The U.S. Army School of the Americas, recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and placed under the direction of the Department of Defense, is a combat training school for Latin American military personnel. The school is currently located at Ft. Benning, Ga. During its 55-year history, the WHISC has readied more than 60,000 Latin American troops in commando tactics, military intelligence, psychological operations and advanced combat skills. Graduates have been cited for massacres, rapes, tortures and assassinations throughout Latin America. We, as taxpayers, spend $20 million annually for this school.
WHISC graduates use skills learned from training to quell uprisings of the poor working class. When taken into perspective, the results of their training are obvious, given the numbers of non-combatant civilians murdered or “disappeared”: in Guatemala, 200,000; in El Salvador, 78,000 ; in Colombia, 300,000, where 14 die daily; not to mention Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, etc.
Colombia is enduring the hemisphere’s worst human rights crisis. Human rights, union, university and religious leaders are among the many people living under death threats or forced into exile. Guerilla groups and right-wing paramilitaries both target civilians, who they claim are supporters of the other side. Guerillas commit serious violations, but paramilitaries commit the vast majority of all atrocities in Colombia. One figure states that in 1999, 78 percent of the atrocities were committed by the paramilitaries. The army, though directly responsible for fewer violations, has extensive links with paramilitary forces at a local and regional level. Some army officers facilitate the work of the paramilitaries or look the other way as violence occurs.
A 1993 human rights report cites 247 Colombian officers for human rights violations. Fully one half of those cited were WHISC graduates. Some were even featured as WHISC guest speakers or instructors, or included in the “Hall of Fame” after their involvement in such crimes. For example, Gen. Farouk Diaz was a guest speaker at the school in 1990 and 1991 after his involvement in the 1988 Uraba massacre of 20 banana workers, the assassination of the mayor of Sabana de Torres, and the massacre of 19 businessmen. According to a U.S. State Department report, he was also accused of establishing and expanding paramilitary death squads, as well as ordering dozens of disappearances and the killing of judges and court personnel sent to investigate previous crimes.
WHISC graduates have been linked to some of Colombia’s most heinous massacres, including the 1998 massacre in Segovia in which 43 people were killed, the Trujillo chain saw massacres, which took place between 1988 and 1991 and the 1993 Riofrio massacre.
Last May, Representatives Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., Joe Moakley, D-Mass., Connie Morella, R-Md., Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Lane Evans, D-Ill., introduced a bill to close the WHISC. The bill, HR1810, calls for closure of the school and the establishment of a joint congressional task force to assess U.S. training of Latin American military. Currently, there are 82 supporters in the House. Sen. Wyden supports the effort, unlike Sen. Smith. We must urge his support.
The former School of the Americas is a school of terrorism. We must work together to close this School of Assassins.
Matt Hornback is a freshman majoring in political science.