258), and to investigate the accountability of the SOA in past human rights offenses (as called for by Amnesty International[3].)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Point 2 - "The failure of the U.S. Army to deal seriously with the record of the SOA, the most intensely scrutinized aspect of US military training in Latin America, raises questions about the quality and emphasis in the vast array of other training programs."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a recent master’s thesis conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison[4], Katherine McCoy studied the question:&nbsp; “Does U.S. Military training help improve human rights in other countries by providing a powerful alternative example of how to be both effective and professional, or erode human rights by providing the legitimacy and resources to perpetuate abuses?” [5] The statistical analysis was based on a sample of nearly 12,000 SOA graduates from six countries (Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru and Panama) during the period from 1960-2000.&nbsp; Using data on the human rights records of these graduates, the study tracked them over the 40-year period to determine what effect SOA training had on graduates? human rights records.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Army, the DoD and other supporters of the SOA, and now the WHINSEC, have argued that this school and training of this kind are essential for the professionalization and democratization of Latin American militaries.&nbsp; Further, they have argued that any evidence of human rights violations committed by graduates, as argued by those in opposition to the SOA/WHINSEC, do not constitute a pattern, but simply “a few bad apples.”&nbsp; Recognizing that those “bad apples” exist, those in support of the training of Latin American militaries have argued the following:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; “The way to do away with human rights violations is to expose foreign militaries to the modern, professional training embodied by the U.S. military.” (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; “The more professional training a soldier has, the less likely he is to violate human rights.&nbsp; Similarly, the more professional training a soldier has, the greater his respect for democracy and the rule of law.” (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Applied to the case of the SOA, then, these arguments predict that exposure to professional training through the SOA would reduce a soldier’s chance of committing a human rights violation or engaging in other illegal behavior, and that soldiers with the greatest exposure to this type of training should have the lowest chances of committing such crimes.” (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The result of Katherine McCoy’s study found the opposite.&nbsp; First, McCoy found that graduates who took more courses were more often the perpetrators of human rights violations: (see graph)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Second, McCoy statistically analyzed the data to see if this could be explained by other factors—type of SOA training, civil wars or dictatorships in the soldiers’ home nations, the cold war period and decade attending, and the soldiers’ rank.&nbsp; Even after controlling for these variables through regression analysis, soldiers who took two or more courses were almost four times more likely to have committed human rights violations than soldiers who took one course. These results are highly significant “Hence when reviewing differences in rates of human rights abuses among graduates of the School of the Americas, we find that the worst offenders are students who took more than one class at the SOA…this suggests that more courses in fact result in much higher rates of abuse.” (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; “Another key finding of this study is that, contrary to the Army’s claim that the School of the Americas has corrected past faults and that professional standards have been raised over time to promote the highest respect for human rights, there is no statistical evidence that students who attended the SOA in the 1990s were less likely to engage in human rights violations than those who graduated in the 1960s…the absence of any indicator that SOA graduates improved over time with respect to human rights raises the possibility that recent reforms have not managed to curb existing patterns of human rights violations. ” (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These results raise serious questions about the nature and effectiveness of the training done at the SOA.&nbsp; Because the training provided has never been analyzed or scrutinized, and because past reforms did not result in statistical changes in human rights violations, we cannot assume that the current “reforms” have done any better.&nbsp; The U.S. Army, the DoD, and the U.S. Congress have failed to deal with the record of the SOA.&nbsp; Therefore, no “reforms” will result in significant or substantive change in the training or democratization of Latin America or Latin American militaries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Point 3 - "Human rights abuses and the problems with civil-military relations are not, unfortunately, a thing of the past in Latin America."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WHINSEC claims that their applicants must undergo a stringent 5-step vetting process. "Specifically, Chiefs of Missions should ensure that all nominees for training or travel grants, military or civilian, in country or in the U.S., are scrutinized for records of human rights abuses, corruption, or criminal activities that would render them ineligible or inappropriate for U.S. training programs."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In practice, however, the screening process for applicants to WHINSEC is seriously flawed. There are a number of students with well-documented prior histories of human rights abuses in their home countries subsequently studying at the WHINSEC, including the following:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; From El Salvador: In 1983, Colonel Francisco del Cid Diaz (then a 2nd Lieutenant) commanded a unit that forcibly removed 16 residents from the Los Hojas cooperative of the Asociaci?n Nacional de Ind?genas, bound and beat them, shot all 16 at point-blank range and threw their bodies in the Cuyuapa River. This is a very well known, very high profile and notorious massacre, and cited in the annual State Department Human Rights Country Reports throughout the 1980s.&nbsp; The case was also investigated by, and included in the final report of, the El Salvador Truth Commission established under the Salvadoran Peace Accords.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The El Salvador Supreme Court granted amnesty to all defendants, but in 1992 the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that there was substantial evidence that Col. del Cid Diaz and the other ranking officer present gave the orders to execute, and recommended that the Salvadoran government bring them to justice. Instead of facing justice, we find that Col. del Cid Diaz was at the WHINSEC in 2003, and was also enrolled in SOA in 1988 and 1991.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; From Bolivia: In 1997 Captain Filmann Urzagaste Rodriguez was one of those responsible for the kidnapping and torture of Waldo Albarracin, then the director of the Popular Assembly for Human Rights in Bolivia and now the Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman). In 1999 the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies Commission in charge of investigating the case passed it, together with all the evidence, to the ordinary courts for investigation and prosecution. The case was also the subject of a well-known petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (that has not yet been acted upon). In 2002, Urzagaste Rodriguez, now a Major, took a 49-week officer training course at the WHINSEC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; From Colombia: Three Colombian police officers under investigation for personal use of counter-narcotics funds took courses at the WHINSEC at nearly the same time as the investigation. In June 2002 the Colombian Attorney General's office, at the request of the U.S. Government, opened a "disciplinary" investigation into alleged activities of corruption by members of the Colombian National Police, including Captain Dario Sierro Chapeta, Lt. Col. Francisco Patino Fonseca, and Captain Luis Benavides Guancha. The first two attended the WHINSEC in 2002, and Benavides Guancha was there for 18 weeks in 2003. (It is yet to be determined if the charges against the 3 were brought before, during, or after acceptance at the WHINSEC.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human rights abuses and problems with civil-military relations are not a thing of the past in Latin America, and many are well documented. The fact that students with known human rights violations and problems of corruption are attending an institution that boasts about the "meticulous screening process" that all students pass to ensure they are "law-abiding citizens"[6], undermines the claim that the WHINSEC "teaches" respect for human rights, or that it is serious about claiming to train "only personnel of unquestionable character." To the contrary, these cases can be interpreted as the WHINSEC’s --or more seriously the U.S. military-- rewarding of human rights violators with the honor of studying in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last Updated 5/06/04 by SOA Watch, www.soaw.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1] Lisa Haugaard, Latin America Working Group, “Declassified Army and CIA Manuals Used in Latin America:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An Analysis of Their Content,” 1997, www.lawg.org/misc/publications-manuals.htm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[2]United States, General Accounting Office, School of the Americas: U.S. Military Training for Latin American Countries, document no. NSIAD-96-178 (Washington: GAO, August 22, 1996) http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/gao96178.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[3] Amnesty International, Unmet Power, Unmatched Principles:&nbsp; The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces, 2002.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[4] The program is consistently ranked as one of the top Sociology program in the country, largely because of its rigor in statistics. (McCoy)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[5] McCoy, Katherine, Trained to Torture:&nbsp; A Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations Committee by Graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas, 1960 – 2000, submitted to the University of Wisconsin - Madison in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science Degree, 2003</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[6] Statements in preceding quotation marks made by Army Legislative Liaison LTC Jack Einwechter at a WHINSEC briefing to House Members and staff on March 17, 2004.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.readperiodicals.com/201507/3659706701.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kpfa intrview cs song ~ grain noon 7/13/15</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Justice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author: Williams, Ginger; Disney, Jennifer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Date published: July 1, 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Language: English</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PMID: 19223</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ISSN: 10431578</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CODEN: SOJUEX</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Journal code: ISOJ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE UNITED STATES HAS LONG FLEXED ITS MUSCLES IN LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS and exerted its power over the Western Hemisphere. The end of the Cold War failed to ease tensions in US-Latin American relations. The expansion of state-sanctioned terrorism in the Americas until the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 rested on the privileges of impunity for Latin American security forces and their brethren in the United States. Impunity reinforced US hegemony by enabling Latin American militaries (and those who trained them) to get away with torture, murder, and the disappearance of thousands of people during the many dirty wars that ensued during the last half of the twentieth century. According to Leslie Gill (2004,237), "the impunity-backed state terror that fractured countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina while they were ruled by harsh regimes set the stage for the consolidation of neoliberal economic models under civilian governments." John Bellamy Foster (2007,2-3) further articulates the connection between militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America, and identifies the role the United States played in the process: "It was in the US-sponsored dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) that neoliberalism, i.e., the promotion of a new naked capitalism in response to world economic slowdown-requiring the elimination of all state protections for the population and all limits on the movement of capital-was first imposed." The return to "democracy" in the 1980s and 1990s did not alleviate the fears, as repressive entities largely remained intact (in Chile, for example). The arrest of Augusto Pinochet tilted the balance as former repressive leaders started to face the courts after 1998, and the poor began to blame the new "democratic" leaders for selling the state to transnational capital. The trial and conviction of José Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala in 2013 demonstrates that 15 years later, it is possible to convict a former head of state of crimes against humanity.1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 1998, 17 left-leaning presidents have been elected in Latin America.2 In different ways, they helped to orchestrate a movement against the Washington Consensus and loosen the grip of the United States on the region.3 When some of these new presidents entered office, they challenged the power relations in the hemisphere, promising to overhaul the government and the economy and to reassert the place of government above that of transnational corporations. In response, in 2002, President George W. Bush announced that "the future of this hemisphere depends on the strength of three commitments-democracy, security, and free-market development." Democracy proved to be a problem for the Bush administration with the elections of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, who challenged the power of the Washington Consensus in the region. Populist-style democracy was something that policymakers in Washington thought had died with Juan Perón and Getulio Vargas in the 1950s; moreover, these populist-style democratic leaders have fervently worked to reassert the power of the state over transnational capital, which US policymakers have interpreted as a threat to stability in the region. Because of the perceived instability in Latin America, the United States has reasserted one of its strongest Cold War policies-US military presence and training in the hemisphere-to deal with the perceived rising threats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we explain US militarism in the region in the wake of the overwhelming rejection of the Washington Consensus since 1998? How do US policymakers justify policies at home that Latin American nations and inter-American organizations deem obsolete? Why is the United States intent on executing a War on Drugs in Latin America that has not curtailed the entry of drugs into the United States, but has cost the United States over seven billion dollars in military aid to Colombia alone since 1996?4 The answers to these questions are revealed by examining the nature of the relationship between militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Militarism and Neoliberalism in Latin America</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The current integration of the world economy into a neocolonial system of capitalist production, consumption, and reproduction requires access to and control of resources including labor so that transnational corporations can maximize profits. Corporations need the assurance of political stability and protection of their investments. As part of the nation-state apparatus, the military is on hand whenever necessary to intimidate and repress popular resistance to exploitative working conditions, to structural adjustment programs, or the privatization of resources in aid of profit accumulation. (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2000,3)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of the Cold War, US policy in Latin America turned to "shaping the strategic environment to prevent conflict and promote stability" (McSherry 2000, 34). But by the end of the twentieth century, U S leadership became synonymous with global market capitalism, and the US government forced Latin American nations to jump on board the neoliberal economic train or face reprisals. In their special issue of Social Justice on "Neoliberalism, Militarism, and Armed Conflict," Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey (2000, 1) assert that neoliberalism and militarism are inextricably linked. "In critiquing and challenging neoliberal economic integration," they argue, "it is essential to take account of militarism as an intrinsic element. Conversely, in analyzing militarism, war, and armed conflict, it is also necessary to consider global economic forces and institutions."