"SOA graduates include dictators and soldiers implicated in gross human rights violations in Latin America,"

- Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass)

Politics by assassination

The bloody legacy of the U.S Army School of the Americas

Editor's Note: The following two-part article was originally published on March 4, 1995 and March 11, 1995, respectively.

By W. E. GUTMAN

Special to Honduras This Week

Getting rid of someone easy. Destroying popular aspirations takes more effort but you can always count on a volunteer or two to the dirty work. For money; favors; influence; power -- mostly power; out of conviction or spite or malevolence -- mostly malevolence. When conventional methods -- elections, plebiscites, national referenda --fail, or when the results threaten the oligarchy, the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, a shadowy but formidable spook-nook billeted for Fort Benning, Georgia can help. There are no petty bureaucrats here, no dim-witted freeloaders who dot the is and bar the ts day after day, no semi-literate dogfaces taking up space and stealing time till retirement. The SOA is a model institution. Its instructors and students are recruited from the cream of Latin America's military establishment. On the curriculum: counterinsurgency, military intelligence, interrogation techniques, sniper fire, infantry and commando tactics, "irregular" and psychological warfare, jungle operations, among the most bellicose specialties.

But Latin American soldiers at the SOA are not always trained to defend their borders from foreign invasion. They are thought -- at U.S. tax payers' expense -- to make war against their own people, to subvert the truth, to tame feckless poets, to muzzle activst clergy, to hinder trade unionism, to domesticate unruly visionaries, to extinguish common dreams, to silence the voices of dissidence and discontent, to neutralize the poor, the hungry, the dispossessed, to irrigate fields of plenty with the tears of a captive society, to transform paladins and protesters into submissive vassals. Even if it kills them.

For the past two years, a group of U.S. legislators led by Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass) have vowed to shut down the facility. "SOA graduates include dictators and soldiers implicated in gross human rights violations in Latin America," says Kennedy." [Continued operation of] this facility, suggests that the U.S. has blessed such excesses. The SOA costs [the U.S.] millions of dollars a year and identifies us with tyranny and oppression." In 1993 Mr. Kennedy sponsored an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations Bill calling for an end to the training provided at the SOA. The measure was defeated. Reintroduced in 1994, the amendment was again rejected. This time the defeat was sustained by a six-fold increase in the number of abstentions from the preceding year. Founded in Panama in 1946 -- and relocated in 1984 at Fort Benning when then-Panamerican President Jorge Illuca evicted it, calling it "the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America," the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American and Caribbean basin soldiers in combat and "counterinsurgency" skills, presumably to professionalize their armies, strengthen democracies and promote regional stability. Its graduates include some of the most despicable military strongmen whose wanton lawlessness was conveniently overlooked by the U.S. when the hemispheric enemy was Communism. The SOA is expected to graduate about 750 students in 1995.

IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

When the military go on feeding frenzies in Latin American, as they are wont to do with unsettling regularity, accusing fingers often point to Washington. This is what happened in 1989, when a Salvadoran Army patrol burst into the Central American University and murdered six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter. Some of the victims were executed lying face down on the ground. Human rights groups were quick to accuse the U.S. of aiding and abetting El Salvador's military regime. This was not an idle allegation. Nineteen of the 27 Salvadoran officers who took part in the massacre by a U.N. Truth Commission report were graduates of the SOA. In fact, almost three quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in seven other bloodbaths during El Salvador's civil war (including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero 15 years ago this month) were trained by the SOA. Well learned, the elite school's protocol paid off elsewhere in Latin America:

