School of Americas
Thank you for your May 21 editorial, “Bury This Relic,” regarding closing the infamous School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Ga. I want to add another concern.
The huge increase in Mexico’s involvement in the SOA’s counterintelligence, counterinsurgency and psychological-warfare training (an enrollment surge from an indifferent 15 per year to a yearly 330 immediately upon the Chiapas indigenous protest of the PRI’s human-rights trashing) says it all. Latin America’s military have been notorious for suppression of their own people. We have no business giving them the skills, especially now that they are, in turn, training fratricidal paramilitary. And the U.S. Army’s touted SOA curriculum changes since their days of torture manuals are only cosmetic; they are still “iron fisting” their grads for the interests of NAFTA.
ROBERT BROPHY
Los Alamitos
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