School Of Assassins Essay, Research Paper

Due to the incredible amounts of human rights violations committed by graduates

of the School of the Americas as a direct effect of their training funded by

U.S. tax dollars, the School of the Americas must be closed down. The school is

a cold war dinosaur that needs to be brought to the attention of the American

taxpaying public. The people of our nation need to be aware that every time they

get a paycheck, they are contributing to the oppression and killing of the

indigenous peoples of Latin America by their own leaders. The School of Americas

was formed in 1946 in Panama. It was originally formed so that the United States

would have ties in Central America to keep Castro under control in Cuba. In

1984, the school moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. The students at the school are

taught counterinsurgency tactics such as combat skills, sniper fire, military

intelligence, commando tactics, and psychological operations. Recent revelations

have shown that the school also actively teaches torture tactics. In September

of 1996, the Pentagon, under intense social pressure, released SOA training

manuals that were previously unavailable to the public. A group called the Latin

America Working Group issued a translated copy of the manuals. The manuals

recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail, and

arresting the relatives of parties involved. They suggested the use of truth

serums on prisoners to get them to answer questions. The manuals recommend the

infiltration of work unions, political parties, youth groups, religious groups,

and all other organizations subversive to the national government (Fact Sheet).

The governments of these nations recognize anyone who promotes social change and

betterment as a terrorist threat. "One manual describes 60’s activist Tom

Hayden, currently a California State Senator, as ?one of the masters of

terrorist planning.’ It is precisely this identification of activist for social

change as terrorists that led death squads to kill thousands of religious

leaders, students, union members and human rights activists" (Haugaard 15)

These manuals and recommendations hardly seem to be in line with the democratic

seed that the U.S. government is supposedly trying to sow in Latin America. In

the 70’s when Nixon spyed on and infiltrated an opposing political party, he

came up under impeachment chrges. This was a very serious ordeal, but the United

States is promoting this behavior in other countries (Latin America Working

Group). Our country that we believe is the noble protecter of the world is

involved in some of the greatest massacres in the history of Latin America. The

soldiers are trained to fight insurgents, but what insurgents are left in the

poverty-stricken culture of Latin America? The only insurgents now are the

religious leaders and the poor people who want to take a stand for what should

be theirs. The rich and powerful in Latin American nations want to keep their

wealth and status. They don’t want to give the poor citizens of their nation

anything. When the poor rise up to try and alter the position they’re in, the

military rulers are ready to squash their efforts by any means necessary. There

have been many cases in the last twenty years of massacres and assassinations of

religious leaders whose only threat was that of the empowerment of the poor. The

military accused the leaders as heads of guerilla movements and executed them. A

prime example of a religious leader who fought for the betterment of his people

was Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. He spoke out against the violence

