The School of the Americas was founded in 1946 with the aim of improving ties with Latin American militaries, training them, and instilling a "respect for human rights and democracy in... a region traditionally plagued by military rule and repression." It was assigned the Cold War goal of teaching "anti-communist" counterinsurgency training to military personnel of Latin American countries.
Though the goal of this school appeared civil enough, a training manual released by the Pentagon recommended interrogations like torture, execution, blackmail, and targeting the relatives of those being questioned. A curriculum like this resulted in a handful of graduates becoming some of Latin America's most notorious strongmen of the 1970s and 80s including drug dealing dictator, Manuel Noriega, and Roberto D'Aubuisson who organized many of El Salvador's death squads. Others were involved in the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, the El Mozote massacre that resulted in 900 deaths, and the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
In 2000, the school was shut down but reopened in the same location on January 17, 2001. This time around, they were run by the Defense Department rather than the Army and named the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." Classes were reported to now focus on peacekeeping, disaster relief, and counterdrug operations rather than Cold War training in counterinsurgency. In addition, now that the school is run by the Defense Department, students can come from outside the military (e.g. police departments and civilian government agencies).
In 2007, a bill was proposed to defund the school but was narrowly defeated. The school is still in operation.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/opinion/school-of-the-dictators.html
https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81917&page=1
http://www.benning.army.mil/Tenant/WHINSEC/
It is interesting that this school originally taught some dark things, such as torture. It is also interesting that this resulted in some of the students becoming drug lords or other strongmen. However, after being reopened it taught things such as peacekeeping and disaster relief.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting how the school taught torture and execution, because it shows how big of a threat Americans perceived communism to be during that time. Even though those things would be considered immoral to teach from a modern perspective, it reveals how fighting communism was the number-one priority, and how people were willing to sacrifice morals to do so. This is also similar to McCarthyism, seeing as how people would sacrifice the morality of defending those wrongfully accused in fear of allowing communists to infiltrate the US.
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