Latin America and the Global War on Terror
Since 9/11, a seismic shift has occurred in U.S. foreign policy – not so much in its objectives, or even in its practice, but rather what was done secretly and denied is now done openly and justified. In the words of Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, “U.S. support for brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the name of anticommunism caused great suffering: the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile; the Central American wars in the 1980s and their high body counts. These Latin American grievances were balanced by a perception that the U.S. never formally renounced the principles of international law and the hope that it would reaffirm them again.”
That hope, however, has dramatically changed-and even more now with the reelection of President Bush in November, 2004: “What Latin Americans find so shocking about the Bush Administration [is that] instead of multilateralism, unilateralism. Instead of diplomacy and negotiation, a search for consensus and the use of force only as a last resort, the barbaric principle of preventive war… What is alarming is its formal denunciation of the basic rules of international intercourse. With us or against us, President Bush declares starkly and simplistically….” (Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2004)
Increasingly, U.S. training of Latin American military is forming part of the “Global War on Terror.” Beginning in 2003, many Latin American governments were urged by the United States to join the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq. Only a handful of governments, however, joined. Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Domincan Republic all sent troops to Iraq, ranging from 115 to 380 troops. Honduras and Nicaragua have since brought their soldiers home; only El Salvador decided to renew its mission.
These measures were highly unpopular with the people of Central America; undoubtedly, the governments of these countries hope to curry favor with the U.S. government in exchange for favorable trade and immigration agreements (September’s Shadow: Post-9/11 U.S.-Latin American Relations, LAWG).
Since the attacks of 9/11 and the initiation of a “Global War on Terror,” the United States has increased its military training and spending for Latin America. According to the U.S. Foreign Military Training Report, the U.S. military trained 22,855 Latin Americans in fiscal year 2003, a 52 percent increase over 2002. Most of those increases occurred in Colombia, where the U.S. and Colombian governments have united behind “Plan Colombia” to fight a decades-old war against the guerrilla insurgency and protect U.S. vital interests under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers.
In 1999, 2,476 Colombian military were trained by the United States; four years later, the number had increased more than tenfold to 28,200, nearly half of the 65,941 Latin American military trained in 2003 (Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S. Military Programs with Latin America, LAWG/CIP/WOLA).
“In the months before the passage by the United States in 2000 of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion antidrug initiative, members of Congress hotly debated whether involvement in Colombia could lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire. ‘The main concern is two years from now: what is going to stop them from coming back for more, until Colombia becomes one of our most serious military commitments,’ Adam Isaacson [a senior analyst at the Center for International Policy] said, referring to American military planners” (NYT, October 11, 2004).
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has continued to increase military aid to Latin America, calling for $859 million in military aid, nearly equal to its $921 million economic aid package for the region.
Survivors, Families of the Victims Speak Out
In past years, survivors and family members of victims in Latin America killed by graduates of the School of the Americas came to Ft. Benning to share their stories: Rufina Amaya-the only survivor of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, where more than 700 men, women and children were killed by SOA graduates in the Atlacatl Battalion; and Adriana Portillo-Bartow-whose 18-month-old baby sister Alma, 9-year-old daughter, 12-year-old daughter, stepfather and mother were disappeared and killed by SOA graduates-have spoken on numerous occasions and called for the closing of the school.
This year was no exception, as Colombian trade unionists, Mayan Indians from Guatemala, Salvadoran torture victims, and children of the disappeared in Argentina also denounced the present and past killings. Eva, one of many children belonging to a group called “Hijos,” (Sons and Daughters), spoke most eloquently of the pain that accompanies the survivors and their families:
In 1977, Eva’s mother was kidnapped in front of her and her little sister and brother in the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her mother was shot in legs, dragged into the car, and taken away.
“I still remember her eyes. I was 4 years old the last time I saw her eyes. She was asking me to be her memory. She was asking me to continue the struggle she started. So that is why we are here today.
“We are the sons and daughters of the disappeared. We are the sons and daughters of the people who had to leave their countries for their beliefs. We are the sons and daughters of the people who have been imprisoned for their beliefs.
