School of Coups

School of Coups

 

By Fr. Roy Bourgeois, M.M., and Margaret Knapke

July 22, 2009

Foreign Policy in Focus

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6285

 

The day after Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was

deposed, President Barack Obama cautioned against

repeating Latin America's "dark past," decades when

military coups regularly overrode the results of

democratic elections. Obama went on to acknowledge, in

his understated way, "The United States has not always

stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies."

 

In fact, the U.S. government has often stood with - or

at least behind - the coup-makers.  Examples include

Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973, and

Venezuela in 2002 (this last coup attempt, against

President Hugo Chávez, was reversed). Also, throughout

most of the 1980s, the Reagan administration subsidized

and helped direct the "contra" (meaning counter-

revolutionary) war against the Nicaraguan government and people.

 

Notably, the June 28 coup against Zelaya and the

Honduran electorate traces back to the U.S. Army School

of the Americas (SOA). Originally established in Panama

in 1946, the school was the U.S. Army's premier site

for training Latin American officers and soldiers in

military intelligence and combat operations, supposedly

within the letter of the law.

 

Within 20 years, however, it was known in Latin

American military circles as "la Escuela de Golpes" -

the School of Coups. And in the early 1980s, Panamanian

President Jorge Illueca declared the SOA "the biggest

base for destabilization in Latin America." The "School

of Coups" moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia, in 1984.

 

School rosters obtained through the Freedom of

Information Act show that General Romeo Vásquez Velá

squez, leader of the recent Honduran coup, trained

there in 1976 and 1984. He was assisted in deposing

President Zelaya by General Luis Javier Prince Suazo,

head of the Honduran Air Force, who in 1996 rather

presciently took an SOA course in Joint Operations.

 

Fingerprints

 

But the school's fingerprints have long been evident in

Honduras. A death squad known as Battalion 3-16 was

organized in the 1980s and operated clandestinely for

years - kidnapping, forcibly disappearing, and

torturing political opponents, and killing at least 184

of them. Nineteen members of Battalion 3-16 are known

to have graduated from the School of the Americas,

including three generals who directed battalion activities.

 

School officials have long insisted that its graduates

who flaunt the rule of law do so despite their

training. They are, according to that argument, just

inevitable "bad apples."

 

But, to the contrary, documentary evidence indicates

these students have learned their lessons well. In

1996, for example, President Bill Clinton's Defense

Department revealed that training materials used from

1982-1991 at the School had instructed Latin American

military officers and soldiers to target civilian

populations and use torture, intimidation, false

arrest, extrajudicial execution, blackmail, and more inhumane tactics.

 

So, while SOA training has emboldened golpistas (coup-

makers) to act against legitimately elected heads of

state, it also has provoked crimes against citizens

challenging illegitimate or antidemocratic powers. As

Berta Oliva - who coordinates the Committee of

Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) -

said of soldiers repressing anti-coup protests: "They

view those who demand their rights as if they were enemies."

 

Oliva will never forget the Battalion 3-16 years. She

founded the COFADEH after her husband was kidnapped and

disappeared in 1982. About the recent military coup in

her country, she observed: "They've made a return to

the 1980s.... Friendly governments who hold democratic

ideals simply cannot allow this to happen here.

 

Shine the Light

 

Arguably the only way for Latin America to avoid

repeating its "dark past" is to shine a bright light

into it, for all to see. At the fifth Summit of the

Americas last April, Obama noted the importance of

learning from history. And he declared, "The United

States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where

those errors have been made."

 

With H.R. 2567, the Latin America Military Training

Review Act, Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) and 57 co-

sponsors are offering us a light to shine. This

legislation would suspend operations at the Western

Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)

- the "successor institution" to the School of the

Americas, which is still located at Ft. Benning. Then a

bipartisan congressional taskforce would investigate

decades of its activities and teaching materials.

 

Certainly "errors have been made." Some at this moment

are threatening to override the will of the Honduran electorate.

 

It's time. It's past time. Shine the light on the School of Coups.

 

Shine the light.

 

Father Roy Bourgeois is a Catholic priest, a former

missionary, and founder of SOA Watch. Margaret Knapke

is a longtime Latin America human-rights activist. Both

have served federal prison terms for nonviolent civil

disobedience aimed at closing the School of the

Americas and are Foreign Policy In Focus contributors.

 

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