With Honduras Coup, the School of the Americas' War on the Left Continues

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

When I went to study Spanish in Guatemala in 2002, I only had a basic knowledge of the 36-year civil war that had, until recently, ravaged the small Central American nation. My instructor -- in the process of explaining reflexive verbs, strangely enough -- told me that Guatemala invented a special use of the word "disappear." In Guatemala, the government could "disappear" you, and no one would ever hear from you again.

But my instructor was wrong. The U.S. military "invented" that. They taught Guatemalans, Chileans, Salvadorans and even Hondurans how to disappear people who were considered a threat to their power.

They taught soldiers all over Latin America how to assassinate, torture, imprison without charge, and carry out mass murder. They organized these soldiers into death squads. And the school in which they taught all of this is still around today, albeit with a little name change. It's known as the School of the Americas (although the U.S. military renamed it the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), and its fingerprints are all over the recent coup d'etat in Honduras.

This excellent mini-documentary on the School of the Americas (SOA) put together by the Real News Network (watch part two here) features declassified training manuals from the school and testimonials from a former instructor that confirm that soldiers were taught to view rural people, students and union members as the enemy under an antiquated Cold War mantra known as "national security doctrine." These enemies of the state are identified in the training materials as using legal, constitutional means such as voting to create an unwanted change in status quo.

But the objective for the U.S. military has little to do with Latin America's security. Just as the civil war in Guatemala was precipitated by the CIA to ensure the continued operations in Guatemala of the American United Fruit Company, the SOA operates at least in part to secure American interests in the region.

"The objective is to have countries that respond to U.S. interests. Should they distance themselves, they launch a coup d'etat," said Pablo Ruiz, an activist and former victim of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who spoke to the Real News Network for their video. "In Chile, why are so many soldiers still coming to the school? Because the U.S. wants to ensure that if [current Chilean President] Michele Bachelet begins to reform the neo-liberal system, clearly they will mobilize these soldiers to overthrow the government... This is the interest of the Department of Defense, of the Pentagon and the interest in having this school: to have contact with the military. And what is it all for? To protect the interests of the large corporations."

Established in 1946, the school's budget has nearly doubled since the late 1990s. There have been several legislative attempts to stop funding the school, most recently in the form of HR 2567, introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and co-sponsored by 53 others as of last week. The bill would not only suspend operations at the school, but also launch an investigation into the training materials and methodology there.

Perhaps the unfortunate situation in Honduras will attract more supporters of the legislation. Human rights abuses in Honduras' past have been connected to the SOA, including at least one secret death squad that operated there in the 1980s. Though the U.S. military stopped publishing un-redacted accounts of the names of people who have attended the SOA, there is already a long list of confirmed SOA students operating in Honduras.

Defenders of the school claim that with the name change and the addition of new policies such as the mandated eight hours of human rights training students now receive that such sinister influences are gone from the school. Whether that is true or not matters very little, though, as my guess is the men leading the Honduran coup missed out on that particular class. Their diplomas (if they have such a thing there) say "School of the Americas," not "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation."

Not only are the coup's leaders former students of the school, but the events in Honduras -- from the kidnapping of President Manuel Zelaya to the crackdown on leftists and the media to the installation of a right-wing military chief -- follow a familiar pattern established by a history of SOA involvement in Latin American political affairs.

Granted, the situation is complex, and it's hard to know exactly who is orchestrating what in Honduras. There are suggestions that this coup was a carefully-set trap from Venezuela, while others say it has roots here. The target may not have even been President Zelaya, but other political entities in Honduras.

The fact that the only leftist candidate for the upcoming presidential election was conveniently assassinated during the unrest certainly gives me pause about the true aim of the coup. Either way, it's clear that those paying the ultimate price for freedom in the country are the people of Honduras.

Not that he's the most reliable source, but what writer Wayne Madsen had to say on the subject got me thinking. He said he's "afraid that some of the same elements that we saw in the Bush Administration are still calling the shots with this administration" in regard to Latin American policy in an interview with the news show Russia Today.

"This is starting to look like a carbon copy of the U.S.-supported coup against [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez. The president was kidnapped -- Zelaya -- just like Chavez was in 2002: flown to an airbase and then exiled," he said, adding that though we have 600 troops, as well as a CIA base and an extensive intelligence-gathering network in the country, the U.S. has done nothing to help maintain order. "Unless he does something more proactively to put President Zelaya back in power, I believe President Obama owns this coup."

That might explain Chavez' reaction to the Honduran coup: "This is a coup against us all."

I worry Chavez was talking about you and me, too.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS