Sides feud over SOA's role in Latin American atrocities

COLUMBUS, Ga. - Rufina Amaya witnessed the massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador on Dec. 12, 1981, when the Salvadoran Army systematically murdered more than 1,000 men, women and children. For seven days and nights, she said she hid alone in the hills near the small town, where she knelt down and prayed behind an apple shrub with no food or water.

This past weekend, 18 years later in Fort Benning, Ga - dressed in a pink sweater, blue skirt and black sandals - Amaya described what was done to her as "a plan to instill fear and terror." She said the El Salvadoran government "killed innocent children."

But what resonated with others this weekend during the annual protest of the U.S. School of the Americas in Columbus, Ga., where Ft. Benning is located, was more than Amaya's descriptive story of atrocity. It was her claim that the massacre would not have occurred if top Salvadoran military officials had not graduated from SOA.

Surrounded by much controversy throughout its more than 50-year existence, SOA has graduated about 60,000 Latin American and 1,500 American cadets, officers and government civilians.

Critics refer to SOA as the "School of Assassins," holding the school accountable for the oppression, death and suffering of women, children and the economically disadvantaged in Latin America.

But SOA supporters deny these allegations and say the school provides relevant military training and education to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean while promoting democracy and respect for human rights and cooperation between the militaries of the western world. Supporters also say SOA teaches democratic values to the United States and Latin Americans who fill the school's classrooms.

SOA originated in 1946 in Panama as a Latin American Training Center during a time when the United States was at odds with the former Soviet Union. The school relocated in 1984 to Fort Benning Ga., under the arrangement of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty to promote democracy and fight the Communist empire.

The school began by infusing United States foreign policy into Latin American militaries by teaching counterassault tactics to its students. SOA changed its focus when the world's Communist command crumpled to stopping drug trafficking between Latin American countries and the United States.

The goal of SOA also was to protect Latin American governments from drug lords, rebels and military coups, designating the SOA as an official U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command School.

Critics claim SOA teaches Latin American students commando tactics and allege that history supports their accusations because hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been assassinated, massacred, tortured and raped by those trained at the school. Critics also say the SOA trained students with torture manuals between 1982 and 1991.

Father Roy Bourgeois, the leader of the grassroots opposition group SOA Watch, said SOA is responsible for defending a socio-economic system that keeps a small elite rich and the vast majority of Latin American civilians very poor.

"The majority of the people in these countries are struggling for survival, living in shacks without running water, not receiving just wages for their labor and don't have schools or hospitals for their kids and so many will die before the age of 3 or 4," Bourgeois said.

Bourgeois said Latin American soldiers arrive at the school from suffering and oppression, and SOA "breeds bullies" in Latin American countries that "have instilled fear and death among their people. The militaries are so powerful that they have killed, raped and massacred and have gotten away with it," he said.

But Col. Glenn Weidner, an SOA graduate who now serves as its commadante, explained that SOA exposes Latin American countries to the values of the United States Armed Forces and a multi-national forum.

Like Bourgeois, Weidner admitted that Latin American military institutions have a history of negative activities that can be obstacles to the democratic process, but he added that SOA helps to combat this problem.

"The United States School of Americas is the U.S. contribution to our strategy to raise the professional level of the militaries of those countries that make up the inter-America system," Weidner said, referring to the U.S. policy to work cooperatively with other western countries.

Weidner adamantly denied critics' allegations that SOA students were taught with torture manuals and said, "they were trained to conduct combat operations according to the laws of war. The manuals contained passages about the handling of intelligence agents that was improper. There was nothing in the manuals about torture."

Weidner also added that manuals were introduced to SOA in 1989 and were discovered in 1991. This differs from what the Pentagon stated in 1996 - that the SOA used training manuals that recommended torture between 1982 and 1991, a difference of seven years.

Since the discovery of the "torture" manuals in 1991, SOA has put a noticeable emphasis on adding more human rights instructors in its "classrooms than any other Department of Defense school," Weidner said, listing off some of the names of mandatory SOA human rights classes, including "Democratic Sustainment," "Civil Military Operations" and "Defense Resource Management."

Two of the most well-known SOA graduates are former Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega, who currently is serving jail time in the United States on charges of racketeering and conspiracy tied to drug trafficking, and the late Roberto d'Aubuisson, a reported death squad commander in El Salvador.

In response to questions about Noriega's enrollment in SOA, Weidner said, "Noriega came to us for two courses. His total time was 12 weeks. No one talks about the fact that he went to the Peruvian military academy for four years or to Taiwanese strategic intelligence courses."

Unabomber "Ted Kaczynski graduated from Harvard, yet no one is trying to close it down. We look at what we teach and how we teach it," Weidner said.

U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.), a stern SOA critic, introduced an amendment to the House foreign aid bill that would cut off between $1.5 to $2 million in funding for the military school. The Pentagon also funds SOA.

On July 30, the House voted by a margin of 230-197 in favor of cutting funding for SOA. The SOA critics - mostly Democrats - who introduced the bill argued that the Pentagon needs to stop funding SOA to train Latin Americans because of its history of human rights abuse and coups.

Bourgeois attributed the success of the House vote to the education constituents forced on U.S. representatives by writing "thousands of letters" on the issue.

But on Sept. 22, a conference committee meeting, comprised of both Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate met to debate opposing opinions about SOA. They voted in a narrow margin of 8-7 to continue funding SOA, keeping the school open to continue training Latin American students.

U.S. Rep. Mac Collins (R-Ga.), whose district includes Fort Benning, said SOA helped establish democracy in Latin America and hopes "the region will have a democracy like we have. I hope they have a judicial process," he said.

But Bourgeois said, "You don't teach democracy to soldiers who come from violent institutions. You do not teach democracy through the barrel of a gun."

He explained that the fate of the SOA is left in the hands of the U.S. government. "We have to go through Congress to close the school. We citizens pay for it with our tax money."

Weidner strongly objected closing SOA and said in describing the Latin American students, "No one is an empty vessel. They come with baggage and go back to their countries. It's in our mission to promote democracy and human rights."

Amaya no longer lives in El Mozote because the massacre caused her to have "nervous conditions." She said her daughter is "psychologically wounded." and that she survived to "tell the world what happened. It was a miracle of God."

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