San Antonio Remarks from Debate with
Col. Glenn Weidner (former SOA Commandant),
April 2001
WHY WE MUST CLOSE THE SOAI'd like to begin with a suggestion and a cautionary note. First, I want to
suggest that you are all far too intelligent to merely take anyone's word for this or any other foreign policy issue. So please -- leave this discussion determined to do your own homework! I have a list of suggested readings and websites, including the website for the School of the Americas (or SOA), now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (or WHISC). We critics of the SOA/WHISC, and of US foreign policy in general, encourage you to do your research, and to do it deeply.But I also have a cautionary note regarding that homework! It's very easy, when considering foreign policy or "militarism" or even "human rights," to allow that consideration to become largely abstract and theoretical. That's okay to a point because, obviously, analysis and interpretation are called for. But I want to emphasize at the outset that this question of US involvement throughout Latin America -- and the role played by the SOA/WHISC -- is not first and foremost a theoretical issue. Nor is it even primarily about a collection of facts! Rather it is primarily about the FACES and the NAMES behind those facts. We fail ourselves, and certainly we fail those faces behind the facts, if we forget that any true understanding of policy must begin -- and end! -- with that human reality. And finally, there is no better way to become acquainted with that particular human reality than to go to Latin America -- to stay with people in their communities and allow yourselves to really hear their stories.
The SOA/WHISC has played a key role in training Latin American soldiers, so that they can more effectively implement US foreign policy objectives throughout Latin America. The School originated in Panama in 1946, and was moved to Ft. Benning, GA in 1984. You might already know that numerous human rights documents have implicated 500-600 graduates of the SOA in atrocious human rights violations throughout the region. Those cited include many of the SOA's most honored graduates, and even some commencement speakers and guest instructors.
One of the reasons that I have been asked to speak with you today, is that I am one of perhaps 50 people who have been imprisoned over the years for our nonviolent protests at the School of the Americas. I happen to be among the most recent group of protesters to be prosecuted, and that took place just one year ago on March 10. We were ten people ranging in age from 39 to 73 years old, from a variety of backgrounds. Of the ten, one of my co-defendants received probation rather than a prison sentence. Another eight of us were given and have already served sentences in federal prisons around the country. And that leaves the tenth: Charlie Liteky is a former Catholic priest who served as a chaplain during the Vietnam War, and he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for amazing, life-saving heroism there. Charlie continues to serve his sentence of one year at Federal Prison Camp Lompoc, in CA, where he recently turned 70 years old.... I'd like to dedicate my remarks this afternoon to Charlie.Certainly my co-defendants and I have received lots of attention as Prisoners of Conscience, particularly in our local communities. But we all understand that we are not the real story. Rather, we hope to be windows onto the real story, which is the life and death struggle of the majority poor of Latin America. What I need to share with you today --(and there really is no way that I can say this that won't be painful or upsetting) -- is the fact that Latin American repression has and continues to issue (despite the existence of formal democracy throughout the region) largely from power centers in Washington, DC, with the help of the US military, including the SOA/WHISC. That repression is the true face of what many have called a corporate "War against the Poor," a war that is intensifying with economic globalization.To begin, I'd like to tell you why we 10 were arrested, on November 21, 1999. We had gathered with about 12,000 people at the gate of Ft. Benning to mark the tenth anniversary of the killing of six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America in San Salvador: Padres Ellacuria, Martin-Baro, Montes, Lopez, Lopez y Lopez, and Moreno were six scholars and churchmen who were outspoken advocates for the poor. Accordingly, they had been marked for death as so-called "subversives." They were dragged from their beds and executed, along with their housekeeper Elba Ramos, and her 15-year-old daughter Celina, by 26 members of the Salvadoran government's Atlacatl Battalion. Of those 26 soldiers cited in the UN Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 19 had trained at the SOA.And in addition to the Jesuits and the Ramos women, we wanted to remember the many thousands of other Latin Americans who also had been killed by graduates of the SOA and the soldiers under their command. Back in December of 1981, for instance, members of the Atlacatl