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although much recent scholarship on Latin America focuses on the widespread political shift to the Left, our article examines military and political movements that subvert democracy in the region.5 We explore the rise of militarism in Latin America in response to the backlash against the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. One of the strongest elements of US Cold War policy in Latin America, US military presence and training, grew stronger in the new millennium. US expenditures on the military and military training in Latin America now exceed Cold War levels. The wars on drugs and terrorism have been used to justify increased militarization in the region, when the primary motive has been to repress resistance to neoliberalism. This study concentrates on Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras. Militarism and neoliberalism in Latin America have three operational dimensions: ( 1 ) neoliberal globalization has led to increasing poverty and inequality in the region; (2) neoliberalism requires increased military expenditures to repress resistance and/ or impose neoliberal structural adjustment policies that perpetuate the interests of dominant-class elites in particular and capital accumulation in general; (3) US military training of Latin American armed forces increases military and paramilitary violence, reinforces US hegemony, buttresses the imposition of neoliberal policies, and subverts democracy in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article describes the impact of neoliberal globalization in Latin America. After discussing the nature of US militarism after the Cold War, we detail the connection between a consistent, increasing presence of the US military and the imposition of neoliberalism in the region. Then we explain how the United States has resurrected old forms of neocolonial strategies (such as gunboat diplomacy and the training and financing of military coups) and subverted democracy through military and paramilitary violence. By exploiting existing domestic conflicts in Columbia, Mexico, and Honduras, the United States has justified increased military involvement in these countries to counter growing regional resistance to the Washington Consensus. Mexico has witnessed ongoing militarization since the Zapatista rebellion in 1994. Honduras experienced a military coup that overthrew a left-leaning, democratically elected president. Columbia is in its 50th year of civil war. Thus, these three countries provide the best case studies for examining militarism and neoliberalism in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neoliberal Globalization in Latin America: Human (Under-)Development, Poverty, and Inequality</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that the term "globalization" did not become part of our lexicon until the late eighties/early nineties, was not because it wasn't already pervasive-international trade, production, and finance had already been growing much faster than domestic economies by the mid-sixties-but because its later combination with neoliberalism accelerated those international trends and the process seemed to take on a life of its own. (Panitch and Gindin 2003,19)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neoliberal globalization has dominated the Latin American region throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Richard Peet (2003, 3-4) distinguishes between the humanitarian potential within globalization and the reality of existing neoliberal globalization, which is based on neoliberal ideas, policies, and institutions. Laura MacDonald and Anne Ruckert (2009, 3) define neoliberalism as a set of economic policies associated with the Washington Consensus and its corresponding "ten neoliberal commandments." Senior Institute for International Economics (HE) official John Williamson enumerated those reforms for Latin America at the conclusion of a 1989 HE conference attended by participants from international financial institutions, US government agencies, and the Federal Reserve Board. The prescriptions include fiscal discipline, public expenditures in fields with high economic returns, tax reform, financial liberalization, unified and competitive exchange rates, trade liberalization, removal of barriers to foreign direct investment, privatization,deregulation, and secure property rights (Hristov 2005,91; Macdonald and Ruckert 2009,3). Panitch and Gindin (2003,24) define neoliberalism as "state-led economic restructuring oriented to removing, through the expansion and deepening of markets, democratically imposed barriers to accumulation (earlier concessions on the part of capital that once reflected capitalism's munificence now resurfaced as problems that demanded reversal)." For MacDonald and Ruckert (2009, 4), neoliberalism represents "a new form of social rule under which elite class power and the profitability of capital have been successfully restored."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neoliberalism has had a devastating effect on inequality, poverty, and unemployment in Latin America. In 1996, "the superiors of all 18 Latin American provinces of the Society of Jesus issued an urgent letter on neoliberalism... addressed to all those in the Americas participating in the Jesuit enterprise and 'those who make common cause with our people, especially the poorest'" (Gent 2008a).6 The Jesuit leaders noted that, at the time, "180 million people (43.5 percent) in Latin America (and the Caribbean) lived in poverty, and 80 million (19 percent) lived in extreme poverty" (Latin American Provincials of the Society of Jesus 1997,48). The "lost decade" of economic growth of the 1980s saw the number of Latin Americans living in poverty increase from 41 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 1990 (Foster 2007, 3). Between 1990 and 2000, joblessness rose 10 percent in Latin America (ibid.). In the 1980s and 1990s, there was high and persistent income inequality:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most striking fact is the resilience of high inequality, through many different policy regimes over the past few decades. The 1970s saw some tendency for mild reductions in inequality, and the 1980s a more marked tendency for increased inequality in the context of macroeconomic, difficulties. The 1990s has seen a more mixed picture: more countries experienced increases than declines in inequality, but there is no overall pattern. (Walton 2004,171)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "Economic Snapshot of Latin America" in the Latinobarómetro 2010 Report estimates that "in 2009, the region's poverty rate rose to 33.1 percent, up from 33 percent in 2008, and, in the case of extreme poverty, to 13.7 percent, up from 12.9 percent." However, the report also notes that in 2002, 44 percent of people in Latin America were living in poverty, with 19.4 percent experiencing extreme poverty. According to the IMF, by 2010 poverty in Latin America had declined to 31.4 percent, its lowest level in 20 years (Barcena 2012, 1). IMF figures also reveal that the rate of extreme poverty fell to 12.3 percent between 1990 and 2010 (ibid.). Despite these achievements, 177 million people remain in poverty, including 70 million in extreme poverty (ibid.). The IMF attributes the drop in poverty to strong economic growth, higher wage earnings, a decline in fertility rates, and better social programs (ibid.). Yet it does not acknowledge that many of these changes came about during the tenure of democratically elected leaders on the Left, who revitalized the state's role in alleviating poverty and unemployment and implementing social programs for the poor. "There can be no doubt," states the Latinobarómetro 2010 Report, that the most important problem in Latin America is inequality, which, "measured as the Gini coefficient, is greater than in any other region of the world."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US Militarism in Latin America since the End of the Cold War</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the strongest elements of US Cold War policy in Latin America was retained and grew stronger in the new millennium: US military presence and training in the region. After the Cold War ended, US military expenditures in Latin America increased. After declining in 2001, US military aid, training, and arms sales to the region increased each year from the beginning of the war on terror through 2010 (Emerson 2010, 41).7 US military and police aid to Latin America increased steadily, reaching a height of $1.6 billion in 2010.8</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beginning in 2005, five Latin American countries were among the top 20 global recipients of US military assistance (Emerson 2010,41). In 2010, Colombia and Haiti were among the top 10 global recipients of US economic and military assistance (USAID, US Overseas Loans and Grants, Greenbook, 2012).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Tovrov (2012), "the United States allocates more than $50 billion a year to send abroad in the form of military and economic aid. Among the top 10 nations, military assistance is generally the largest percentage of the total amount sent." In 2012, the top 10 recipients of US aid were Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Jordan, Mexico, Kenya, and Nigeria (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are other measures of US militarism in Latin America in the post-Cold War period and after the initiation of the War on Terror. Between 2001 and 2005, 85,820 Latin American soldiers were trained in the United States. In contrast, 61,000 soldiers were trained at the infamous School of the Americas/Westem Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC) between 1946 and 2000 (Emerson 2010,41). Moreover, the Fourth Fleet, which was established in 1943 and disbanded in 1950, was reactivated on July 1,2008, by the US Department of Defense to "operate in the Caribbean, and Central and South America" (Cruz 2008). US Navy spokespersons insist that the fleet's reactivation was "administrative in nature only" (Espinoza 2008), but Admiral Gary Roughead stated that it "will send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region" (Ross 2008). Government officials in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia consider the "US decision to reactivate the Fourth Fleet a matter of concern" (Espinoza 2008). According to John Ross, an American journalist and author who lived and worked in Mexico for decades, "the resurrection and imminent dispatch of the United States Fourth Fleet to patrol the coasts of Latin America invokes the bad old days of Monroe Doctrine impositions and gunboat diplomacy for many citizens of those southern latitudes" (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early twenty-first century, electoral victories of the Left have multiplied and emergent social movements increasingly challenge neoliberalism in Latin America. For the first time in US-Latin American relations since World War II, more US troops and military facilities were located in the region than aid agencies (Chomsky 2006,4). Military tensions are higher now than during the Cold War. Its grip on the region weakening, the US government also lacks the credibility to reassert it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emerson (2010, 38) argues that the War on Terror replaced the Cold War as "the guiding paradigm for US policy toward Latin America during the George W. Bush administration." For Emerson (ibid., 43), continuity exists in foreign policy logic between the post-September 11 Pentagon strategy of "effective sovereignty" (in which US national security is threatened by "ungovemed spaces" within Latin American countries) and the Cold War conception of "internal enemies." "In contrast to assumptions that the disconnect was a product of US neglect," Emerson notes, "a growing militarization of US policy became evident, a policy that viewed the Western Hemisphere as complementary to the 'War on Terror.'" Jasmin Hristov (2005,106) argues along similar lines that after September 11, the National Security Doctrine focused on the use of low-intensity warfare "under the cover of the War on Drugs or War on Terror" aimed at the "internal enemy." She contends that the internal enemy includes social movements and organizations, as well as "entire sectors of society that have been excluded and marginalized by the current economic model, who are potential sources of challenge with their demands for social justice" (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the last decade, the Pentagon and US Southern Command (Southcom) have become more responsible than the State Department for policy in Latin America. This undoubtedly explains the shift to a security focus (Emerson 2010,41). Southcom 's Command Strategy 2018 announced its intention "to expand its scope by acting as the regional coordinating body for both military and non-military operations" (ibid.). Using data from Just the Facts (at justf.org), Emerson correlates this policymaking shift toward the Pentagon with increased military spending in the region (ibid.). Southcom's change in terminology from "narcotraffickers" to "narcoterrorists" enabled a "doubling of military training in Colombia, with funds originally designed for countemarcotics programs diverted to support counterinsurgency missions" (ibid., 43). According to Delacour, Plan Colombia "exemplifies this exercise of hegemony and the masking of counterinsurgency measures as a countemarcotics policy" (in Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2000,6).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Continuously resorting to military solutions to address social and political problems has exacerbated conflict and sidetracked development in the region. Increased military presence and assistance, as well as counterinsurgency training, in Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras in the name of the wars on drugs and terror reinforce US hegemony, buttress the imposition of neoliberal policies, and subvert democracy in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Militarism and Neoliberalism in Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Colombia, increases in military training and aid have been justified via the War on Drugs. The country is the prototypical case in Latin America of rising US military expenditures in efforts to repress resistance, from Afro-Colombians to unionized workers to the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). US military training of Colombian armed forces has increased military and paramilitary violence, reinforced US hegemony, and subverted democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colombia's 50-year conflict is extremely complicated, with the situation defying comprehension. Four armed groups, some of which cooperate, are fed by the drug trade. They operate in a nation deeply divided by geography, economic status, ethnicity, and ideology. Unfortunately, the United States-now a key actor in the conflict-is pursuing a dangerously simplistic strategy, one that is doomed to failure. Instead of recognizing the complexity of Colombia's crisis and addressing its many root causes, Washington's approach is dominated by the priorities of the wars on drugs and terror. The Andres Pastrana administration conceived Plan Colombia in 1999. In 2000, the Clinton administration agreed to fund the program, which sought to eradicate drug output and to strengthen democracy in Colombia, at a cost of $1.3 billion (Delacour 2000,63).The United States has poured over seven billion dollars into Colombian military and police aid grants since 1996 (justf.org). Since the late 1980s, the United States has aided the Colombian government in combating the drug trade. Then, Washington's mandate was to avoid involvement in Colombia's long-standing civil war. As counterdrug operations became increasingly dangerous, and guerilla attacks on Colombian security forces grew more successful in the mid-1990s, US efforts to engage Colombian security forces in counterdrug policies conflicted with congressional efforts to condition such assistance on human rights criteria. In August 2000, however, "Clinton waived five of the six human rights conditions, making a mockery of the administration's pronounced concerns for human rights" (Delacour 2000,63).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As of 2006, approximately 82 percent of US aid to Colombia went to its military police, largely to aid drug interdiction, arrest drug traffickers, and ensure the safety of the massive herbicide fumigation operation in coca- and poppy-producing areas (Witness for Peace 2006). In 2002, before the war in Iraq erupted, Colombia was the third-largest recipient of US security assistance, behind Israel and Egypt (Isaacson 2003a, 16). Between 1997 and 2002, US aid to Colombia's military increased six times, equaling $1.5 million per day in 2002 (ibid.). In mid-2002, the Bush administration asked Congress for more worldwide anti-terror funding, which became law on August 2, 2002. The bill provided for an expanded campaign against narcotics trafficking and against the FARC, the National Liberation Army, and the paramilitaries, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). This broadened mission laid the foundation for a dramatically increased US military commitment. With the attention of the US public focused on Iraq and the Middle East, the Bush administration helped Colombia's military protect a vulnerable Colombian oil pipeline. In 2002, US troops were sent to Colombia to protect the Cano Limon pipeline, where Occidental Petroleum and Colombia's Ecopetrol produced $5 billion a year in oil (Tate 2004,73).9 With 170 attacks on the pipeline in 2001, the Colombian government petitioned the US government for military aid specifically to protect the pipeline (Leech 2002,3). In 2003, the Bush administration projected $104 million in expenditures to help Colombia's army protect the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline, of which US oil company Occidental Petroleum owns 44 percent (Isaacson 2003b). In Colombia, the military has historically protected the few at the expense of the majority.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The appeal of military aid has grown in the wake of recent international crises. US supporters of military aid to Colombia believe a stronger security force is the best way to protect territory and people. As is the case with other Latin American nations, however, the historical role of Colombia's military has not involved protecting people. While the US and Colombian governments were busy fighting the FARC and other "insurgents" and waging the War on Drugs, Colombia's local governments and its civil society (churches and business associations; labor, human rights, and peace activists; student, campesino, and women's groups; and AfroColombian and indigenous organizations) were busy working peacefully for change. Many in these groups were identified as "insurgents," especially union activists, and were killed or displaced. Over the last 20 years, 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia (American Center for International Labor Solidarity 2006, 2). Each year, more union activists are killed in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined (ibid.). On June 30, 2005, "the Colombian Commission of Jurists reported that paramilitaries had killed at least 2,548 civilians since the 2002 cease-fire declaration" (ibid., 7). In an interview cited in the labor center's report, Carlos Castaño, former head of the AUC paramilitary umbrella group, said: "We kill trade unionists because they interfere with people working" (ibid., 12). Of the trade unionists victimized, teachers have been especially targeted (Otis 2012, 5).