against and oppression of the poor. He had and seen enough and was taking a

stand. He made a plea over a radio station which broadcast throughout Latin

America asking the governments to stop the killing and oppression. The very next

day, while performing mass, he was assassinated by a graduate of the SOA

("School of Assassins." 2) Another example of martyrs slain by

graduates of the SOA were three nuns and a layworker who were abducted, raped,

and murdered in El Salvador on December 2, 1980. They were Ita Ford, Dorothy

Kazel, Maura Clarke, and Jean Donovan. They were in El Salvador to work with the

poor. These were four women. They were not a threat to the government except

that they were attempting to elevate the poor. Recently the four soldiers who

were imprisoned for the murders indicated that they were following orders from

above. This means that the actual perpetrators were the upper echelon commanders

that ordered the attack. It has come to the light that General Jose Guillermo

Garcia and Colonel Carlos Eugenio Vides Cassanova, both graduates of the School

of Americas, had organized an official cover up that made it seem as though the

four soldiers had acted independently. Both of these men today live in Florida

and have not been charged with the murders (Rohter 1). Yet another example of

the brutality of SOA graduates is the slaying of six Jesuit leaders and their

cook and her daughter on November 16, 1989. The Jesuits and the two other

victims were on the campus of the University of Central America when 26

Salvadoran soldiers came onto the complex and murdered them execution style. The

soldiers bashed out their brains and spread them next to the corpses as a final

act of indignity. These men were there to educate the poor and the women were

there simply to seek refuge from the fighting in the city they had fled. Of the

26 soldiers implicated in the massacre, 19 were trained with U.S. tax dollars at

the School of Americas (Rochford 10) Proponents of the school say that it is a

viable way of stopping the drug trafficking problem. They believe that by

training these soldiers, we are promoting democracy. However, as we will see

later, one of the most infamous graduates of the SOA was one of the largest drug

traffickers caught to date. Giving one group of people so much power over

another group naturally leads to class separation which leads to struggle which

leads to oppression. That is the main problem in Latin America. The distribution

of wealth and resources is so limited to the upper ten percent. Some of the more

infamous graduates of the School of Americas include General Hernan Jose

Rodriguez who protected and aided the Colombian paramilitary death squad

responsible for 129 civilian deaths. He also commanded the soldiers who

detained, tortured, gang raped, and executed human rights activist Yolanda

Acevedo Carvejal ("School of Assassins." 1) General Hector Gramajo who

used genocide policies resulting in the murder torture and disappearance of

hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Guatemala was also found guilty of

the rape and torture of Sister Diana Ortiz, another human rights activist, in

U.S. civil court just six weeks prior to being the keynote speaker at the SOA

graduation. ("School of Assassins." 1) Perhaps the most well known of

the SOA graduates is Manuel Noriega, who is now serving a 40 year sentence in

U.S. prison for drug trafficking. ("School of Assassins." 1) While

these are just the more infamous, in a 1993 international human rights tribunal

investigation of Colombia, of the 246 officers cited for war crimes and other

human rights atrocities, 100 were graduates of the SOA ("United Nations

Truth Commission Report" 22) This is a subject that is very important to me

and should be to every American who stands against violence and torture. We, the

American Public whether knowingly or unknowingly, directly contribute to this

treatment every time we pay federal taxes. The School of Americas draws 20

million dollars of our taxes every year. Every time you get a paycheck, it goes

to the killing or disappearance of an innocent person just struggling to

survive. Our taxes need to be spent on more worthwhile enterprises. Some schools

in our nation desperately need assistance and funding to improve facilities and

pay educators a living wage. And yet we continue to spend 18.4 million a year on

the rape and murder of women and children (Fischer 185) By sitting idly by and

allowing this to happen we are just as guilty as the actual perpetrators of

these heinous actions. The people of our nation need to wake up and try to look

past their own noses for a few minutes and realize that this must stop. The

School of the Americas will continue to exist funded by our dollars until we

tell the government otherwise. This is a subject that if more people were aware

of, would without a doubt be very easy to conclude. Most Americans, since our

nation is supposedly built on freedom and justice, would find this an

intolerable situation. Most people would not want to fund killing and rape.

Awareness of this institution must be raised. Americans need to write letters or

call their congressman and tell them that these practices and the spending of

our taxes on them must be brought to an immediate halt. You, yes you, can write

to your congressman at U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 or

your senator at U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, 20510. We cannot call ourselves a

free nation if we condone and promote acts that violate human rights. We are all

just as guilty by association as the actual murderers, rapists, and torturers if

we continue to allow this to go on in our own back yard.

School of Assassins: U.S. Army School of the Americas. Columbus, GA: SOA

Watch Group. 1998 United Nations Truth Commission Report 1993. New York: 1993.

Fischer, Mary. "Teaching Torture." GQ June 1997:182-189,237-240.

Haugaard, Lisa. "Torture 101." In These Times October14-27 1996:14-16.

Werner, Michael. Fact Sheet Concerning Training Manuals Containing Materials

Inconsistent With U.S. Policy. Center For International Policy. Rohter, Larry.

"4 Salvadorians Say They Killed U.S. Nuns On Orders of Military." New

York Times 3 Apr. 1998 A1. Latin America Working Group. "Report on Army

Manuals." 21 pp. Online. 4 Nov. 1997. [email protected].