“We are the voice of our parents – we want to keep the memory of our parents alive.
“We want to walk with all of you to the gates of the school and close it down. Let show the whole world that we can close this school down.
“No to war, no to torture, no to violence.”
Victims Organize Against Military Impunity
Probably the most celebrated victories in recent years against military impunity was the historic decision by a Fresno, California court holding Alvaro Saravia responsible for his role in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Until then, no single individual has been held responsible for the assassination, committed while Romero was celebrating mass on March 24, 1980. The judge in that case order Saravia to pay $10 million to the plaintiff, a relative of the Archbishop.
Another significant victory was that achieved in a civil court in West Palm Beach, Florida, by three Salvadorans against Generals Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, both graduates of the SOA and in power in El Salvador during the worst repression and torture in the early 1980s. The two generals were ordered by a Florida court two years ago to pay millions of dollars of damages to the three plaintiffs. One of those awarded damages was Neris Gonzales, of the Stop Impunity Project.
“In the year 2002 we were able to bring to justice two of the generals responsible for massacres tortures and disappearances here, people who were trained here at the School of the Americas: General Garcia and General Vides Casanova.
“I had to be in court facing them, looking at them, telling people about the way I was tortured. About the way my unborn child was killed in my womb, in the same way that so many people in El Salvador were massacred. It was in the court in West Palm Beach in Florida.
“So I want to tell you that there is justice. And in this time we sometimes find a little bit of justice for some of the people here who were trained at the School of the Americas who committed so many violations of human rights.
“This is hope seeing so many people here today: this gives us faith. We know we can say no more money for these kinds of schools that teach torture. We need money for the schools that teach our children. Thank you so much for being here at the school of the Americas and for remembering people like my child and so many thousands of children who lost their lives because of the violence committed at the hands of people who studied here at the School of the Americas.”
U.S. Military Families, Veterans Speak Out
Increasingly, those who speak out against the School of the Americas include U.S. military families and veterans of past and current wars. Celeste Zappala is a member of Military Families Speak Out, a group of 1,700 families with loved ones serving in Iraq. Her son Sherwood served in the Pennsylvania National Guard and was killed in Iraq on April 26, 2004.
“If we’re ever to get to peace, we have to tell the truth…. We must recognize that preemptive war and torture are an affront to God. This has been the deadliest month in Iraq and the bitter sisterhood of mothers screaming for their children grows and grows and grows.
“To offer one’s life to protect their homeland, to lay down your life for your friends, is a noble act, and time and again this nobility has been betrayed by our government. So let us not think of our fallen soldiers as just casualties. They were someone’s beloved and they will never touch their face or hear their whispered words of love again.
“Let us not be lulled into thinking of the Iraqis as collateral damage. Think of a mother lying on top of her child to protect her at the first sound of a bomb. Think of a little boy, his hand in the rubble, searching for his brother. Think of the last breath of my son.
“And if all those dead could speak to us now, what would they say? Harden your heart? Kill more? Or would they say Stop! Find a better way?
“I made an oath to Sherwood on that day, in that cemetery [where he is buried] to not to be quiet. And I ask you now too: do not be quiet. Do not let yourself be made cynical with your grief, about this war, about this place [the SOA], about the long struggle ahead.
“Let us be willing to do the hard work of love in the world. Let us strive to do justice, to love mercy, and to be humble people walking with our God.”
SOA an Integral Part of the War on Terror
One question that looms large is, “How significant, really, is the SOA?” Hasn’t the government cleaned up its act, removing the torture manuals and training courses from its curriculum? For more than a decade, now-with the possible exception of Colombia and a “brushfire” in Chiapas in 1994-hasn’t the focus of military activity moved to the Middle East and now the war in Iraq?