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Removal of Afro-Colombians from their oil-rich lands is another use of militarism to reinforce neoliberalism. In 1996, paramilitaries forced Marino Córdoba, an AfroColombian from the Riosucio municipality of Colombia and former director of the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians, out of his home for working for the legal recognition of land for Afro-Colombians (Córdoba 2003). Now in the United States, he continues to raise awareness of the plight of displaced Colombians. According to the Human Rights and Displacement Consultancy, over 2.7 million Colombians have been displaced, and Córdoba estimates that Afro-Colombians account for 90 percent of that figure (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hristov's Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Columbia cites hundreds of examples of what she calls SC A-sponsored terrorism10 against peasants, indigenous groups, and human rights workers of all kinds:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The SC A, which can also be described as the machinery of terror, runs through a system of mutually reinforcing mechanisms that can be grouped into three broad categories: legal, military, and ideological.... Here, the penetration of civil society by the SCA, especially during the last fifteen years, has not been sporadic but rather organized, systematic, and intense. (Hristov 2009a, 26-27; 25)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps the most damning evidence of the relationship between the state and the paramilitaries in Colombia comes from Captain Gilberto Cárdenas, former director of the Judicial Police Investigative and Intelligence Unit (Sección de Investigaciones Judiciales e Inteligencia de la Policía), in a statement made to authorities of the Colombian state and the United Nations:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The paramilitaries were created by the Colombian government itself to do the dirty work, in other words, in order to kill all individuals who, according to the state and police, are guerrillas. But in order to do that, they [the government] had to create illegal groups so that no one would suspect the government of Colombia and its military forces.... Members of the army and the police even patrol side by side with the paramilitaries. (Quoted in Hristov 2009a, 58)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colombia's civil war continues. A tenuous peace process began in 2002, when newly elected President Álvaro Uribe approved a law enabling official negotiations with any illegal armed group. By July 2004, the government and the largest paramilitary organization in Colombia, the AUC, reached an agreement known as the Acuerdo de Santa Fe de Ralito, which provided for the demobilization of about 50 paramilitary blocs spread over 28 of Colombia's 32 departments (Hristov 2009b, 12). According to Uribe, "this was the beginning of a process toward peace and the restoration of human rights" (ibid.). The Colombian people had good reason to wish for the dismantling of the paramilitaries. Paramilitaries have committed about 80 percent of all human rights violations against the civilian population of Colombia, which has the regions' worst human rights record, and one of the world's largest populations of internal refugees (Amnesty International 2010a). By 2004, the paramilitaries had gained the upper hand in the fight against the guerrillas, and Uribe gave the "green light to Plan Patriota, the second phase of Plan Colombia" (Brito 2009,36).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colombia's relationship with SOA/WHINSEC further confirms that US military training increases violence and human rights violations and subverts democracy in the region. Over 10,000 Colombian soldiers have trained at the school, with Latin American military officers supposedly learning how to operate professionally within a democratic society. However, Colombia's human rights atrocities have continued to rise as more Colombian soldiers are trained at the US military school. In 2004, over one-third of the soldiers who attended WHINSEC were from Colombia, while Colombia's human rights abuses continued to escalate (WHINSEC 2004a). For the past decade, Colombia has had the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. Nonetheless, the day after President Uribe was reelected in June 2006, the US State Department certified that Colombia was meeting human rights conditions for US military assistance (McFarland Sánchez-Moreno 2006).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When General Bantz Craddock, the head of US SOUTHCOM, addressed graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC's Command and General Staff Course in the summer of 2004, he warned soldiers that "today's complex challenges include transnational terrorism, narcoterror, and radical movements" (Board of Visitors Meeting, WHINSEC 2004a). Most Latin American security experts say that, aside from Colombia, the terrorist threat is overstated and terrorists who threaten US citizens on US soil are "scarcer still" (Isaacson 2005). In March 2006, CIA Director Porter Goss testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the United States should pay greater attention to threats "in our own backyard" (ibid.). He noted that "presidential elections will be held in eight South and Central American countries in 2006" and warned that "destabilization or a backslide away from democratic principles would not be helpful to our interests and would probably be threatening to our security in the long run" (Priest and Pincus 2005). Thus, Colombia, an exceptional stronghold of right-wing conservatism in the region, is the country in which the United States remains the most deeply entrenched militarily.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More bothersome to the United States than Colombia's human rights record is the decade-long challenge to the Washington Consensus posed by Latin America's anti-neoliberal forces. The Colombian government intensified the conflict in March 2008 when its military crossed the southern border into Ecuador and bombed a FARC encampment, killing 25 (Walcott 2008,11). This violation of territorial boundaries set off a diplomatic standoff with Ecuador that continued until November 2010. Despite the easing of tensions and averting of war, this event highlights the growing polarization in South America. The United States heightened its military presence in Colombia, and on October30,2009, US and Colombian officials signed an agreement that gave US armed forces access to seven Colombian military bases for the next decade (Grandin 2010, 1). Within the hemisphere, this deal was hotly debated, since the repercussions transcended the dynamics of US-Colombian relations. In July 2009, the US Air Force made its last flight from its base in Manta, Ecuador. Growing Ecuadoran dissatisfaction with the base and it effects upon the country prompted its closure. In 2006, President Rafael Correa's campaign promised to close the base when its lease expired in 2009. The leasing of seven new bases in Colombia offset the base closure in Ecuador, and the US foothold in South America became firmer. According to Grandin, "the Obama decision to go forward with the bases accelerates a dangerous trend in US hemispheric policy" (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A decrease in US military aid to Colombia between 2009 and 2013 had been projected, but the Obama administration continued to justify aid by claiming that enhanced hemispheric security was needed. In 2009, Presidents Obama and Uribe signed the US-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA), giving the United States access to the seven bases noted above. On April 15,2012, Presidents Obama and Santos signed the US-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security as a "response to increasing insecurity generated by transnational organized crime" (US State Department 2012). If there is greater insecurity in Colombia, does this indicate that Plan Colombia has failed, or is the plan being extended via further militarization of the region? Plan Colombia's original conception was as a military strategy to combat the FARC and eradicate coca production intended for the US market. The plan did diminish FARC forces. Yet coca production is still going strong in Colombia, and even greater quantities are being produced in other Andean countries, such as Bolivia and Peru (Crandall 2008).11</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Plan Colombia failed to eliminate the drug trade or the FARC, US policymakers adopted it as a model for policy in Afghanistan and Iraq (Hylton 2010). In a 2009 op-ed piece that connects the two counterinsurgencies, Rozoff (2012) argues: "CBS News quoted an unnamed Pentagon official stating, 'The more Afghanistan can look like Colombia, the better.'The equation is now being reversed." As Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey reported, "we're getting ready to send some brigade commanders who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan down here to partner with their Joint Task Force commanders in a leader developmental function. The challenges they face are not unlike the challenges we've faced in Iraq and Afghanistan" (ibid.). In April 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Colombia as part of a three-nation tour to coordinate the American role in the "final solution to cut the FARC in half by 2014" (ibid.). Colombia thus remains the focus of US hemispheric military aid in the region, and the model for counterinsurgency doctrine throughout the world (Hylton 2010).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Militarism and Neoliberalism in Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Obama administration intends to reinforce diplomatic relations in response to the open militarization carried out by the George W. Bush government (2001 -2009), this diplomatic agenda is still linked to security and military power. In this sense, despite the change in discourse, the practice remains the same.... As the Colombian case has shown and as is becoming evident in the Mexican one, this leads to authoritarian systems with increasing military and paramilitary power, human rights violations, and increased US interference under the guise of help, cooperation, or the defense of its interests and investments in the region. (Delgado-Ramos and Romano 2011)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps no state in Latin America reflects the relationship between neoliberalism and militarism better than Mexico. Neoliberalism there has created growing poverty and resistance, and the state has increasingly resorted to militarism in response. Mexico is now one of the top 10 global recipients of US aid. US military training of the Mexican armed forces intensified with the Zapatista rebellion in 1994. It coincides with increasing military and paramilitary violence and human rights abuses, buttressing the imposition of neoliberal policies and subverting democracy in Mexico.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the early 1980s, a "neoliberal revolution" has been underway in Mexico, with well-documented effects: "severe cuts in social spending, the gutting of protective legislation, heightened foreign investment and privatization, growing income inequality, and the expansion of crime and violence. Neoliberalism is an attempt to realign and strengthen capitalist imperialism using the tools of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund" (Ochoa 2001,148). On January 1,1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, a group of armed guerrillas calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) rose up and occupied government buildings in the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas called upon Mexican workers, the poor, and the labor movement to rise up against neoliberal economies and the violence of poverty, providing a blueprint for a broader Latin American movement, while sending a foreboding message to the power structures in Mexico City and Washington, DC: "This is our response to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, because this represents a death sentence for all of the indigenous ethnicities in Mexico" (Bums and Charlip 2007,292).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Center for Economic and Policy Research's assessment of NAFTA after 20 years, Mexico is 18th in a list of 20 Latin American countries when ranked by real growth of GDP per capita, the most basic economic measure of living standards (Weisbrot et al. 2014). Mexican national statistics show that its poverty rate of 52.3 percent in 2012 is almost identical to the 1994 rate (ibid.). As such, 14.3 million more Mexicans were living below the poverty line in 2012 than in 1994 (ibid.). N AFTA's impact on agricultural employment was severe, causing increased poverty and eliminating many small farmers. This was due especially to policies such as the dumping of US com at 30 percent below the cost of production: "From 1991-2007, there were 4.9 million Mexican family farmers displaced, while seasonal labor in agro-export industries increased by about 3 million. This meant a net loss of 1.9 million jobs" (ibid.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the Zapatistas never threatened to take state power, the Mexican government immediately sent troops and heavily militarized the state of Chiapas. On behalf of Mexico's indigenous and non-indigenous poor, the Zapatistas demanded land, work, housing, nutrition, health, education, liberty, democracy, peace, justice, and dignity. Instead of upholding the February 16,1996, San Andrés Accords between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government, the state responded with military and paramilitary violence. Violence in Chiapas peaked in 1997 as the paramilitaries (with close ties to the Mexican army) committed horrific atrocities, the most famous being the massacre of Actael, in which a pacifist community of 45, mostly women and children, was brutally executed while praying in their local church.12 Since 1994, the state of Chiapas has withstood low-intensity warfare in a global counterinsurgency strategy supported by the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The state of Oaxaca has figured prominently in Mexico's neoliberal resistance and militarized repression. On May 1, 2006, members of Local 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) delivered a list of economic demands to the state government. It included the creation of education infrastructure, new teaching positions, more teaching materials, support for scholarships and school breakfasts, and improved salaries for teachers (González and Baeza 2007, 30). After no response was forthcoming, hundreds of teachers initiated an encampment in Oaxaca, blocked access to Oaxaca's airport, held mega-marches of about 80,000 people, and created the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, APPO), a coalition of "365 social, political, human rights, non-governmental, environmental, gender, student and union organizations, the indigenous communities, and thousands of independent Oaxacans" (ibid.). APPO's Constituent Assembly, including over 1,000 delegates, adopted the goals of anticapitalism, anti-imperialism, direct democracy, independence from the state, and gender and ethnic equality (ibid., 33).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between May 2006 and April 2007, thousands of teachers, workers, and citizens of Oaxaca "rebelled against the corrupt and oppressive government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz despite assassinations, disappearances, beastly abuse, and imprisonment.... In retaliation for the events of 2006, federal police repressed hundreds of protestors and arrested dozens of people. They broke into homes without warrants, and raped women" (ibid., 26). On October 27, 2006, teacher Emilio Alonso Fabián and US journalist William Bradley Roland (Brad Will) were assassinated; APPO reported 16 wounded, one disappeared, and three kidnapped teachers (ibid., 32). On October 28, the secretary of government conceded all 17 points on the list of the teachers' demands, and the day after, the federal and state governments initiated even more repression, resulting in three dead, eight wounded, and 50 detained (ibid.). Upon visiting Oaxaca, an International Civil Commission of Observation of Human Rights concluded that "the events that occurred in Oaxaca form part of a juridical, police, and military strategy, acting on a psychosocial and community level, whose goal is to control and intimidate the population in areas where community-based or non-partisan social movements are unfolding" (ibid., 34).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In late November 2006, the administration of President Vicente Fox "sent hundreds of military-trained Federal Preventative Police [Policía Federal Preventiva, PFP] to lay siege on the city" (Magaña 2010, 83). Fox augmented the repressive forces of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz with the power of the national government, unleashing an overwhelming display of state power and repression on Oaxaca's resistance movements:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The brute force used by the PFP was too much for the nonviolent APPO to overcome, no matter how flexible and adaptable. In one week at least 192 people were taken prisoner by the PFP, many of them shipped to a maximum-security prison in the Northern state of Nayarit.... One of the women I interviewed told me about a friend who was among those arrested and shipped to Nayarit. While in police custody, she was tortured and humiliated. She received electric shocks to the nipples and vagina, was photographed naked by police, and was hung from a helicopter where she was told to scream like she did in the marches. (Ibid.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between June 14 and December 10, 2006, the violence in Oaxaca resulted in "26 murders, 450 arrests, countless injuries, and almost 30 people 'disappeared.' According to the International Civil Commission for Human Rights Observation's most recent report, the number of politically motivated murders in Oaxaca between the summer of 2006 and April 2008 was 62" (ibid.).13</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US military expenditures for the War on Drugs contribute to the violence in Mexico. With the crackdown on drug cartels in Colombia, "the United States has supported Mexico's crackdown on drug cartels with both money and personnel," including $1.6 billion between 2007 and 2010 (Tovrov 2012). In 2008, the Bush administration began to implement a multiyear, $ 1.4 billion foreign aid plan known as the Mérida Initiative, "with the stated purpose of enhancing Mexico's ability to reduce crime, with overwhelming emphasis on the drug trade. This aid package complements other forms of US security aid to its southern neighbor, including millions of dollars in annual military aid from the Department of Defense" (Brewer 2009,9). Most Mérida Initiative funds support military aid:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The detailed spending plan prepared by the US State Department in September 2008 outlines the proposed uses of Mérida funding, including the purchase of airplanes and helicopters for the Mexican military for surveillance, countemarcotics, and counterterrorism operations; the purchase of scanners and armored vehicles; the establishment of law enforcement databases; training for specialized police units combating organized crime; and anticorruption activities in the federal police. (Ibid.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2008, Mexico received nearly $13 million in aid from the Department of Defense (ibid., 13). Critics of the initiative and human rights activists call attention to abuses committed by military forces in Mexico. They particularly fault the deployment of "forces trained for war to perform the work of civilian police" (ibid., 10). Delgado-Ramos and Romano (2011,99) also connect human rights abuses, US military aid, and the drug war in Mexico: "According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, complaints against soldiers have increased 500 percent; in 2009 alone, some 1,800 complaints were registered, most of them from the states in which most of the antidrug army contingents are stationed (Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Michoacán)."14 Militarization of the Mexican state has increased military and paramilitary violence and human rights abuses against indigenous communities, women, teachers, students, laborrights activists, and other marginalized communities in the name of the War on Drugs and neoliberalism, subverting democracy in Mexico.