Bolivia Withdraws from the School of the Americas

Dear Readers:

Last week Bolivian President Evo Morales, responding to both Bolivian and international pleas to do so, announced that his country would no longer be sending its military officers to the controversial U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia. Bolivia's withdrawal is the fifth in the region and marks an important trend in U.S. Latin America relations.

The newest member of our Democracy Center team, Yi-Ching Hwang, is the author of this Blog post on Morales' announcement. Yi-Ching, an intern at the Center's Cochabamba office, is a former member of the U.S. Peace Corps – an organization that is the mirror opposite of the SOA in terms of the face that our country shows to the world.

Jim Shultz


Soldiers Out of Georgia

“We will gradually withdraw until there are no Bolivian officers attending the School of the Americas,” said Morales. Hesitant of U.S. government’s foreign policy, he remarked that “they are teaching high ranking officers to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their enemies.”

President Evo Morales formally announced last week in La Paz that he will not send any more Bolivian military officers to attend training at this US institute formally known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

This announcement confirmed a statement made by President Morales in October of last year when he said that “no foreigner in uniform will be operating here (in Bolivia),” and that he will stop sending Bolivian officers to the SOA. [Critics of President Morales will be quick to note, however, that uniformed Venezuelan soldiers have been a presence in Bolivia on different occasions.]

Bolivia is now the fifth country to end its relationship with the institute, following the lead of Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Located in Fort Benning, Georgia, SOA is a U.S. taxpayer funded military training facility for Latin American soldiers. At a school where the Pentagon has acknowledged use of training manuals advocating coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions, more than 60,000 soldiers have been trained in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, and military intelligence, among other topics. In numerous documented incidents, SOA graduates have used their skills to instigate violence and war in their own countries against their own people. Responding to such a history and its associated public reaction, in 2001 Congress intervened by modifying the structure and curriculum of this military training school, and renaming it as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Nicknamed by its opponents in the US religious community as the “School for Assassins,” SOA/WHINSEC has historically evident ties to oppressive military regimes in Latin America, training dictators and brutal military leaders.

Most notably for Bolivians is Hugo Banzer Suárez, a cruel military dictator who ruled Bolivia from 1971-1978. Trained by SOA in 1956, Banzer was infamously known for his “Banzer Plan” which silenced outspoken church members. The plan was later used throughout Latin America as a blueprint for repression. Furthermore, Banzer sheltered Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and had various links to drug trafficking groups. For all his ‘accomplishments’ Banzer received SOA’s “hall of fame” recognition in 1988.

In more recent times during Bolivia’s Gas Wars of September - October 2003, two former SOA/WHINSEC graduates, arrested on charges of torture, murder, and violation of the constitution, were held responsible for the death of 67 civilians in El Alto, Bolivia.

According to the organization School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), some other notorious past SOA/WHINSEC graduates include the perpetrators of both the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador and the assassination of that country's Archbishop, Oscar Romero.

President Morales’ decision to severe ties with SOA signifies a great triumph for victims and families wounded by SOA graduates, social movement leaders, and human rights activists of Bolivia and the rest of Latin America.

Written by Yi-Ching Hwang