These are important questions, and answers to them may have to do with looking at the School of the Americas in the broader context of the “Global War on Terror.” Leslie Gill, author of the new book, “School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence,” writes: “Although the SOA/WHINSEC is an important symbol, it is not the only or the most important institution of its kind. Because of the public scrutiny the movement has brought upon the School, the SOA’s most sinister training practices have been relocated elsewhere. Even if the movement finally closes the SOA/WHINSEC, the imperial policies that spawned the School-as well as the invasions, proxy wars, death squads and right-wing dictatorships that have brutalized the region-will persist. Without ending U.S. imperial policy and dismantling its full infrastructure, the rights of Latin Americans will continue to be flouted….
“The assaults of September 11 unleashed the self-righteous fury of the United States and bolstered its institutions for teaching, controlling and dispensing violence. The ‘War on Terror’ has no foreseeable end and provides new justification for re-mapping the globe in accordance with U.S. interests, whatever the costs” (NACLA Report on the Americas, September/October 2004).
In fact, the Bush Administration has tried hard to advance its national security agenda throughout the world, in the wake of 9/11. Within two weeks after September 11th, the administration was seeking “to erase decades of human rights legislation and to cast the U.S. response to 9/11 as broadly as possible. The White House sent a bill to Congress that would have lifted all restrictions on military aid and arms transfers on any country for the next five years where necessary to help fight terrorism” (September’s Shadow: Post-9/11 U.S.-Latin America Relations, LAWG).
Fortunately, a divided Congress refused to pass the bill as it was presented, raising its concerns about human rights. But who is to say that the current Republican-dominated Congress might not set aside human rights concerns in the interest of “national security” and the “Global War on Terror.” “In Latin America, the lifting of sanctions could potentially have affected Guatemala and Colombia. Guatemala had a ban on military aid in place since 1990, while Colombia had a certification attached to its military aid” (September’s Shadow).
Corporate Globalization by Military Means
The other half of the question about whether the significance of the SOA has not diminished since 9/11 is the question of globalization-and here it is important to add the qualifier “corporate” globalization-because in effect, what drives globalization-whether it be issues of free trade, patent rights on biodiversity, genetically modified seeds, or privatization of natural resources like water, minerals, timber or public services like health care, education and culture, or the stripping of local and national governments of the power to protect the rights of their people and the environment-is corporate greed for power.
In recent years, the School of the Americas Watch has made a concerted effort to make the connections between “guns, greed and globalization”-and the training of Latin American militaries to protect U.S. corporate interests in the region while combatting social movements struggling for economic justice and democratic participation in civil society.
At the same time, social movements in Latin America and throughout the world, under the umbrella of “Another World is Possible,” have continued to build alternatives to corporate globalization and militarization of their societies, and to resist debt slavery, free trade, and the spread of U.S. military bases in their lands. Two months prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil successfully called for a worldwide mobilization against the impending war. A month later, on February 15, more than ten million people marched in the major capitals of the world against the war.
“We are a global solidarity movement, united in our determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of the earth…. This system produces a daily drama of women, children, and the elderly dying because of hunger, lack of health care and preventable diseases. Families are forced to leave their homes because of wars, the impact of ‘big development,’ landlessness and environmental disasters, unemployment, attacks on public services and the destruction of social solidarity….
“September 11 marked a dramatic change…. In the name of the ‘war against terrorism,’ civil and political rights are being attacked all over the world…. There is the beginning of a permanent global war to cement the domination of the U.S. government and its allies. The war reveals another face of neoliberalism, a face which is brutal and unacceptable. Islam is being demonized, while racism and xenophobia are deliberately propagated. The mass media is actively taking part in this belligerent campaign which divides the world into ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The opposition to the war is at the heart of our movement” (Call of the Social Movements, World Social Forum, 2002).
The movement to close the School of the Americas is as vital as ever. And its significance should not be underestimated. The times call for social movements to diversify and grow, as the power to wage war, justify torture and disregard basic human rights continues to form part of the current Bush Administration foreign policy. “Both in the South and in the North,” the call of the social movements concludes, “vibrant struggles and resistance to uphold the dignity of life are flourishing.” The movement to close the School of the Americas continues to be key part of that resistance. And its message is very simple: “No to war, no to torture, no to violence.”