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Military Coup in Honduras</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Honduras represents one of the most egregious examples of militarism in Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, it is the only Latin American country in which a military coup successfully deposed a democratically elected leader. The 2009 coup demonstrates the extent to which Latin American elites, with the backing of US military training and aid, will use force to support neoliberalism and subvert democracy. Adult Hondurans remember the brutality of the Honduran government during the 1980s, when the military assassinated and tortured suspected opponents. Honduras's infamous paramilitary Battalion 316 was found responsible for the kidnapping, torture, disappearance, and murder of hundreds of people (Center for Justice and Accountability 2009).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On June 28, 2009, democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup and whisked away to Costa Rica by the golpista government of Roberto Micheletti, which maintained power through force and unleashed a wave of human rights violations in Honduras for more than 125 days without agreeing to negotiate or cede power to the elected president. One week after the coup, the military fired 160 rounds of live ammunition into a nonviolent crowd, killing a teenager (Goodman 2011). By mid-August, the coup regime had carried out nine politically motivated murders, countless military attacks on peaceful protesters, and ordered the arrest of over 1,300 people (Beachy 2009). Direct links exist between the 2009 military coup and the military government of the 1980s. The golpista government's special security advisor was Billy Joya, a former member of Battalion 316, who was trained in counterinsurgency techniques at the School of the Americas. General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, the head of the Honduran Air Force and SO A graduate, arranged to have Zelaya flown into exile in Costa Rica (Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice 2009). Similar to the 1980s, the military detained hundreds, and protesters and teachers, peasant farmers, students, and journalists disappeared. The elite Honduran police force, COBRA, harassed Hondurans in urban and rural areas. To shut down the press and restrict freedom of expression, major television and radio stations were militarized as part of the coup (Amnesty International 2010b, 4).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On June 28, the Obama administration decried the coup and called for the restoration of democracy in Honduras, but US policymakers responded sluggishly and ambivalently throughout the summer and fall of 2009, reflecting ingrained patterns of US-Honduran relations, especially longstanding ties with the military. US policymakers had begun to distrust President Manuel Zelaya, who inched toward the Left after his election in 2005. Before the coup, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a neoliberal US government aid agency, pumped nearly $17 million in foreign aid to Honduras between April 1 and July 31, 2009 (Conroy 2010). Created by Congress in 2004 with strong bipartisan support, the MCC was to "provide some of the world's poorest countries with large-scale grants to fund country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable economic growth."15 The MCC claims to be committed to helping poor countries reduce poverty, but it only helps "those countries committed to good governance, economic freedom, and investments in their citizens," that is, those with a strict neoliberal free-trade development model. Zelaya had "fallen out of favor with the Honduran business class" in part because he joined the Chavez-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a move ratified by the Honduran Congress in October 2008 (ibid.). The 2009 Honduran coup demonstrates that Latin American leaders who reject the Washington Consensus and neoliberalism and lack the support of their militaries and economic elites can face reprisals in the form of militarism, often backed by the United States:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just a month before his overthrow, Zelay a-in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras 's Siria Valley-introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices ; he joined Petrocaribe-the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries-and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. (Grandin 2010)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Europe, Latin America, and the United States, human rights organizations called for the United States to cut diplomatic relations and economic aid to Honduras to comply with international laws governing military coups (Section 7008 of the US Foreign Operations Law) (Dangle 2009a). After the June 28 announcement that a coup had occurred, however, the US government "withheld determination" until mid-August. It refused to demand Zelaya's return, because, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives" (Dangle 2009b). US policymakers were ambivalent about returning Zelaya to power. The US ambassador to Honduras, Ambassador Hugo Llorens, previously served as President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor on issues pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. His resume includes the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt against Hugo Chávez. As human rights atrocities mounted, international pressure against the Honduran coup gained legitimacy. By August, US officials again admitted that a coup had taken place, but it was too late to save Manuel Zelaya's presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The November 2009 election "was marked by violence and fraud, was boycotted by the EU, the UN, the Carter Center, the OAS, and half of the Honduran voters" (Fasquelle 2011,20). Porfirio Lobo won the election, which has been described as the "progeny of the military coup that deposed President Zelaya on June 28, 2009" (Frank 2012, 11). After the election, heads of state throughout the region refused to recognize Lobo's presidency; the United States "hailed him for restoring democracy and restoring reconciliation" (ibid.). President Obama even invited him to the White House. Upon his inauguration in January 2010, President Lobo declared the crisis over and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed those remarks as ex-President Manuel Zelaya was "allowed" to leave the Brazilian embassy. Since Lobo's inauguration,repression in Honduras has increased. Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, and protesters and human rights advocates have experienced illegal detentions, executions by death squads, intimidation, and torture. In Honduras, a man, woman, or child is killed every 74 minutes (ibid., 14).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the repression, activists in Honduras and throughout the hemisphere have protested the "illegitimate" government of the Lobo administration. On May 28, 2011, through a deal brokered by Colombian President Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Manuel Zelaya was allowed to return to Honduras almost two years after he was deposed. This marked the largest demonstration in Honduran history, with an estimated 11 percent of the Honduran population attending (Frank 2011). Upon Zelaya's return, the United States called for the reinstatement of Honduras to the OAS, which took place in June 2011. Only Ecuador dissented due to persistent human rights violations. Some voices in the United States have spoken out against the undemocratic and violent government in Honduras. Ninety-four members of the House of Representatives signed a letter dated March 9,2012, which called for the suspension of police and military aid to Honduras. On March 5, 2012, seven senators signed a letter expressing concerns over the "increasing human rights violations in Honduras" (Frank 2012, 14). Although the US State Department admits that human rights violations exist in Honduras, the US government sees working with the Honduran military as a solution. On March 6,2012, Vice President Biden flew to Honduras and promised to increase military and police funds to $107 million under the Central American Regional Security Initiative. President Obama's proposed budget for 2013 more than doubled police and military funds for Honduras (ibid.). Given the increases in US military funding and the extensive political and social violence, Honduras has become the Colombia of 10 years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Honduras remains strategically important for the US military in the region, serving as the regional hub for US military operations in Central America. Human rights organizations in Honduras such as COFEDAH (Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras-Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras) agree that the drug war is "a pretext for a greater military occupation" (ibid., 17). Human rights workers in Honduras and defenders of human rights in the United Nations and throughout the world have called on Honduras to guarantee basic human rights. This is difficult since the United States props up the government, the police, and the military, which are heavily involved in human rights violations, the drug trade, and criminal activity. Delgado-Ramos and Romano (2011, 101) summarize the role of US hegemony in the context of the Honduran coup:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies... organized a workshop to advise Honduran police and army forces, as well as Congress members and government officials, on the planning of national security strategies.... The seriousness of US interference in internal affairs through this type of "advising" is compounded by the fact that the Honduran government receiving these internal security "suggestions" is the product of a technical coup d'état against a constitutional president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US military training of the Honduran armed forces has unequivocally increased military violence, reinforced neoliberalism, and subverted democracy in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SOA/WHINSEC: Architect of Violence and Repression</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US Army School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) is the model for US military training and counterinsurgency in Latin America. SOA/WHINSEC was established in 1946 in Panama as a Cold War mechanism for keeping order and stability in the region and serving as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. In 1984, in compliance with the Panama Canal Treaty, the school was moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia. For over 60 years, the school, under several names, has taught courses to Latin American military officers on counterinsurgency methods, counter-narcotics, command and general staff, human rights training, and democratic consolidation (WHINSEC 2004b).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US military and policymakers view the school as a way to secure democracy in Latin America and to help professionalize their militaries. Yet it gained notoriety in the hemisphere as a "School of Assassins" and boasts among its graduates men who have committed some of the most horrific atrocities in Latin America.16 In December 2000, the SO A Watch movement, which sought to close the school while investigating past and current atrocities and their links to its graduates, won enough support from Congress and the American public to motivate the US Army to close the Army School of the Americas. Only three weeks later, in January 2001, the army reopened the school in the same building, with the same instructors, under a new name-The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. As the SOA Watch movement would attest, "New Name, Same Shame."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Katherine McCoy's (2005) article on the school 's torture and human rights record directly challenged the US government's argument that US military training leads to the professionalization of Latin American militaries and the democratization of Latin America. She analyzed the course records of nearly 12,000 SOA graduates from six countries (Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Panama), between 1960 and 2000, and tracked their human rights records during the 40-year period to determine the impact of SOA training. The more courses an SOA graduate took, McCoy concluded, the more likely the graduate was to commit human rights abuses. Moreover, if the graduate took two or more courses, they were more than three times as likely to commit human rights abuses than soldiers who took one course (ibid., 57). Students who took three courses had a higher rate of abuse and committed abuses sooner after graduation (ibid.). McCoy concluded that "repeated SOA training was associated with increased human rights violations in times of war and peace, under democratic presidents and dictatorial regimes, and both during and after the cold war" (ibid., 61).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The recent coups in Haiti in 1991 and 2004, the Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002, and the Honduran coup of 2009, which was led by an SOA graduate, exemplify the continuation of violence in the region. A legacy of the Cold War, SOAAVHINSEC remains the bulwark of US military training, and thus violence, in the hemisphere. Though not the only US military training school for the region, it is the premiere one and a shining example. Newly elected Latin American leaders are beginning to withdraw troops from the school because of its reputation. Leaders in the United States must likewise cease this perpetuation of violence (funded by US taxpayers) in Latin America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conclusion: Moving beyond Militarism</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colombia and Honduras are the most violent and heavily militarized nations in Latin America. Mexico is not far behind. Military solutions have not worked in these countries, and innocent civilians continue to die. Poverty and inequality caused by neoliberalism lead the marginalized communities most affected by neoliberal policies to resist. US military expenditures in Latin America and ongoing military training of its armed forces by entities such as SOAAVHINSEC repress that resistance, increase military and paramilitary violence, reinforce US hegemony, and subvert democracy in the region. In this context, are peace and change possible?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guatemala is the first Latin American country to place a former president on trial for genocide. President Jose Efraín Rios Montt, a former SOA graduate, whose 14-month rule between 1982 and 1983 resulted in the killing or disappearance of 70,000 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, was charged in 2011 with genocide and crimes against humanity and placed under house arrest while awaiting trial (Wirtz 2012). On May 10, 2013, in Guatemala City, a threejudge trial court convicted Rios Montt of crimes against humanity and genocide of more than 1,700 indigenous Ixil Mayans (Castillo 2013). After a six-week trial and testimony of over 90 witnesses, dozens of forensic and other experts, and the presentation of documentary and other evidence, Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison. Prosecutors presented</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a month of chilling testimony from survivors of Army massacres carried out 30 years ago during one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala's long civil war. Experts in the trial described how the Army had marched into remote hamlets in the Maya Ixil region in search of leftist guerrillas during General Rios Montt's 17-month rule in 1982 and 1983. Soldiers killed all those who could not flee, burning down houses, killing livestock and destroying crops. (Malkin 2013)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The trial court issued a 718-page judgment laying the foundation for the 80-year sentence (Open Society Foundations 2013). Three days later, the Constitutional Court overturned the conviction due to a "procedural irregularity," and now lawyers on both sides believe that the case must be retried in front of new judges (Malkin 2013). Nevertheless, the Open Society Justice Initiative states the importance of this case in addressing military violence in Latin America: "The trial marks the first time a former head of state has been tried for genocide in a domestic court. It is an important milestone in holding political and military leaders accountable for international crimes" (ibid.). The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998 and the conviction of Efraín Rios Montt in 2013 prove that world leaders must concern themselves with what happens when they leave office, as well as how they treat their citizens while in office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States needs a new foreign policy in Latin America based on democracy, development, and the preservation of human rights, not one that defends neoliberal economic policies with arms. Latin American nations will demand no less. Perhaps Rigoberta Menchú, the Guatemalan activist and politician, put it best in 2001 in a letter she penned to President George W. Bush, when she responded to his statement that "all nations in all regions of the world must now make a decision: You are with us or you are with the terrorists" (Menchú 2001). She retorted: "Before you give the cry for war, I would like to invite you to think about a different type of world leadership, one which must convince rather than conquer, in which the human species can show that in the last 1,000 years we have overcome the idea of an eye for an eye."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NOTES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. We discuss Rios Montt's complicated trial in greater detail at the end of the article.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. 1998: Hugo Chávez, Venezuela; 1999: Ricardo Lagos, Chile; 2002: Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil; 2003: Néstor Kirchner, Argentina; 2004: Tabaré Ramón Vázquez, Uraguay; 2005: Evo Morales, Bolivia; 2006: Michelle Bachelet,Chile; 2006: Manuel Zelaya, Honduras; 2006: Rafael Correa, Ecuador; 2006: Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua; 2007: Cristina Fernández Kirchner, Argentina; 2008: Fernando Lugo, Paraguay; 2009: José Mujica, Uruguay; 2009: Mauricio Funes, El Salvador; 2010: Dilma Rousseff, Brazil; 2011: Ollanta Humala, Peru; and 2013: Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. For many authors, the Washington Consensus is the conflation of US foreign policy and economic interests through the domination of neoliberal structural adjustment policies via the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. Many scholars have also written about the New American Imperialism, American Empire, and the unilateralism that accompanied the US policy agenda during the Reagan-Bush years. George W. Bush's administration took this to new heights and the Obama administration largely left it unchallenged.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Data from Just the Facts. See http://justf.org/All_Grants_Country?yearl=l996&year2=20l 3 &funding=All+Programs&subregion=Entire+Region&x=68&y=6.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. See, for example, our recent article, "Latin American Social Movements and a New Left Consensus: State and Civil Society Challenges to Neoliberal Globalization" (2014) in New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 36(1): 1-31.