• Of the 246 officers cited for various crimes in Colombia by a 1992 international human rights tribunal, 105 are SOA graduates.
• The three highest ranking officers who supported former Guatemalan President Serrano's 1993 attempted auto-coup are graduates of the SOA -- including former Defence Minister José Domingo García and the sinister presidential chief of staff, Luis Francisco Ortega Menaldo. In 1976, Ortega then a captain, took a military intelligence course at the SOA. Other Guatemalan bug-name SOA graduates include current Defense Minister, Gen. Mario Enriquez and Congress President, Gen. José Efrain Rios Montt. A former president of Guatemala (1982-83) Montt in best remembered for his "beans or bullets" policy -- beans for the obedient, bullets for the rest.
• In Honduras, five ranking officers who organized -- with U.S. complicity -- the secret death squad known as Intelligence Battalion 3-16 in the mid-eighties are SOA graduates. They include General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, Daniel Bali Castillo, Luis Alonzo Discua Elvir and Juan López Grijalva. An Americas Watch report has charged López with involvement in a death squad. Captain Pio Flores, whose house was used as a detention and torture center, took four courses at the SOA. Colonel Amilcar Zelaya, from whose residence muffled screams were regularly heard, also attended the school. Battalion commanders Luis Alonzo Villatoro Villeda and Adolfo Díaz took courses at the SOA, as did Lieutenants Segundo Flores Murillo and Noel Corrales. Murillo's specialty was interrogating and torture.
• The three highest ranking officers convicted in February 1994 of murdering nine university students and a professor in Peru are all SOA graduates -- as is the commander of the Peruvian military who dispatched tanks to block an investigation.
• Also known as the School for Dictators (and dubbed -- less kindly but with more acronymic consistency -- the School of Assassins) the SOA has sired a number of favorite sons destined for historical scrutiny. Among them:
• Omar Torrijos of Panama, Guillermo Rodríguez of Ecuador and Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru -- all of whom overthrew constitutionally elected civilian governments.
• Leopoldo Galtieri, ex-head of Argentina's junta -- defeated in the Falkland "Dirty War" against the British. Galtieri's military advisers helped establish Honduras' Battalion 3-16.
• Hugo Bánzer Suarez, Bolivian President in the 70's -- crushed dissident clerics and suppressed tin miners with savage zeal.
• Roberto D'Aubuisson, late Salvadoran death-squad leader -- plotted the assassination of Archbishop Romero and may have participated in the El Mozote massacre of 900 men, woman and children.
• Manuel Noriega, ex-dictator of Panama -- serving 40 years in a U.S. penitentiary for drug trafficking.
• Honduran generals Humbetro Regalado Hernández (linked to Colombian drug cartels) and Policarpo Paz García (led a corrupt regime in the 80s). Hernández was inducted into the SOA Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas -- chief of Guatemalan intelligence in the late 70s and early 80s, when thousands of political opponents were assassination.

THEY SHOOT THE CHILDREN DON'T THEY?

Not as eminent but equally adept at making war, wielding in some cases formidable regional or local power, and exceeding the limits of their own authority, a number of SOA graduates have been known to take on less redoubtable foes. In Guatemala, a nation described by a high-ranking U.S.Embassy official as "a fractured society -- politically, economically, culturally and ethnically -- probably the most corrupt in Latin America," crimes against street children have long made international headlines but were never stanched. Unwanted, unloved, disposable, society's chaff, ubiquitous and growing in numbers, they continue to pay the price of civil strife and poverty and feudalism and social decay, enduring illegal detentions and beatings, often to petty crimes, including those motivated by hunger.

According to Bruce Harris, executive director, Covenant House Latin American Programs, "1994 was a banner yet for a country more preoccupied with bananas and coffee than human life. It produced the highest number of extrajudicial executions of street children in Guatemala this decade -- 13 in all." Gathered by the legal aid office of Casa Alianza, Covenant House's Latin American Branch, fresh evidence points to waves of mindless retribution by a constabulary gone amok and overlooked by a judicial system disinclined to obey Guatemala's very own constitution, let alone the international human rights accord to which it is a party.

Julio Caballeros Seigne, SOA class of 1960 (Infantry Arms, Tactics and Army Documents) may have to answer for many of these children's blood. Head of Guatemalan military at Nebal, Quiché province, where some of the worst atrocities were committed against the campesinos, he is generally blamed for the displacement of over one million persons, many of them orphaned children, and for spurring an urban migration which continues to strain the country's moribund economy. Former head of G2 (military intelligence), he was twice chief of the national police (1985, 1990), a semi-militarized corps with a reputation and lengthy record of human rights abuses, many against defenseless minors. In 1993 he was named Customs chief.

In the BBC-produced documentary, They Shoot Children, Don't They, Caballeros charged Harris with "wanting justice at the snap of a finger," and complained that he was "making too much of a fuss about the death of one child." The child, 13-year old Nahamán Carmona López, was beaten to death five years ago this month by four of Caballeros' officers. His death galvanized international attention a paved the way for a widely publicized series of legal proceedings by Harris against his executioners. To his credit, Caballeros did order some of his men investigated but he blamed the judicial system, rather than inept sleuthing, for its failure to secure binding convictions.

Arrogant and self-deluded, Caballeros may have underestimated the resolve of dedicated human rights activists to take on abusive regimes. At this writing, Casa Alianza has 191 criminal suits in the Guatemalan court system against 120 policemen and 30 soldiers. Arrest warrants have been issued against 18 policemen. Urged by Harris, the European Parliament has vowed to impose economic sanctions against Guatemala.