Battalion systematically killed the men, women, children, and infants of the village of El Mozote, along with a number of their neighbors who had mistakenly sought safety in that village from roaming Army units. Estimates of the total killed in El Mozote range from 787 to 960, and I regret that I cannot name every single one of them for you now. But there was one survivor, a brave woman by the name of Rufina Amaya, who was able to hide herself so that she might tell the tale -- knowing that she could do nothing to save her husband, her 4 children, and her many friends and relatives. Of the 12 soldiers cited for that massacre, 10 had been trained at the SOA.And permit me one more example: in Guatemala, hundreds of Mayan villages were destroyed under scorched earth policies in the 1980's, with many thousands of people killed, and hundreds of thousands of survivors displaced from their lands. Some of the SOA graduates currently being sued in Spanish and Guatemalan courts for those atrocities include former dictators Gen. Efrain Rios Montt and Fernando Lucas Garcia, former Army Chief Benedicto Lucas Garcia and former Defense Minister Luis Rene Mendoza.... So there were many people for us to honor on that November day, these relative few I've mentioned and many others, both the dead and their survivors.That anniversary vigil had been perfectly legal, but at the conclusion of the commemorative service more than 4000 of us formed a somber, mock funeral procession and we proceeded onto the grounds of Ft. Benning, bearing coffins sized for adults, children, and infants toward the School of the Americas. It was our intention to symbolically return the dead to the place which had contributed so potently to their demise. Many mourners risked arrest that November day -- but only we ten were prosecuted.
One way that I have come to think of my own prison witness is as an attempt to directly counter the effects of a military doctrine known as Low Intensity Conflict. Low Intensity Conflict is civilian-targeted warfare, also known as counterinsurgency, and it emphasizes seeking out so-called internal enemies or subversives. But who are those so-called "subversives"? They are the poor and those who advocate for them -- including progressive teachers, lawyers, health care workers, clergy, labor organizers, and human rights workers. Whether they are inspired by a class analysis, or by the Bible expressing a "preferential option for the poor," or simply by the hunger of their children, these people are claiming both ECONOMIC and POLITICAL democracy as their birthright.
The Low Intensity Conflict response to the demands of the poor serves the interests of an internal economic elite, as well as the interests of FOREIGN investors. That response is the attempt to undermine popular movements through intimidation and even managed terror, using native military personnel whenever possible. The SOA courses which have served this purpose -- all too well -- include Combat Tactics, Combat Arms, Psychological Operations, and Propaganda. And you might recall the seven notorious training manuals that were used at the SOA from 1982-1991, which contained references to the use of blackmail, torture, abusive interrogation techniques, extrajudicial execution, and the characterizing of civic organizations as subversive.I want to point out that that modifier "low intensity" does not describe the experience of those who are repressed -- certainly not! Rather "low
intensity" expresses the intention to keep these ANTI-democratic measures out of the news, and thereby off the radar screen of US taxpayers. And why is that so important? Because US taxpayers are expected to underwrite this repression -- as a kind of hidden subsidy for US corporations, which then have access to cheaper labor and resources abroad. So arguably Low Intensity Conflict can be thought of as a kind of "psy op" (or psychological operation) conducted against our own citizens, who after all would have good reason to object to such repressive policies -- morally and legally, as well as out of a concern for protecting their own jobs!Again, I understand that this is a depressing, difficult scenario to even
consider, much less accept. It's far more tempting to trust that feel-good
State Department rhetoric -- rhetoric implying that the US somehow occupies a higher moral ground than many countries, and that from that higher ground we patrol the world like a stern but benevolent police officer, most recently in the "good fight" against drug-trafficking. And let me say, I've no doubt that there are individuals in government and military service who are indeed motivated to be so principled, and who see their roles in such a light! Nevertheless, despite the good intentions of some -- perhaps many, the evidence just doesn't support a rosy, benign picture of US foreign policy.Rather the evidence supports the sentiments of a former State Department analyst by the name of George Kennan, who communicated very openly with his colleagues in 1948 in Policy Planning Statement #23. Here is a quote from Kennan, and the "we" he uses refers to the US.
...We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming....We should cease to talk about vague... objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.... {Kennan}
The figures have changed slightly since Kennan's day, but the priorities -- not at all! And, as journalist and free-marketeer Tom Friedman has said, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist...." So I ask you: What is the SOA /WHISC, whether by design or by default, if not a trade school in what Kennan has called "straight power concepts"? What is it, if not the trainer of the Latin American "fist"?
So to understand what drives US policy in Latin America, we need to distinguish between the carefully cultivated APPEARANCE and the often contradictory REALITY. Colombia is currently on fire. Let's look at it for a few minutes, as a case in point. Colombia has trained the most soldiers at the SOA/WHISC to date, approximately 10,000, and -- whether coincidentally or not -- it has the worst human rights record of any military in the hemisphere. Actually, we know that many Colombian abusers have themselves trained at the SOA! In a human rights report issued in 1993, of the 247 soldiers identified as violators of human rights, fully one-half of them -- 124 -- were graduates of the SOA. And more recent graduates continue to be named as well: just last year, reports issued by the US State Department and Human Rights Watch documented the involvement of Colombian SOA graduates in kidnapping, murder, massacres, and the setting up of paramilitary groups.
FIRST THE CULTIVATED APPEARANCE: We are told that the main aim of Plan Colombia is to eradicate coca production and the drug trade, so that an alternative economy can be developed -- one that will benefit all legitimate sectors of Colombian society. We are told that the herbicide being used to eradicate the coca fields -- glyphosate or Ultra-Round-Up -- is safe for people and the environment, that it is only detrimental to the plants it falls on. We are told that the Colombian military has largely reformed itself from its previous abuse of human rights, and is earnestly fighting both the paramilitaries of the Right and the guerrillas of the Left. For all these reasons, we are told that the Colombian military is deserving of the approximately $800 million in military aid it recently received from the US, for the express purpose of fighting the drug war. So we're told.
NOW, THE REALITY ON THE GROUND: Colombia has a drug problem all right,
and all three armed factions -- the government's military, the paramilitaries and the guerrillas -- have been profiting from it. To the exact extent that the Colombian military's abuses have declined, the paramilitary's abuses have increased. In fact, the military and paramilitaries work hand-in-glove, and show a consistent contempt for human rights. This cooperative and deadly relationship continues to be documented by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights as well as by Amnesty International, who reports that the security forces "facilitate paramilitary operations" by withdrawing from targeted areas, or even preventing humanitarian and other agencies from "gaining access to civilian communities at risk." In the last five years, several thousand civilians have been killed by paramilitary groups.SOME MORE REALITY: The fumigation effort has not been restricted to coca crops, and there is already evidence of environmental destruction, as well as serious health side effects for the peasants in the vicinity of the fumigation. It appears very likely that the soil will not sustain future crops, coca or alternative. All of which creates the conditions for a massive displacement of peasants, already more than 1-1/2 million -- which, if you think about it, serves to make the land available to oil companies.THIS IS NO COINCIDENCE! Sgt. Stan Goff, who recently retired from the US Special Forces Intelligence unit which has been training Colombia's anti-narcotics battalions, has stated, "The main interest of the US is oil.... We never mentioned the words coca or narco-trafficker in our training." He further stated that the main purpose of Plan Colombia is "defending the operations of Occidental, British Petroleum and Texas Petroleum, and securing control of future Colombian fields." ... And finally, let's not forget that last year alone 129 Colombian trade unionists were murdered, and already more than 25 this year -- further evidence that the real policy intent is to eradicate -- not just coca -- but attempts at real economic democracy.Truly, it is heartbreaking, but let me close by offering some good news: Together with the people of Latin America, we can change this unjust situation! In the face of so much atrocity, that might sound crazy, but consider this: WHY would there be such a concerted effort to keep us MESMERIZED regarding US policy, if the prospect of our THINKING CLEARLY posed no threat? So I want to remind you today of your power, and -- for those of you who haven't yet experienced it -- I also want to tell you that there is great joy to be had in facing down these difficult truths, and in choosing CONSCIOUS SOLIDARITY with the poor over UNCONSCIOUS COLLUSION with privilege. So, please, do that homework I mentioned earlier, and then help us close the School of the Americas -- by any name, and help us change the anti-democratic policies it serves.THE END