Venezuela fires the "School of the Americas"

Catholic New Times, June 6, 2004

In a move that illustrates the growing divide between Latin American nations and the U.S., Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced that all training of Venezuelan soldiers at the School of the Americas (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Georgia will cease.

The controversial U.S. military combat training school for Latin American soldiers in Fort Benning graduates officers who have been found responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

Chavez met in January with Fr. Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the School of Americas Watch in a meeting set up by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concern and the Medical Mission Sisters' Alliance for Justice. In April, the ban was reaffirmed. Venezuela had previously sent over 4,000 officers to train at Ft. Benning.

In 1996, the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Chavez stated: "This school deformed the minds of many Latin American soldiers, who from there went on to become dictators."

Hugo Chavez had first hand experience with SOA graduates in April 2002, when a 48-hour coup threatened to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.

SOA graduates Efrain Vasquez Velasco (the Army Commander in Chief) and General Ramirez Poveda were key players in the attempted coup, which was denounced by many Latin American governments. The U.S. ambassador in Caracas, however, was quick to embrace the coup leaders and content to see Hugo Chavez, a duly elected president, in exile. Such involvement by SOA graduates follows a clear pattern, as recognized by former Congressman Joseph Kennedy, who stated "The School of the Americas is a school that has trained more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." In total, the school has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, the SOA was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca stated that the School of the Americas was the "biggest base for destabilization in Latin America."

Over its 58 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency techniques, sniper skills, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. Graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, unionists, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into refuge by those trained at the SOA. Some of its most notorious grads participated in the Salvadoran assassinations of six Jesuits and Archbishop Oscar Romero.

The School of the Americas continues to be a "key element of U.S. foreign policy"--a foreign policy that is using military repression to ensure U.S. control. The official SOA line, that the school is "promoting democracy, human rights and civilian control of government" has too many times been contradicted by the actions of its graduates.