A member of the extreme right-wing Revolutionary Party, Caballeros, who lost a bid for a congressional seat, makes no secret of his political aspirations and of his commitment to a return to military rule in Guatemala. It is widely believed that several former administration cabinet members itching for a political comeback favor such takeover. In an open letter to his "Querido Juan Pueblo" [Beloved John Q. Public] in the newspaper Siglo Veintiuno [21st Century], Caballeros blames "dirty, rich politicians" for the country's chronic problems. Given that the wealthy in Guatemala (as elsewhere in Latin America) have traditionally supported the military, Caballeros was being more than disingenuous. Playing on short memories and growing public discontent to agitate the masses, in military parlance, is called disinformation, a technique taught at SOA under a different appellation.

Long simmering rumors that the Guatemalan military has been involved in various criminal activities burst into the open last month when a number of high-ranking officers, among them Col. Carlos René Ochoa Ruiz, SOA Class of 1969, were charged with drug trafficking, car theft and murder. Cited as a cocaine exporter, Ochoa has so far evaded U.S. extradition efforts.

Next door, in Honduras, the early 1980s witnessed political violence of a level unknown in earlier decades as the civil conflict in El Salvador and Nicaragua spilled across its borders. Many "disappeared" after their abduction or were summarily executed by death squads. Seven men, including the late Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, SOA Class of 1978, were accused of taking part in the "disappearances" of dozens of Hondurans. Alvarez was also charged with abuse of authority, homicide, assassination, torture and hindering due process of law. In a recent interview, his widow, Lillian de Alvarez, justified her husband's excesses, saying he had "fought against disloyalty and terrorist organizations." Former armed forces intelligence chief Leonidas Torres Arias, SOA Class of 1962 and 1971 (Commando Operations), who had accused Alvarez of complicity in the "disappearances," was himself dishonorably discharged in 1982. Rumors persist that Torres was involved in arms and drug trafficking and murder. Vigilantism against "delinquents," -- a euphemism of sizable elasticity generally reserved for the destitute and the hungry -- continues to claim lives in Honduras. Last month, Regional Police Chief Lt. Col. Angel Arnoldo Cabrera, SOA Class of 1979 (Class Leader, Commando Tactics), was accused of heading a death squad specializing in the assassination of "known criminals." Cabrera has denied the charges and threatened to sue for libel.

To reports of irregularities in detention procedures and the torture of detainees during interrogation by the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (FUSEP), particularly at the hands of its military branch, was soon added evidence of intimidation and harassment of members of human rights groups, lawyers, members of the Catholic clergy, trade unionists and the press. Relations between the armed forces and the press deteriorated when a group of journalists filmed a murder scene in the provincial city of San Pedro Sula. The killers were identified as members of the armed forces. The journalists were threatened. One was attacked. Another had to flee Honduras.

While there have been no "disappearances" under the present [Carlos Roberto Reina] government, serious human rights violations persist and many of the victims are among Tegucigalpa's more than 1,000 street children. Last October, this writer went to Honduras to investigate allegations of police brutality against street children, to corroborate recurring charges that minors are routinely -- and illegally -- incarcerated with adults, and to document long-held imputations that Honduras' military justice system wantonly disregards the nation's highest laws. Under pressure from Bruce Harris, six minors detained without arraignment for three days and three nights with adults of the Seventh Precinct, including a 10-year-old, were first transferred to an empty cell then quietly released. Hastily convened, a radio interview with Harris, and an Amnesty International dispatch accusing Honduran police of illegally imprisoning minors soon made headlines in Tegucigalpa. Police Chief Jorge Alberto Rodas Gamero, SOA Class of 1975 (Infantry) and Class of 1982 (Military Intelligence) made known his displeasure. Calling the Casa Alianza shelter "a nest of thieves" and its wards "delinquents," he agitated the downtown business community, fomenting an angry demonstration in front of the shelter. Two weeks later, the shelter's director was threatened with expulsion. Coerced by Chief Rodas, the Honduran press mounted a fresh offensive against Casa Alianza. Meanwhile, investigations into charges stemming from the illegal detention, mistreatment, torture of minors in 1993 against the former military intelligence chief, SOA graduate, Lt. Col. Marco Tulio Ayala Vindel, were postponed "indefinitely." Ayala currently heads FUSEP's propaganda machine.

Not to be outdone, the Honduran military have renewed their attacks on the Reina administration for trying, "once again, to damage its credibility and reputation." Reina's efforts to reduce military influence have been met with death threats and a recent [failed] assassination attempt. Among sympathizers of the military, is A. Manuel de Jesus Castillo, SOA Class of 1975 (Military Intelligence). Castillo, one of the attorneys of former Honduran President Rafael Leonardo Callejas, was expelled from the SOA for misconduct. According to private sources, over 30 percent of all living Honduran SOA graduates are still "pulling strings." The SOA has trained over 5,000 Honduran soldiers and officers.

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