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6. See Latin American Provincials of the Society of Jesus (1997.43) and Gent (2008b).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7. See also Berrigan and Wingo (2005) and Just the Facts for data collected throughout this period.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8. The Congressional Research Service Report on U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and FY2013 Appropriation covers the Obama administration's foreign aid budget request for fiscal year 2013, citing "the recent downward trend in assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean," beginning in 2010. However, in taking non-fuel Pentagon contracts into account, John Lindsay-Poland argues that "US military spending in the region is still considerably higher than during the George W. Bush administration, when the equivalent Pentagon spending in Latin America averaged $301 million a year" (at http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/pentagon-continuescontracting-us-companies-latin-america/11782).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9. See also Joseph L. Galloway, "U.S. Forces Expanding Role in Colombia Beyond Drug Mission, Troops Now Working to Protect Oil Pipeline," Charlotte Observer, January 21, 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10. SCA stands for state's coercive apparatus; see Hristov (2009, 26-27; 25).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11. Aerial spraying has reduced coca production in Colombia somewhat, but not the amount of cocaine entering the United States. Supplies from nearby countries compensate for Colombia's decline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12. During a July 2005 Witness for Peace delegation to study neoliberalism in Chiapas, the authors heard directly from members of Las Abejas ("The Bees"), who gave direct and moving accounts of the massacre that occurred while they were attending church.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13. See also Comisión Civil Internaciónal de Observación por los Derechos Humanos (CCIODH), Informe Sobre los Hechos de Oaxaca (2008, Barcelona: Graficas Lunas), 209; and Lynn Stephen, '"We are brown, we are short, we are fat.... We are the face of Oaxaca': Women Leaders in the Oaxaca Rebellion," Socialism and Democracy 21(2): 97-112.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">14. Mexico's case is not exceptional in the region: "According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in 2001 three out of four Latin American countries receiving US military and intelligence assistance had serious human rights violations" (Delgado-Ramos and Romano 2011, 99).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">15. The US Secretary of State chairs the MCC board of directors and the US Treasury Secretary is the vice chair. Information on the MCC is found at www.mcc.gov.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16. Argentina: General Roberto Viola, General Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo, Emilio Massera; Chile: Colonel Pablo Belmar, Miguel Krassnoff; Bolivia: General Hugo Banzer; El Salvador: Captain Roberto D'Aubisson, Colonel Franscisco del Cid Diaz; Colombia: General Luis Alfonso Zapata Uribe, General Rafael Samudio Molina; Guatemala: General Efraín Ríos Montt; and Panama: General Manuel Noriega.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Center for International Labor Solidarity</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2006 "Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia." At www.usleap. org/files/ColombiaFinal_0.pdf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amnesty International</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010a "Annual Report on Colombia." At www.amnesty.org/en/region/colombia/ report-2010.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010b "Honduras: Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, Ninth Session of the UPR Working Group of the Human Rights Council." November-December.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barcena, Alicia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Picture This: Growing Out of Poverty." Finance and Development 49(1): 44-45. At www.impforg/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2012/03/picture.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beachy, Ben</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Tomorrow: Global Day of Action for Honduras." Witness for Peace, August 10. At www.witnessforpeace.org.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Berrigan, Frida and Jonathan Wingo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 "The Bush Effect: U.S. Military Involvement in Latin America Rises, Development and Humanitarian Aid Fall." World Policy Institute, November 5. At www.commondreams.org/views05/1105-21.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Board of Visitors Meeting, WHINSEC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004 Ft. Benning, Georgia, July 16.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brewer, Stephanie Erin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Rethinking the Mérida Initiative: Why the US Must Change Course in Its Approach to Mexico's Drug War." Human Rights Brief 16(3): 9-14.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Britto, Lina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Colombia and Ecuador: A Clash of Two Plans." NACIA Report on the Americas 42(4): 35-39.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burns, E. Bradford and Julie A. Charlip</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2007 Latin America: An Interpretive History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bush, George W.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002 "Remarks of U.S. President George W. Bush to the World Affairs Council National Conference, at the Organization of American States," January 16. At www.oas.org/en/media_center/speech.asp?sCodigo=02-0026.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Castillo, Mariano</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2013 "Guatemala's Ríos Montt Guilty of Genocide." CNN, May 13. At www.cnn. com/2013/05/10/world/americas/guatemala-genocide-trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Center for Justice and Accountability</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Honduras: Battalion 316, Torture and Forced Disappearance." At www.cja.org/ article.php?list=type&type=254.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chomsky, Noam</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2006 Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. New York: Henry Holt and Company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conroy, Bill</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Millennium Challenge Corp. Poured Millions into Honduras in Months Leading up to Putsch." The Narcosphere, August 9. At http://narcosphere, narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/08/millennium-challenge-co.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Córdoba, Marino</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003 Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES), interview with Ginger Williams, Washington, DC, October 3.M</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporation Latinobarómetro</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010 Latinobarómetro 2010 Report, Chile, December. At www.latinobarometro.org/ latino/LATContenidos.jsp.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crandall, Russell</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008 Driven by Drugs: US. Policy Toward Colombia, 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cruz, J.A.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008 "Fourth Fleet Threatens Peace, Democracy in Latin America." People's World, June 7. At www.peoplesworld.org/fourth-fleet-threatens-peace-democracy-in-latin-americal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dangle, Benjamin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009a "The Road to Zelaya's Return: Money, Guns, and Social Movements in Honduras," September 21. At http: //bendlanglnet/? cat=36.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009b "Showdown in Honduras: The Rise and Uncertain Future of the Coup," June 29. At www.TowardFreedom.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Delacour, Justin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2000 "Plan Colombia: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Press." Social Justice 27(4): 63-75.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Delgado-Ramos, Gian Carlo and Silvina Maria Romano</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2011 "Political-Economic Factors in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Colombia Plan, the Merida Initiative, and the Obama Administration." Translated by Mariana Ortega Brena. Latin American Perspectives 38(4): 93-108.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emerson, R. Guy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010 "Radical Neglect? The 'War on Terror' and Latin America." Latin American Politics and Society 52(1): 33-62.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Espinoza, Marla Daniela</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008 "U.S Decision to Reactivate the Fourth Fleet a Matter of Concern." El Universal, Caracas, Venezuela, June 3. At www.worldpress.org/Americas/3164. cfm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fasquelle, Rodolfo Pastor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2011 "The 2009 Coup and the Struggle for Democracy in Honduras." NACLA: Report on the Americas 44( 1): 16-21.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Foster, John Bellamy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2007 "The Latin American Revolt: An Introduction." Monthly Review 59(3): 1-7.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frank, Dana</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2011 "Honduras: Zelaya Returns but Justice Is Still Not Done." The Nation, June 3. At www.TheNation.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Honduras: Which Side Are We On?" The Nation, June 11. At www.TheNation. com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gent, Michael G.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008a "Undoing the Damage: The Growing Backlash to Neoliberalism in Latin America." Delaware Review of Latin American Studies 9(2). At www.udel.edu/ LAS/Vol9-2Gent.html.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008b "Neoliberalism in Latin America: Ten Years after the Jesuit Provincials Sounded the Alarm." At www.sjweb.info/documents/sjs/docs/Gent_PJ98.pdf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gill, Leslie</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004 The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gonzalez, Gloria Martinez and Alejandro Valle Baeza</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2007 "Oaxaca: Rebellion against Marginalization, Extreme Poverty and Abuse of Power." Monthly Review 59(3): 26-37.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goodman, Amy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2011 "Demanding an End to Violence and Repression in Honduras." Rabble.ca, June 1. At http: //rabble.ca/columnists/2011/06/demanding-end-violence-and-repression-honduras.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Grandin, Greg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010 "Muscling Latin America," January. At www.catalunyaoberta.cat/hemeroreca/ statics/fles/TheNation1.pdf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hristov, Jasmin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 "Freedom and Democracy or Hunger and Terror: Neoliberalism and Militarization in Latin America." Social Justice 32(2): 89-114.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009a Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia. Athens: Ohio University Research in International Studies, Ohio University Press.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009b. "Legalizing the Illegal: Paramilitarism in Colombia's 'Post-Paramilitary' Era." NACLA Report on the Americas 42(4).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hylton, Forrest</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010 "Plan Colombia: The Measure of Success." At http: Hdemocracyinamericas.org/ pdfs/Hylton.pdf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "The Coup in Honduras." At www.icpj.net/latin-america.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Isaacson, Adam</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003a "Washington's New War in Columbia." NACLA Report on the Americas 36(5): 13-18.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003b Senior Colombian Advisor, Center for International Policy, interview with Ginger Williams, Washington, DC, January 20.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 "Closing the Seams: U.S. Security Policy in the Americas." NACLA Report on the Americas 38(6): 13-17.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kirk, Gwyn and Margo Okazawa-Rey</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2000 "Neoliberalism. Militarism, and Armed Conflict: An Introduction." Social Justice 27(4): 1-17.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Latin American Provincials of the Society of Jesus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1997 "Letter and Study Document on Neo-liberalism in Latin America." Promotio Iustitiae 67: 41-60. At www.sjweb.info/documents/sjs/pj/docs_pdf/PJ67.ENG.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Leech, Garry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002 "Washington's New Rules of Engagement." Colombia Journal, November 18. At http: llcolombiajournal.org/washingtons-new-rules -of-engagement.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Macdonald, Laura and Arne Ruckert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2009 "Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas: An Introduction." In Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas, edited by Laura Macdonald and Arne Ruckert, 1-18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Magaña, Maurice Rafael</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2010 "Analyzing the Meshwork as an Emerging Social Movement Formation: An Ethnographic Account of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO)." Journal of Contemporary Anthropology 1(1): 72-87.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Malkin, Elizabeth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2013 "Genocide Trial of Guatemalan Ex-Dictator May Have to Restart." New York Times, May 21. At www.nytimes.com/20I3/05/22/world/americas/trial-of-exdictator-of-guatemala-may-have-to-restart.html?ref=efrainriosmontt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCoy, Katherine E.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 "Trained to Torture? The Human Rights Effects of Military Training at the School of the Americas." Latin American Perspectives 32(6): 47-64.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McFarland Sdnchez-Moreno, Maria</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2006 "Colombia: Rosy Picture Belies Stark Problems." Human Rights Watch. June 14. At www.hrw.org/news/2006/06l13/colombia-rosy-picture-belies-stark-problems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McSherry, Patrice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2000 "Preserving Hegemony: National Security Doctrine in the Post-Cold War Era." NACLA Report on the Americas 34(3): 26-55.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Menchú, Rigoberta</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001 Open letter from Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu to President George W. Bush, September 23. At http: Hglohalresearch.calarticleslMENI09A.html.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ochoa, Enrique C.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2001 "Neoliberalism, Disorder, and Militarization in Mexico." Latin American Perspectives 28(4): 148-59.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Open Society Foundations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2013 "The Trial of Efraín Ríos Montt and Mauricio Rodriguez." Open Society Justice Initiative. At www.riosmontt-trial.org/20l3/05/statement-legal-stalemate-over-guatemalas-rios-montt-genocide-trial-threatens-victims-rights/.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Otis, John</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Targeting Teachers: The 'Dirty War' against Colombia's Unions," February 9. At www.globalpost.com/dispatchlnewslregionslamericaslcolombiall20207l colombia-unions-teachers-viotence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Panitch, Leo and Sam Gindin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003 "American Imperialism and Eurocapitalism: The Making of Neoliberal Globalization." Studies in Political Economy 71-72: 7-38.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peet. Richard</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2003 Unholy Trinity. The IMF, World Bank, and WTO. London: Zed Books.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Priest, Dana and Walter Pincus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2005 "CIA, White House Defend Transfers of Terror Suspects." Washington Post, March 18.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ross, John</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008 "Fourth Fleet Steams South Return of the Gunboat ." Counterpunch Webzine, July 29. At www.counterpunch.org/2008/07/29/return-of-the-gunboat/.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rozoff. Rick</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "U.S.'s Post-Afghanistan Counterinsurgency War: Colombia." April 23. At www. opednews.com/articles/U-S-sPost-Afghanistan-Co-by-Rick-Rozoff-120423-8.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tate, Winifred</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004 "No Room for Peace: United States' Role in the Colombian Peace Process." Accord 14: 70-73. At www.c-r.org/accord-article/no-room-peace-united-states%E2%80%99-policy-colombia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tovrov, Daniel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Top Ten Recipients of U.S. Aid." International Business Times, February 6. At www.ibtimes.com/articles/293844/20l20206/aid-humanitarian-top-ten.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">USAID</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants, Obligations and Loan Authorizations. The Greenbook, Companion to the Annual Report to Congress. At http: Hgbk.eads. usaidallnet.gov/data/fast-facts.html.tt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US Department of State</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Joint Press Release on the United States-Colombia Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation." Office of the Spokesperson, April 15. At www.state. gov/rl/pa/prslps/2012104/187928.htm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walcott, Judith</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2008 "The Ecuador-Colombia Border: Historical Links, Current Events, and Future Possibilities." A Writenet Report Commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Emergency, and Technical Support Service, ii-26.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walton, Michael</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004 "Neoliberalism in Latin America: Good, Bad, or Incomplete?" Latin American Research Review 39(3): 165-83.