Latin American SOA Analysis

As described by author Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas now the (Western Hemisphere instate for security cooperation) is a US military center utilized for the training and instruction of Latin American military officers in the realm of war combat skills, tactics, and counterinsurgency doctrine (6). Repressive tactics such as torture, psychological warfare, and varying methods of violence have contributed to the onslaught of violence within Latin America. Such violence is linked to many of the school’s graduates such as General Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, officers working with General Pinochet of Chile, and countless more officers and generals spanning across all Latin American nations. As asserted by author Gill, the SOAs purpose was never to help Latin American governments, but to utilize the school as a vehicle for US imperialism.

The SOA recognized early on that that the imposition of shock and violence in a nation would allow for the fruition of an “imperial intrusion”; where the dominant groups (the military or police forces) trained by the US, could be utilized to suppress local populations. Once local populations were suppressed and in fear by US-trained state security forces, the neoliberal machine could then proceed to pursue exploitative practices and profit with little opposition. Initially, the SOA and its graduates utilized the context of the cold war to justify pervasive violent acts against Latin American citizens. Oppression was justified given the fact that opponents of militarism and neoliberalism could simply be labeled “communists” and hence a threat to the Western world which had to be contained. However, proceeding the collapse of the USSR in the early nineties, the ‘fight’ against communism evolved into the war on