SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS
The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located at Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA graduates have been responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities in Latin American history, including:
*Two of the three officers responsible for the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980
*Three of the five officers responsible for the rape and murder of four
U.S. churchwomen in 1980
*19 of 26 responsible for the massacre of six Jesuit priests, their
housekeeper, and her daughter in 1989
*The man convicted in Guatemalan courts for the assassination of Guatemalan
Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi in 1998
*The man arrested for the murder of Colombian Bishop Isaias Duarte in
2002 Originally set up as a counterinsurgency training school in 1946,
the SOA has claimed numerous reforms in the way it selects and trains
its students over the years, culminating in its name change to the "Western
\Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" (WHISC) in 2001.
Each of these changes came only
because of grassroots and congressional activism, but none has permanently
closed the school or allowed for a full accounting of its tragic legacy.
The school continues to train soldiers from countries with the worst
human rights records in the region.