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weisbrot, Mark, Stephan Lefebvre, and Joseph Sammut</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2014 "Did NAFTA Help Mexico? An Assessment after Twenty Years." Center for Economic and Policy Research. At www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/ nafta-20-years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WHINSEC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004a Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation Public Affairs Office Publication, Ft. Benning, Georgia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004b Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation Course Syllabi, received from Major Tony Raimondo, J.D.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wirtz Nicolas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012 "Rios Montt and the Genocide Trial in Guatemala." Americas Quarterly, June 7. At http://americasquarterly.org/rios-montl-and-the-genocide-trial-in-guatemala%20.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Witness For Peace</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2006 Newsletter 23(1), Spring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author affiliation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ginger Williams & Jennifer Disney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author affiliation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> GINGER WILLIAMS is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Resolution Studies Program, which she founded in 2006, at Winthrop University. Specializing in the history of US-Latin American relations, her current work focuses on twentieth-century social movements in the United States and Latin America. She is a past president of the Peace History Society. JENNIFER LEIGH DISNEY is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Winthrop University. Her areas of teaching, research, and scholarship are in the fields of comparative politics and political theory, focusing on development, underdevelopment, and social movements in Africa and Latin America. Temple University Press published her 2008 book. Women's Activism and Feminist Agency in Mozambique and Nicaragua.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201507/3659706701.html#ixzz3fnt1odmZ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">soawatch cf&nbsp; court rules names must be public, outlawed by bush2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kpfa 10 am 4/28/13 husb 1 yr in Lompoc 9no time off) jliteky AT judy liteky 100K fine for fed tresspass?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.soaw.org/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most Notorious SOA Graduates</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This list is a summary of the most notorious SOA grads, sorted by country of origin, which is current as of 04/10/2012, and will be updated continuously.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a more complete list of the graduates sorted by country, click here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ARGENTINA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Naval Officer Emilio Massera (Deceased), Commander-in-chief of the Navy, 1973 - 1978 , Military Junta Leader 1976 – 1978</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Argentina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the School of the Americas in Panama&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: In May 1976, Massera, then head of the Navy, undertook a military coup against Perón, together with General Jorge Videla (see below), and the army commander, and Brigadier Ramón Agostin, the commander of the air force. Sought out by the US government for his opposition to communisum, he attended the SOA, then located in Panama, and installed an interrogation and torture centre in the Naval School of Mechanics, ESMA. Here, around 30,000 “enemies of the state” where held as prisoners, and tortured, killed, and routinely taken on “death flights” where they would be dropped from airplanes into the river plate. The newborn babies from women who gave birth while in captivity where sold and/or given away to military families and members of the police force.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assisting the US with the development of Plan Cóndor, too coordinate the terrorism efforts of South American military dictatorships at the time, he also supported the US backed military dictatorships in Central America. In August 1978, he was ultimately forced to retire. In 1999 an international arrest warrant for him was issued but Argentina refused to extradite him to Spain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(This SOA graduate is not in our database, but was determined to have attended the SOA through other sources: The Independent, Nov. 10th, 2010)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo - Army commander, Military Junta Leader 1976 – 1981&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Argentina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Trained at the School of the Americas facility in Panamá. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Videla took power together with the “Junta of 3” (with the leaders of the three branches of the armed forces) in 1976 in a coup d’etat that overthrew María Estela de Perón, former wife of&nbsp; Perón. He continued in power until 1981. Like Massera, he participated in the “disappearances” of 30,000 persons, and coordinated acts of repression in neighboring Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay operating to implement the U.S. designed “Plan Condor.”&nbsp; (Punto Final, Jan. 2011)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1985 he was discharged from the army, and received a life sentence for crimes against humanity (though he was later pardoned by Menem in 1990, and remained in liberty until 1998.) Videla, is as of 2008 now being held in military custody. (The Cutting Edge, Nov. 2008)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(This SOA graduate is not in our database, but was determined to have attended the SOA through other sources: The Independent, Nov. 10th, 2010)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Roberto Viola&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Argentina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1971, Tactical Officer, Arg. Cadet Course.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Military dictator, 1981: Achieved power via scheduled change of military rulers. (WP, 5/19/94) In December 1985, Viola was convicted of murder, kidnapping and torture during the "dirty war."(The New York Times, 10/8/89)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Luis Arce Gomez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Argentina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Communications course, Tactical officer and radio repair courses, 1958</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: With Garcia Meza Tejada, Arce Gomez plotted and executed a bloody coup, which occurred on July 17, 1980. (Garcia Meza became "president" and Arce Gomez Minister of the Interior.) Prior to the coup, Arce Gomez was in charge of assembling a paramilitary force to overthrow the government. (One of his recruits was Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal known as the Butcher of Lyon) (Americas Watch Report, Bolivia: The Trial of Responsibilities: The Garcia Meza Tejada Trial, 1993) Drug trafficking (convicted), 1989: Arce Gomez, who was declared a fugitive from justice in 1986, was captured by Bolivian police in 1989. With the approval of the Bolivian government, he was handed over to the United States and is currently serving a 30-year sentence in Miami for drug-trafficking. (Americas Watch Report, Bolivia: The Trial of Responsibilities: The Garcia Meza Tejada Trial, 1993)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Leopoldo Galtieri, military dictator, 1981-1982</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Argentina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Engineer course, 1949</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: One of many violent dictators of Argentina, who achieved power by means of a violent coup. Galtieri was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for leading Argentina into the disastrous war with Britain for control of the Falkland Islands, using the war as a way to manipulate public support for the military. He was pardoned, along with 280 other human rights abusers by President Carlos Menem in October 1989. (The New York Times, 10/12/89)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BOLIVIA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Sub. Tte. Luis Arce Gomez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Bolivia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1958, Communications Officer; 1958, Tactical Officer, Radio Repair</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Armed insurrection (convicted), 1980: With Garcia Meza Tejada, Arce Gomez plotted and executed a bloody coup, which occurred on July 17, 1980. (Garcia Meza became "president" and Arce Gomez minister of the Interior.) Prior to the coup, Arce Gomez was in charge of assembling a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">paramilitary force to overthrow the government. (One of his recruits was Klaus Barbie.) (Americas Watch Report, Bolivia: The Trial of Responsibilities: The Garcia Meza Tejada Trial, 1993)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Drug trafficking (convicted), 1989: Arce Gomez, who was declared a fugitive from justice in 1986, was captured by Bolivian police in 1989. With the approval of the Bolivian government, he was handed over to the United States and is currently serving a 30-year sentence in Miami for drug-trafficking. (Americas Watch Report, Bolivia: The Trial of Responsibilities: The Garcia Meza Tejada Trial, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Hugo Banzer Suarez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Bolivia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1956</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Military general and dictator of Bolivia after seizing power in a violent coup in 1971.&nbsp; He closed universities and banned all political activity, participated in Operation Condor, and his rule was repressive with numerous labor leaders and members of the opposition exiled, jailed and killed. Several thousand Bolivians sought asylum in foreign countries, 3,000 political opponents were arrested, 200 were killed, and many more were tortured. In the basement of the Ministry of the Interior or "the horror chambers" around 2,000 political prisoners were held and tortured with many others disappeared.&nbsp; For all this, Banzer was included in a photo gallery called the “Wall of Fame” at the SOA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Captain Filmann Urzagaste Rodriguez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Bolivia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA/WHINSEC in 2002 for a 49-week course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Was one of those responsible in 1997 for the kidnapping and torture of Waldo Albarracin, then the director of the Popular Assembly for Human Rights in Bolivia and now the Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman). In 2006, SOA/ WHINSEC officials and the supporters tried to discredit this research linking the “new school WHINSEC” with admitting known human rights abusers by claiming Waldo had recanted his story and did not accuse Captain Rodriguez of the crime.&nbsp; A letter from Waldo was submitted to the Congressional Record by Congressman Jim McGovern on the House floor to corroborate the research and expose the attempts to silence Waldo’s story.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CHILE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Augusto Pinochet is not a graduate of the School of the Americas; yet his influence is held in high esteem. in 1991, visitors could view a note from Pinochet, and a ceremonial sword donated by him, on display in the office of the Commandant (Charles Call, MH, 8/9/93)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Graduates of the School of the Americas have comprised 1 out of every 7 members of the command staff of DINA, the notorious Chilean intelligence agency responsible for many of the worst human rights atrocities during the Pinochet years. See here for a complete list.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Pablo Belmar</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Chile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Guest Instructor in 1987, and took Basic Arms Orientation course in 1968</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Directly implicated in the 1976 torture and murder of United Nations official Carmelo Soria, whose neck was broken after he was arrested and tortured by Chilean DINA (Dirección de lnteligencia Nacional) personnel, Pinochet's personal secret police force that operated from 1974-1977. Soria's car and body were dumped in a Santiago canal in order to make his death appear accidental. (Americas Watch Report, Unfinished Business: Human Rights in Chile at the Start of the Frei Presidency, 1994) According to former SOA instructor Maj. Joseph Blair, as a guest instructor in 1987, Belmar was responsible for teaching the human rights component to the students.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: First Lieutenant Miguel Krassnoff&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Chile&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1974, Urban Counterinsurgency Course Cited in Spanish Human Rights Case, 1998: Info: One of 30 officials cited in the case of Augusto Pinochet for crimes of genocide, terrorism, torture, and illegal arrest. A former member of the DINA, Krassnoff was known by political prisoners held and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, Tress Alamos and Cuatro Alamos. Implicated in the death by torture of former Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria in 1976. Took part in the assault on the residence of former president Salvador Allende who was deposed by the Army in Sept. 1973. (Derechos Chile)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Armando Fernandez Larios</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Chile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Combat Arms Orientation, 1970</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Fernandez Larios was second in command to General Sergio Arellano Stark, whose tour of northern cities in 1973 resulted in dozens of summary executions. (Americas Watch Report, Chile in Transition, 1989) He was one of two DINA agents charged with assassinating General Carlos Prats Gonzalez, who was defense minister under the regime Augusto Pinochet overthrew. Prats and his wife were killed by a car bomb in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Americas Watch Report, Unfinished Business: Human Rights in Chile at the Start of the Frei Presidency, 1994) He was also indicted in 1979 by U.S. grand jury for involvement in the Letelier assassination in Washington, D.C. (Americas Watch Report, Chile in Transition, 1989)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COLOMBIA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Alvaro Quijano</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Instructor of Peacekeeping Operations and Democratic Sustainment courses at the school from 2003 to 2004</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Col. Alvaro Quijano led a special counterinsurgency unit in western Colombia — a drug cartel stronghold — and he and other soldiers who attended the SOA were arrested in 2007.&nbsp; They were arrested for allegedly providing security for the Norte del Valle cartel's leader and most-wanted drug lord, Diego Montoya, is on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Luis Bernardo Urbina Sanchez&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Command and General Staff Course, 1985</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Paramilitary death squad activity, 1988-89 -- Fellow SOA graduate Meneses Baez confessed to Urbina Sanchez' involvement in paramilitary death squads, which he referred to as "self-defense' groups; Disappearance, assassination, 1989 -- Implicated in the assassination of Amparo Tordecilla.&nbsp; Assassination, 1987 -- Implicated in the assassination of Union Patriotica member Alvaro Garces Parra. Disappearance, torture, assassination, 1987 -- Ordered the detention, torture and assassination of Mario Alexander Granados Plazas. Disappearance, 1986 -- Intellectual author of the detention/disappearance of William Camacho Barajas and Orlando Garcia Gonzalez. Torture, disappearance, 1977 -- Implicated in the torture of Omaira Montoya Henao and Mauricio Trujillo, and the subsequent disappearance of Omaira Montoya. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Luis Alfonso Zapata Uribe&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Counter-insurgency, Small-Unit Infantry Tactics C-7, 1976</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: San Jose Killings: Has commanded the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army since May 2005., whom were involved in the November 17th, 2005, killing of Arlen Salas David, a leader of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, Antioquia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The soldiers accused, along with members of the self-defense forces [paramilitaries], of the slaughter are Colonel Orlando Espinosa Beltrán, Major José Fernando Castaño López, Luitenant Alejandro Jaramillo Giraldo, Captian Sabarain Cruz Reina, Sargent Ángel María Padilla Petro, Sargent Jorge Humberto Milanés Vega, Sargent Henry Agudelo Guasmayan Ortega, Sargent Édgar Garciá Estupiñón, Sargent Darío Brango Agamez, and Captain Ricardo Bastidas Candia. Criminal proceedings against the soldiers were brought on February 26, 2009 for murder of protected persons, acts of extreme cruelty, and conspiracy as part of their participation in the February 21, 2005 massacre in which eight people, including four children, were murdered..(El Tiempo, Jan. 2010)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Harold Bedoya Pizarro</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1978-79, SOA Guest Instructor;1965, Military Intelligence Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Paramilitary death squad activity, 1965 - present: "Throughout Bedoya's entire career, he has been Implicated with the sponsorship and organization of a network of paramilitary organizations. Bedoya, who has never undergone any investigation for his involvement in the massacres of non-combatants or other dirty-war crimes, is an articulate proponent of the continued "legal" involvement of local populations in counterinsurgency operations." (Ana Carrigan, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 1995)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paramilitary death squad activity ("AAA"), 1978: Believed to be the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">founder and chief of the paramilitary death squad known as "AAA" (American Anti-communist Alliance). (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other prominent members of the AAA Paramilitary group graduated from the SOA include: Tte. Cnel. Mario Montoya Uribe (1993, SOA Guest Instructor; 1983, Tactical Officer, Cadet Arms) Maj Jorge Flores Suarez (1972, Military Intelligence Officer Course)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Major Alejandro de Jesus Alvarez Henao</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1984, Joint Operations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Paramilitary death squad activity (MAS), 1982: Principal member of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Muerte a Secuestradores" (MAS), a paramilitary death squad responsible</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for numerous assassinations and disappearances. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other prominent members of MAS Paramilitary group graduated from the SOA include: LTC Virgilio Anzola Montero (1967, Cadet Orientation Course), GEN Carlos Julio Gil Colorado (1969, 0-6), GEN Farouk Yanine Diaz (1990, Guest speaker; 1991, Guest speaker; 1969, Maintenance Orientation Course)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: First Lieutenant Luis Enrique Andrade Ortiz</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1983, Cadet Arms Orientation Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Massacre of a judicial commission, 1989: Believed to be the intellectual author of the paramilitary massacre of 12 officials, including 2 judges, who were investigating military/paramilitary cooperation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assassination, 1988: Ordered the assassination of farmer Jorge Ramirez, carried out by a military/paramilitary patrol under his command.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assassination, 1988: Ordered the assassination of Jose Sanchez, also carried out by military/paramilitary soldiers under his command. Then he had the corpse put on display for the benefit of the public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ramirez family massacre, 1986: Andrade Ortiz was one of officers in charge of military/paramilitary soldiers who broke into the home of the Ramirez family, killed two members outright; and captured 4 others whose bodies were found later with signs of torture. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Hernan Jose Guzman Rodriguez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1993, SOA "Hall of Fame"; 1969, Maintenance Orientation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Former Commander, Colombian Army, dismissed: With five other top military officers, Guzman Rodriguez was dismissed on November 22, 1994 by President Ernesto Samper. Samper overhauled the military leadership in the hopes of decreasing corruption and drug trafficking in the armed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">forces, and Improving the human rights record of the military. (Reuters, 11/22/94)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paramilitary activity (MAS), 1987-90: Guzman Rodriguez protected and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aided paramilitary death squad MAS between 1987 and 1990, when it was</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">responsible for the deaths of at least 149 people. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EN COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial execution, 1986: Guzman Rodriguez commanded the soldiers who detained, tortured, gang raped and executed Yolanda Acevedo Carvajal - then concocted the story that she committed suicide by shooting herself in the nape of her neck. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Roberto Hernandez Hernandez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1970, Automotive Maintenance Officer;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1976, Tactical Officer, Small Unit Infantry Tactics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Paramilitary activity, 1980-90: Consistently implicated in paramilitary</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">activities in association with members of the extreme right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Torture, 1990: Supervised the illegal detention and torture of 42</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">people, most of whom were union members and human rights workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trujillo massacre, 1990: Implicated in the gruesome killings in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trujillo, in which many victims were dismembered with chain saws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Major Carlos Enrique Martinez Orozco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1975, Guerrilla Warfare Operations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Massacre, 1988: Implicated in the massacre of 18 miners in Antioquia, whose body parts washed in pieces down the river Nare. Mart?nez Orozco was subsequently promoted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paramilitary activity, 1990: Protected a chief paramilitarist responsible for high-profile assassinations; and in June 1992 was charged in a military court for his connection to paramilitaries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Amnesty International Report: Colombia: Political Violence: Myth and Reality; TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Gustavo Pardo Ariza</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1971, Irregular Warfare Operations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Escape of Pablo Escobar, 1992: Pardo was one of three Army officers (two of them SOA graduates) forced into retirement upon the "escape" of Pablo Escobar from prison. Pardo was head of the Fourth Brigade in Medellin; soldiers under his command were supposed to be guarding the prison from which Escobar literally walked away. (Americas Watch Report: State of War Politcal Violence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia, 1993)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Rafael Samudio Molina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1988, SOA "Hall of Fame"; 1970, SOA Guest Instructor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Massacre at the Palace of Justice, November 7, 1985: Oversaw the Army massacre at the Palace of Justice following an attempt by the M-19 to take it over. The Army under his command set the building ablaze, resulting in the needless and horrifying deaths of many of the hostages. Other hostages were killed in Army crossfire, or, as some suspect, direct assassination. Even the hostages who lived through the horrifying ordeal were not safe; some were killed before exiting the palace and others were arrested and disappeared immediately upon leaving the building. Taped conversations between Samudio Molina and his commanders in the building establish that at no time did Samudio Molina act as an agent of the civilian government, but rather used the situation to prove the brutality of the Colombian military and to eliminate individuals, including Supreme Court justices, who were not staunch enough allies of the Colombian Army. (POJ) Samudio Molina has also been implicated in paramilitary activities since 1978. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Farouk Yanine Diaz&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1990, Guest speaker; 1991, Guest speaker; 1969,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maintenance Orientation Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Urabá massacre, 1988: Implicated in the massacre of 20 banana workers in Antioqua in March 1988.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assassination, 1987: Implicated in the assassination of the mayor of Sabana de Torres, Alvaro Garces Parra.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paramilitary activities (MAS), 1984-85: Implicated in paramilitary activities associated with the death squad MAS. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massacre of 19 businessmen, 1987: After an investigation that linked Yanine to this 1987 massacre, the public prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant for Yanine, who was at that time giving classes at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington. Upon return to Colombia, Yanine was detained, but, in a decision criticized by the U.S. State Department, among others, his case was quickly passed to a military court where he was absolved. (Colombia: Derechos humanos y derechos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">humanitarios, Comision Colombiana de Juristas, 1997) According to the 1998 State Department Report on Human Rights in Colombia, “Despite the government’s attempts to bring him to justice in the civilian court system, the military prevailed, continuing the tradition of impunity for all but the lowest-ranking members of the security forces.” According to former SOA instructor Maj. Joseph Blair, Yanine visited the SOA as a guest speaker from 1986 to 1989 on an annual basis and was a close personal friend of US Army Col. Miguel Garcia, who was the commandant of the SOA at the time.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Cadete Ritoalejo del Rio Rojas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Colombia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1967, Cadet Orientation Course&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Paramilitary activity, 1985: Implicated in paramilitary activities, including the theft of an Army weapons shipment. (TERRORISMO DE ESTADO EN COLOMBIA, 1992) In 1999, President Pastrana sent Del Rio into retirement without explanation, at a time when he was under investigation by the federal Prosecutor’s Office for alleged human rights abuses and could face criminal charges. (Miami Herald 4/10/99)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Costa Rica</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Minor Masis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Costa Rica</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1991,Curso Basico para Oficiales de Infanteria (0-20)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Rape and Murder, 1992: This leader of Costa Rica’s former “Comando</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cobra” anti-drug squad is serving a 42-year jail term for rape and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">murder committed during a 1992 drug raid in the South Atlantic Talamanca</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountains. (The Tico Times, 1998)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ECUADOR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Guillermo Rodriguez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Ecuador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Three-time graduate of the SOA, taking courses on topics like Irregular Warfare (1967 Maintenance Management, 1961 C &R & Bn Staff, 26 Aug. 1966 Irregular Warfare Orientation.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Military dictator of Ecuador from February 6, 1972 to January 11, 1976 who took power by leading a coup to exile the previous president.&nbsp; Initiated an extensive seven year period of military rule over Ecuador.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Francisco del Cid Diaz</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 2003, Cadet Troop Leader Training; 1991, Combat Arms Officer Adv. Course; 1988, Infantry Officer Basic Course .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Info: In 1983, Colonel Diaz (then a 2nd Lieutenant) commanded a unit that forcibly removed 16 residents from the Los Hojas cooperative, bound and beat them, shot all 16 at point-blank range and threw their bodies in the Cuyuapa River. This very well known, very high profile and notorious massacre was cited in the annual State Department Human Rights Country Reports throughout the 1980s, and investigated by, and included in the final report of, the El Salvador Truth Commission. The OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that there was substantial evidence that Col. del Cid Diaz gave orders to execute, and recommended that the Salvadoran government bring them to justice. Instead of facing justice, Col. del Cid Diaz was at the SOA/ WHINSEC in 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Captain Roberto D'Aubuisson</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1972, Communications Officer Course (Chief Off Communication 0 – 20)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Romero assassination, 1980: Planned and ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, beloved champion of the poor in El Salvador. Death Squad Organizer, 1978-1992: Organized El Salvador's death squad network. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Jose Guillermo Garcia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1962 - CIO, Counterinsurgency Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: El Mozote massacre, 1981: Then-defense minister Garcia, and the Armed Forces High Command, refused to investigate reports that hundreds of unarmed civilians were brutally murdered by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion in the Morazon province in December of 1981. The reports turned out to be true.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Murder of U.S. Churchwomen, 1980: Garcia also failed to launch a serious investigation of the murder of 4 U.S. church women by members of the Salvadoran National Guard in December 1980. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993) Later granted residency in the U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These events occurred in the course of an anti-guerrilla action known as "Operación Rescate" in which, in addition to the Atlacatl Battalion, units from the Third Infantry Brigade and the San Francisco Gotera Commando Training Centre took part. In the course of "Operación Rescate", massacres of civilians also occurred in the following places: 11 December, more than 20 people in La Joya canton; 12 December, some 30 people in the village of La Ranchería; the same day, by units of the Atlacatl Battalion, the inhabitants of the village of Los Toriles; and 13 December, the inhabitants of the village of Jocote Amarillo and Cerro Pando canton. More than 500 identified victims perished at El Mozote and in the other villages. Many other victims have not been identified. (“From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador” Truth Commission Report for El Salvador, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios (deceased)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1966, Parachute Rigger Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: El Mozote massacre, 1981: Commander of the brutal Atlacatl battalion, which massacred hundreds of unarmed men, women and children in and around El Mozote in December 1991. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other officers in command of the Atlacatl Battalionl include SOA graduates: Commanding Officer: Major (now Colonel) Natividad de Jesús Cáceres Cabrera (1970, General Supply Officer Course); Chief of Operations: (deceased) Major José Armando Azmitia Melara (1967, Cadet Orientation Course); Company Commanders: (now Colonel) Juan Ernesto Méndez Rodríguez (1970, Cadet Course); (deceased) Roberto Alfonso Mendoza Portillo (1980, Supply/Human Rights Course); (now Lieutenant Colonel) José Antonio Rodríguez Molina (1972, Combat Arms/Support Services), (now Lieutenant Colonel) Captain Walter Oswaldo Salazar (1974 Basis in Engineering for Officers) and (currently a fugitive from justice) José Alfredo Jiménez (1971, Cadet Course). (“From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador” Truth Commission Report for El Salvador, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Rafael Humberto Larios</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Command and General Staff course at the SOA in 1977.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Jesuits massacre (1989): Held the rank of General and was Minister of Defense at the time. Was present at meetings where the orders were given and discussed.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Juan Rafael Bustillo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: CIO Orientation course at the SOA in August of 1965</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Jesuits massacre (1989): Held the rank of general and was commander of the Salvadoran Air Force at the time of the massacre. Participated in the meetings where orders were given for the massacre.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Juan Orlando Zeped</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1975, Urban Counterinsurgency Ops.; 1969, Unnamed Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Jesuit massacre, 1989: Planned the assassination of 6 Jesuit priests and covered-up the massacre, which also took the lives of the priests' housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other war crimes, 1980's: The Non-Governmental Human Rights Commission in El Salvador also cites Zepeda for involvement in 210 summary executions, 64 tortures, and 110 illegal detentions. (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Member of the “La Tandona” and held the rank of colonel and served as the Vice Minister of Defense at the time of the massacre. Prior to the massacre he publicly accused the UCA of being the center of operations for the FMLN and was present for the meetings where orders were given for the massacre. He was later promoted to the rank of general.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: El Salvador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1970, Engineer Officer Course</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Jesuit massacre, 1989: Was in on the planning of the massacre, and cooperated in the cover-up. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Held the rank of colonel and was a Vice Minister in the Salvadoran government at the time of the massacre. Prior to the massacre he publicly accused the Jesuits of being aligned with subversive movements and was present for the meetings where orders were given for the massacre.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other SOA graduates who were compicit to the 1989 Jesuit massacre are:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">•&nbsp; Colonel Francisco Elena Fuentes – held the rank of colonel and was the commander of the First Infantry Brigade in San Salvador at the time of the massacre. He was present for the meetings where orders were given for the massacre, and one day after the killings, troops from his First Infantry Brigade attempted to intimidate members of San Salvador’s Archdiocese by transmitting messages over loudspeakers saying, “We are still killing communists, Ellacuría and Martín-Baró have fallen, surrender, this is the First Brigade.” Fuentes took the Irregular warfare course at the SOA in 1969, a second course in 1973, and was invited to the SOA to be an instructor in 1985.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">•&nbsp; Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Camilo Hernández Barahona – held the rank of major and was the interim Assistant Dean at the Military College in El Salvador at the time of the massacre and later promoted to lieutenant colonel. On the night of November 15, 1989, he was present when Benavides informed the officers at the Military College of the order he had been given to murder Ellacuría and remained silent when asked by Benavides if anyone objected to the order. Later, Benavides ordered Hernández Barahona to organize and plan the operation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hernández Barahona organized and attended the meeting where the orders were given for the massacre. He also handed over an AK-47 rifle that had been captured from the FMLN and told them to use it in the massacre. The use of the FMLN AK-47 would serve to point blame away from the Armed Forces and toward the FMLN. Additionally, Hernández Barahona ordered them to leave behind at the murder site propaganda mentioning the FMLN.