By Scott Wright
Once again, thousands of people from all walks of life converged on the School of the Americas/WHINSEC to call for the closing of the U.S. military’s school to train Latin America’s armies. This year, too, marked the 20th anniversary of the assassination of the six Jesuit priests from El Salvador, their housekeeper and her daughter, all killed by graduates of the School of the Americas.
This year also marks the first year of the protest under the new administration of President Barack Obama. If the last six months are any indication of an Obama foreign policy for Latin America, the signs are not very encouraging.
It has been nearly five months since the June 28 military coup in Honduras, in which the democratically elected President Zelaya was forcibly removed by the Honduran military. Honduras is one of the biggest clients of the School of the Americas.
Despite an initial, hesitant response from President Obama calling for the restoration of President Zelaya to office, efforts by the U.S. State Department have all but undermined the restoration of democracy in Honduras. From an initial refusal to characterize the coup as a “military coup,” to brokering an agreement that effectively legitimized the coup government and failed to restore President Zelaya to office, it is clear that Obama’s stance toward Honduras is ambiguous at best, to complicit in recognizing elections that take place in a climate of repression.
Of even greater concern is the failure of the President Obama and the State Department to condemn the military repression in Honduras, resulting in hundreds of deaths, disappearances and torture of non-violent social movement activists and the silencing of freedom of the press and attacks on freedom of peaceful assembly.
In the past several decades, over 64,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained in combat skills and psychological warfare at the SOA/WHINSEC. Graduates of the school have been consistently involved in human rights abuses, torture and atrocities in Latin America, and include the assassins of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and daughter, and the four U.S. church women in El Salvador.
The CIA’s “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual” was used by the U.S.-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16 during the 1980s, and its “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare” manual was employed by Nicaragua contras seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government during the same time period (NCR, November 5, 2004). Similar torture manuals were used for at least a decade to train Latin American soldiers at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Ft. Benning in Georgia.
On many fronts, supporters of President Obama are beginning to wonder if he has a firm commitment to human rights. And if he does, why he has been silent about the severe repression in Honduras.
Of equal concern are unilateral actions undertaken by the U.S. government in signing a treaty that gives the U.S. access to seven military bases in Colombia. Like Honduras, Colombia is one of the biggest clients of the School of the Americas and has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere.
The signing of the U.S. – Colombia base treaty happened despite protests from Senators Leahy and Dodd to Secretary of State Clinton that Congress was not consulted. Latin American nations as well are concerned that the mandate for the bases goes beyond controlling drug-trafficking and includes establishing a regional base in Latin America for the U.S. to intervene in the affairs of other sovereign nations.
If Honduras and Colombia are any indication of President Obama’s foreign policy toward Latin America, it appears that geo-political interests will trump any concern for human rights, just as anti-communism trumped human rights under the Reagan administration.
And the School of the Americas under President Obama will continue to play the role it has played under previous administrations, beginning with President Reagan in the 1980s when tens of thousands of people were killed in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia by graduates of the SOA.
