¡No Mas! No More!

[AGENDA21]

In the past week, the defense ministers of both Uruguay and Argentina have declared that their governments plan to cut ties with the US Army's School of the Americas. The Montevideo newspaper La República quoted Uruguay's defense minister explaining her country's position in an article published Thursday, and Argentina's defense ministry has issued a statement to The Nation confirming that the lone Argentine soldier currently training at the SOA will be the country's last to enroll there. These developments represent two of the strongest indications to date that the people of Latin America have come to view the SOA as a destabilizing force and a gateway to human rights atrocities.

Since its founding in 1946, the SOA--now located at Fort Benning in Georgia and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation--has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in commando and psychological warfare, counterinsurgency techniques and intelligence-gathering. The Pentagon has acknowledged the school's use of field manuals advocating torture in the past, and UN commissions and research organizations have linked SOA graduates to many of the region's most heinous massacres, assassinations and torturous interrogations over the years. Graduates from Uruguay and Argentina figure prominently into this sordid history, from Uruguayan soldiers linked to kidnappings and torture through Operation Condor to the notorious Argentine dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri.

Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest who founded SOA Watch in 1990, catalyzed the developments in Uruguay and Argentina by appealing directly to the two countries' defense ministers in face-to-face meetings during a visit to the region. "We did not have to convince them," said Bourgeois, speaking by phone from Buenos Aires. "The people here are very educated about the SOA and US foreign policy, simply because they've been on the receiving end."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060417/mulvaney

[Vincardog]

1. Uruguay and Argentina renounce torture. aWoL continues to relish it

[blogslut]

2. Don't forget the link

to SOA Watch

http://www.soaw.org

:)

[AGENDA21]

3. Thanks.