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hernández Barahona was also involved in the cover up, by taking part in the burning of a small suitcase containing photographs, documents and money which the soldiers had stolen from the Jesuits. In conjunction with Benavides he ordered that all Military College arrival and departure logs for that year and the previous year be burned. This was done to prevent investigators from learning who had attended the meetings held at the Military College at the time the murders of the Jesuits were being planned and ordered. He attended the SOA twice in both 1972 and 1975.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">•&nbsp; Second Lieutenant Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos – held the rank of Second Lieutenant and was assigned to the Atlacatl Battalion at the time of the massacre. He was not the commander of the unit, but was an officer with command authority over the troops that carried out the massacre. He was sentenced to three years for instigation and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism for his role in the Jesuits massacre and was later released and continued active service in the armed forces. Cerritos came to the U.S. in 2005 and was employed in Los Angeles. He was deported back to El Salvador in April 2007. He attended the SOA in 1988.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">•&nbsp; Sergeant Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas – was a sergeant in the Salvadoran Army and was assigned to the Atlacatl Battalion at the time of the massacre. In the 1991-1992 trial he admitted to killing Fathers López and Moreno. He was not convicted. He attended the SOA in 1988.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biographies courtesy of the Center for Justice and Accountability's website. You can access the full biographies here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guatemala</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Efrain Rios Montt&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Guatemala</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1950</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Former dictator of Guatemala who seized power in a coup in 1982.&nbsp; Two Truth Commissions documented widespread human rights abuses by his regime including rape, torture, executions and acts of genocide against the populace, including indigenous population through a scorched earth campaign.&nbsp; Conservative estimates cite 200,000 Guatemalans being killed.&nbsp; His regime was supported by U.S. aid and President Ronald Reagan declared during a meeting with Ríos Montt on December 4, 1982: "President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. ... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Guatemala</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in the 1960’s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Arrested in January 2000 for involvement in the death of Guatemalan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi in 1998 as part of continuing concerns about SOA graduates undermining peace and justice throughout Latin America.&nbsp; Bishop Gerardi was murdered in April 1998 just two days after he released a report accusing the Guatemalan military for most of the human rights abuses committed during the country’s civil conflict.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Does not appear in the SOA Grads Database, but appears in other sources)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Pedro Pimentel Ríos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Guatemala</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Following on the heels of an earlier conviction in the case of the 1982 Dos Erres massacre, SOA-trained Pedro Pimentel Ríos was sentenced to 6,060 years for his role in the killings of 201 people. After his participation in the massacre, Ríos left to become an instructor at the School of the Americas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Does not appear in the SOA Grads Database, but appears in other sources)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Otto Perez Molina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Guatemala</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: 1985, Command and General Staff College (Commandant's List) Assassination, 1994: Chief of the G-2 (military intelligence) and on the payroll of the CIA, Perez Molina was in charge in 1994, when the General Staff was implicated in the assassination of Judge Edgar Ramiro Elias Ogaldez. (Allan Nairn, The Nation, 4/17/95)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Haiti</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Gambetta Hyppolite</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Haiti</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1959, Policia Militar para Alistados</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Ordered his soldiers to fire against the Provincial Electoral Bureau, 1987: During the 1987 elections, Col. Gambetta Hippolite ordered his soldiers to fire on the Provincial Electoral Bureau in Gonaives as part of a larger army campaign to "stop the democratic elections". (Americas Watch Report: Human Rights in Haiti, 1987)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Colonel Franck Romain</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Haiti</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1956, MP Officer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: St. Jean Bosco Massacre: On Sept. 11, 1988, armed men broke into the St. Jean Bosco church while Fr. Jean Bertrand Aristide was saying mass and killed 12 parishioners and wounded at least 77. The doused the church in gasoline and set it on fire. Witnesses identified at least two of the gang members as deputies of Col. Romain, who was then Mayor of Port-au- Prince. Col. Romain later publicly justified the massacre as legitimate. (Americas Watch Report: Human Rights in Haiti, 1987)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Honduras</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Romeo Orlando Vásquez Velásquez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Honduras&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Took a combat arms course at SOA in 1976 and another course on small military units in 1984&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Four out of the six Honduran soldiers who were accused by Honduran officials as responsible for flying President Zelaya out of the country during the June 2009 coup were SOA trained, including General Velasquez, head of the of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran military, who was aided by another SOA graduate, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, the head of the Honduran Air Force (who took a 1996 course on joint operations).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Policarpo Paz García, head of the 1980-1982 dictatorial regime</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Honduras</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Communications course, 1956 and General officer course, 1959</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: “Paz Garcia, whom the U.S. Army installed into SOA’s ‘Hall of Fame’ ten years later. Paz Garcia’s tenure was also marked by brutal military repression and the formation of Battalion 3-16, a military death squad that worked closely with the CIA in targeting suspected leftists in the ’80s. Paz Garcia’s military commander was another SOA grad, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, who ran 3-16 and ordered the execution of Fr. James Carney, a U.S. missionary to Honduras.”&nbsp; (National Catholic Reporter, June 2009)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mexican graduates of the School of the Americas have played a key role in the “low-intensity conflict” in the States of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca.&nbsp; (Nuevo Amanecer Press and Covert Action Quarterly).&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least 13 top military officials involved in the conflict are SOA grads, including:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Col. Harold B. Rambling Torres (1972 – irrefular Warfare Ops. O-6), Brig. Gen. Carmelo Teheran Montero (1972, Military Intelligence 0-11) Col. Jose Luis Ruvalcaba&nbsp; (1975 Jungle Operations OE -8), Brig. Gen. Carlos Demetrio Gaytan Ochoa (1981, Administracion/Recursos 0-17), Col. German Antonio Bautista (1994, Curso de Comando y Estado mayor para Oficiales 0-3), Capitan 1 Gaston Menchaca Arias (1971, Operaciones de Guerra Irregular 0-6),&nbsp; Mayor Miguel Leyva Garcia (1971), Mayor Enrique Alonso Garrido (Nov. 1981, Administracion/Recursos 0-17), TCNEL Manuel Garcia Ruiz (1980, Operaciones Conjuntas – America Latina 0-16), TCNEL Adrian Maldonado Ramirez (1978, Operaciones Conjuntas 0 – 16, 1979, Operaciones Conjuntas – America Latina 0 – 16), Coronel Edmundo Elpidio Leyva Galindo&nbsp; (1978, Operaciones Conjuntas 0 -16, 1979, Operaciones Conjuntas – America Latina 0 -16), Renato Garcia Gonzalez, TCNEL Jose Ruben Rivas Pena (see below)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More documentation here: http://www.soaw.org/old/article.php?id=242</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zetas: An October 22, 2003 article in The Brownsville Herald (TX) reported that the notorious Gulf Drug Cartel has hired 31 ex-Mexican soldiers to be part of its hired assassin force, The Zetas. According to the Mexican secretary of defense, at least 1/3 of these deserters were trained at the SOA as part of the elite Special Air Mobile Force Group. Their highly specialized and dangerous weapons, training, and intelligence capabilities are now being used to increase the availability of the drugs and terrorize the region. The Mexican attorney general’s office implicates them in dozens of shootouts, kidnappings and executions of police officers.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Mayor Miguel Leyva Garcia&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 15 Mar. – 17 Dec. 1971</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Leyva Garcia was complicit (together with Gastón Menchaca Arias, having attended an Irregular Warfare Operations Course at the SOA) in the actions against the EZLN revolt in Chiapas in January, 1994. Leyva Garcia also became “famous” in human rights violation reports in the state of Guerrero as a military commander in the action against the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: (retired) Lieutenant Coronel Julian Leyzaola Pérez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1997, Administration of resources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: The current Ciudad Juarez chief of police, is a graduate of the SOA, and has been accused by the UNHCR of arbitrary detention, excessive violence and torture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Jose Ruben Rivas Pena</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1980, Comando y Estado Mayor&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Called for the formation of paramilitary groups: Rivas Pena wrote the army’s “Campaign Plan Chiapas 94” which calls for the “training and support for self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations.” (NACLA Report on the Americas). Rivas Pena is also credited with saying: “The Vatican is the indirect cause of the conflict in Chiapas, which is directly sponsored by a contaminated current of Liberation Theology.” (Nuevo Amanecer Press)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Juan Lopez Ortiz&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Mexico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: 1959, Infantry Arms; 1959, Infantry Tactics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Ocosingo Massacre, 1994: Troops under his command massacred five persons</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the Ocosingo market; the prisoners’ hands were tied behind their</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">backs before the soldiers shot them in the back of the head (Covert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Action Quarterly)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Panama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Manuel Noriega</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Panama</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Five time SOA graduate, including courses in Jungle Operations and Counter-Intelligence in 1965 and 1967 (1965 – Jungle Operations, 1967 Infantry Officer 0 -7, 1967 Jungle Operations OE – 8, 1967, Counter Intelligence Officer Course MI-Phase II, 1967 Combat Intell Off O-11A)&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989.&nbsp; He was on the CIA payroll while heavily involved in the drug trade.&nbsp; He was tried in court for 8 separate counts of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering in the early 1990’s, convicted of murder charges, an extradited to France in April 2010 and is now serving another prison sentence. The 1988 Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations concluded that "The saga of Panama's General Manuel Antonio Noriega represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paraguay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Roberto Knofelmacher</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Paraguay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1954</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: General Knofelmacher was accused of being the “autor moral” of assassinations in Paraguay.&nbsp; On July 12, 1996, peasant leaders Arsenio Vazquezy and Mariano Diaz were murdered by employees of a firm owned by Gen. Knofelmacher. The murders were followed by the destruction of the homes and the forcible removal of peasant families from a piece of land claimed by Knofelmacher. The peasants have brought suit against Knofelmacher as responsible for the assassinations. (Informe de Derechos Humanos en Paraguay)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Alejandro Fretes Davalos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Paraguay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1956</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Fretes Davalos was a member of military intelligence and participated in Operation Condor, which coordinated the efforts of Southern Cone military regimes to arrest, imprison, torture, and “repatriate” the opponents of the different regimes. (Es Mi Informe, 1994)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peru</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Telmo Hurtado</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Peru</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended Arms Orientation courses from 1981-1982 during the height of military repression</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Accused of perpetrating the August 14, 1985 massacre of 69 children, women and men in the village of Accomarca while they commanded four military brigades that carried out the executions.&nbsp; Hurtado separated the children and women of the village from the men so that his unit could rape them, then ordered them into buildings which he set on fire, burning them alive. (Some info cited here: http://www.cja.org/article.php?list=type&type=80) Hurtado was sentenced to 6 years in prison for "abuse of authority." A U.S. State Department report released in February 1994 said that Hurtado was freed and returned to active duty, a testament to the impunity enjoyed by most of the Peruvian military. Americas Watch reports he has since been promoted to captain. (Americas Watch Report: Untold Terror: Violence Against Women in Peru’s Armed Conflict, 1992; Latinamerica Press, 1/24/94).&nbsp; He was arrested by ICE in the United States in 2006 after fleeing Peru.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Peru</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the Cadet course at the SOA in 1965</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Former Chief of Intelligence who allegedly ran the “Colina death squads” linked to the La Cantuta murders and disappearances.&nbsp; (Americas Watch Report: Anatomy of a Cover-up: The Disappearances at La Canuta, 1993) Four officers tortured after plotting a coup against Fujimori in November 1992 state that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them. (Americas Watch Report: Human Rights in Peru: One Year After Fujimori’s Coup, 1993)&nbsp; He was sentenced 15 years in prison for numerous corruption convictions, and then sentenced to six more years in prison for using government money to fund former President Fujimori’s 2000 campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Uruguay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Captain Luis Alfredo Maurente</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Uruguay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1969 and 1976, with curriculum that included Military Intelligence courses</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Uruguay’s Justice Department sought extradition for Maurente for his involvement in the clandestine Automotores Orletti detention center, which operated in Buenos Aires, Argetina during the 1970’s. Maurente was part of the Defense Intelligence Services and, together with three other ex-military officers, faces charges for the disappearances of close to 100 Uruguayan and Argentinean citizens, kidnapping and illicit association.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More information cited here: http://www.soaw.org/old/article.php?id=1408</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Venezuela</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: Army Commander in Chief Efrain Vasquez and General Ramirez Poveda</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Venezuela</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1988; 1972</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: Both Vasquez and Poveda helped to lead a failed coup in Venezuela in April of 2002, despite supposedly receiving training at the SOA that encourages respect for democracy and civilian governments.&nbsp; Otto Reich, then Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, shared his support for the coup and a new government, and in the same year was appointed as a WHINSEC Board of Visitor member to “oversee” democracy and human rights curriculum, as well as operations at the school.&nbsp; Reich met with these SOA graduates prior to the coup and advised business leader Pedro Carmona, who subsequently seized the presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Name: General Ramon Davila Guillen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Country: Venezuela</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dates/courses: Attended the SOA in 1967 for Irregular Warfare training</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Info: General Guillen was indicted in November 1996 in connection with a shipment of one ton of cocaine into Miami in 1990, which he says was authorized by the CIA in an effort to catch drug dealers. In 1993, the CIA called the shipment "a regrettable incident" and dismissed the CIA agent involved. (CAP, 9/21/97)&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div>
</div></div></div>