THE SCHOOL OF THE
AMERICAN EMPIRE
2/10/01 Copyright
Mumia Abu-Jamal
"... A society that
becomes accustomed to using violence to solve its problems, both large and
small, is a society in which the roots of human relations are diseased."
- - Ignacio Martin-Baro, O.J.
It
is virtually impossible for anyone to consider the horrific violence that
has taken place in Central and Latin America, without accounting for the
hideous roots of that violence, that grows and thrives in America.
For decades, the bloody flood from murders, massacres, rapes, torture and
carnage, created a trail that could be traced to the very doorsteps of a
U.S. military training institute known as the School of the Americas in Fort
Benning, Georgia. Human rights activists have held increasingly swelling
demonstrations at the SOA, and have dubbed it the "School of Assassins."
For years the Pentagon dismissed such criticism, and defended the SOA as
an elite international training academy for "counter-insurgency", or, more
obliquely, for "teaching democracy."
The graduates of SOA, however, constituted a kind of rogue's gallery of military
despots and dictators, like Bolivia's Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, who brutally
suppressed progressive church workers and striking tin miners; Like Guatemalan
dictator Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia (1978-82) whose rule saw over 5,000 political
killings and about 25,000 civilians murdered by the Guatemalan army, and
Gen. Juan Rafael Bustillo, of El Salvador, former air force chief, who, according
to a 1993 U.N. report, both planned and covered up the massacre of six Jesuit
priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter on Nov. 16, 1989, to name a
few.
If you think of a massacre, the chances are great that the men who either
ordered or committed the deed were SOA alumni. The El Mozote, El Junquillo,
Las Hojas, La Cantuta, and San Sebastian Massacres were all the work of SOA-trained
"death squads." Was it mere coincidence? When four U.S. churchwomen were
raped and murdered, when Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated, when union
members were killed, it was SOA grads who led in the carnage.
U.S.-trained and armed SOA people have been involved in so many military
coups that Latin American locals refer to the school as the 'escuela de golpas'
- - coup school.
Recently, the Defense Dept., stung by decades of negative publicity, officially
"closed" SOA, only to immediately reopen it under the name, Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). Although not as catchy as SOA,
WHISC promises to play the same game, by another name.
Shortly after the Jesuit murders, U.S.-trained Salvadoran troops surrounded
the office of the Catholic archdiocese, and shouted, "Ignacio Ellacuria and
Ignacio Martin-Baro have already fallen and we will continue murdering communists."
Ellacuria and Martin-Baro were Jesuit priests who worked with Christian-based
communities, where the poor learned literacy, history and how to organize
for human rights in the midst of monstrous military repression.
Martin-Baro was a brilliant liberation theologist and psychologist, who,
like the revolutionary Franz Fanon, chose the side of the oppressed rather
than the political, economic and military elite.
For this he was targeted by the U.S.-trained terrorists of the SOA, and it
is for men and women such as he that imperial training camps, like SOA/WHISC
exist.
Its name has changed, but the game remains the same.