It’s Friday again!

And I’m away for the weekend but as rumors of a possible coup continue to spread like gasoline, here I am writing this for you in order to bring you peace of mind.

God, I hate you.

Like us on Facebook and forgive any possible typos. I wrote this while riding a tour bus.

This is what you need to know:

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  This frigate, ironically named "Libertad," has been impounded by the Ghanaian government. I know, right? I honestly thought it was "Ghanan," but no, it’s totally "Ghanaian." (Photo/Wikipedia)

  It’s a coup! It’s not a coup! It’s a coup, maybe! In case you haven’t been paying attention to the most important news of the week (shame on you), two branches of the armed forces are up in arms against the National Government and trust me, it ain’t pretty. The whole thing started on Tuesday when members of the Coast Guard (in Spanish, Prefectura Naval) decided to start protesting against the recent signing of a presidential decree that pretty much cut their salaries in half. The sight of men in military uniform standing up against the President is obviously not a pretty one, specially since it brings back memories from a past no one here wants to revisit (for all you low-information readers, I’m talking about this), but as usual, both sides of the political spectrum have been using the conflict to try and score a few political points:

• Pro-Government factions: “It’s a coup! Oh, my God, the armed forces are rising against our hard-earned democracy and are trying to topple our dear leaders!”

• Anti-Government factions: “It’s a legitimate protest by hard workers who are being exploited by the National Government.”

• The truth? Their protest is legitimate, their methodology is not. The leader of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo organization, known for her brave work during and after the last military dictatorship, offered a press conference to “bring peace of mind” to the population. Mayor Mauricio Macri did the same and urged the protesters to go home to their families, although he said “he understood their reasons to be angry since they have been mistreated by the National Government for the last ten years” (or “vote for me next time,” wink wink). The uniformed protesters have stated repeatedly that they are 100% behind democracy and that this is not a coup, they just want to be paid accordingly. But considering that several recent pseudo-coups in Latin America (this and this) began in a similar way it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. As of today, and even though the Government has offered a solution to their demands, the protesters have said their fight would continue during the weekend until they get what they want in writing and signed.

• Sorry for the depressing, unfunny, reductionist viewpoint I just offered. I wanted you to understand. I promise the next bullet points are as stupid as usual.

• In the meantime, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was in Lima, Perú, attending the South American – Arab summit, expressing her support for the recognition of a Palestinian state and addressing the Malvinas/Falklands issue. However, the most relevant piece of information to come out of that summit was that Cristina didn’t know that alfajores were in fact an Arabic delicacy. No, I’m serious. You think I cover shitty news? Think again, the mainstream media does the same: check it here, here, here, here and here.

• Also, the president of Lebanon visited Argentina this week but no one cared.

• Youth in revolt! High-school students continue their crusade against the City Government and its plans for a syllabus reform that would reduce hours of art and lab classes in order to focus on more core subjects such as math and Spanish language. In the last three weeks, students have taken over more than 40 schools and marched to the City Education ministry in protest and now a judge has ordered Education Minister Esteban Bullrich to meet with them so they can solve the conflict. In the meantime, it’s like spring break out there. If you walk by a school that’s been taken over, join them for a mate and stay for the protests. It could get fun.

• [UPDATE] Bullrich has said he will suspend the syllabus reform if students agree to end the takeovers. Which is a bummer because you could have had fun with them.

An independent Truth Commission has found that the current Honduran government is violating human rights.

The Truth Commission, an organisation approved and supported by 22 national and international NGOs, released a 306-page document entitled “The Most Relevant Voices Are Those of the Victims”.

The report counts 5,418 human rights violations between the military coup in June 2009 and August 2011. The report states that police, armed forces or government officials carried out 84% of these violations of which 60% occurred in the six first months after the coup.

The report also says “the effects of the coup continue, and before and after the elections carried out in October 2009 the governments have used and continue to use terror as tool for social control”. It also lays responsibility on big private companies and various actors of the financial industry that supported and facilitated the coup.

Elsie Monge, a member of the Truth Commission, said “it is unacceptable, that those responsible of these violations don’t receive any punishment while the victims, who are only fighting for their rights, are massacred, taken to court and sentenced without any evidence”.

The military overthrew democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya from the centre-left Liberal Party on 28^th June 2009 and replaced him with Roberto Michelletti. Michelletti remained in power until December 2009, the period in which the report dates the majority of human rights violations.

He was then succeeded by the current president Porfirio Lobo Sosa from the right-wing conservative National Party under which human rights violations have continued according to the report released this week.

Frente Guasú, a coalition of political parties and social organisations, announced on Friday they would be restructuring the movement, and former president Fernando Lugo would become the new leader of the bloc.

In the restructuring, they reiterated that the aim of the movement would be to continue to fight against the government of current president Federico Franco, who took power after Lugo was deposed in a parliamentary coup d’êtat in June.

The impeachment process lasted less than 48 hours after Lugo was accused of not performing his duties in the aftermath of violent clashes between police and farmers that left 17 dead on 15th June. One day later, 39 (out of 45) senators supported the motion, and Lugo was removed from office.

His desposition was heavily criticised by other Latin American leaders and UNASUR, and led to the temporary suspension of Paraguay from Mercosur.

Frente Guasú is a coalition of left and centre-left parties in Paraguay that was founded in 2010. It is composed of the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) and the Espacio Unitario – Congreso Popular (EU-CP).

Representatives of Unasur (Union of South American Nations) are meeting today in Lima, Peru, to analyse the political situation in Paraguay after the deposition of Fernando Lugo, the country’s democratically-elected president.

According to Rafael Roncagliolo, Peru’s foreign minister, the so-called ‘High Level Group’ will present a declaration about the diplomatic missions that have been sent to Asunción since Lugo was removed from power after a parliamentary decision in July.

Besides Roncagliolo, the meeting will be attended by Unasur secretary general, Alí Rodríguez, along with representatives from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Surinam.

Paraguay was suspended from Unasur after Lugo’s deposition in an extraordinary meeting that took place in Mendoza, Argentina. The trade bloc, Mercosur, adopted a similar measure the same day.

New Paraguayan Minister of Defense María Liz García yesterday released a video that the Paraguayan government claims shows the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicolás Maduro, planning an uprising with the Paraguayan military in advance of the impeachment of former president Lugo.

The video shows Maduro entering and exiting a meeting with high-ranking military officials.

Ecuadorian ambassador Julio Rubo was also allegedly present.

Paraguayan officials hold that in the meeting, Maduro pressured the Paraguayan military to publically support Lugo and refuse to accept the results of the impeachment trial. The government labels these actions as an attempted uprising.

The video, which lasts just under two minutes, shows that the meeting allegedly occurred between 4:23pm and 4:33pm on 22nd June, shortly before the congressional session in which the verdict was to be delivered in the case against former President Lugo.

The video, which was edited, shows both photos and names of those pictured. The video lacked audio, and no conversations between the military and the Venezuelan official can be discerned. An unedited version was also given to the press.

The Paraguayan government alleges that the meeting was called by the head of military cabinet under Lugo, Angel Vallovera. The commanders of the three branches of the military were present, among others: army commander Adalberto Garcete, navy commander Juan Benítez, and air force commander Miguel Angel Christ.

The director of the Military Cabinet and the commanders of the army and navy have been replaced since Franco took office.

Maduro was in Paraguay in the week leading up to the impeachment as part of a Unasur mission that was in the country to monitor Lugo’s trial.

In Paraguay, the Congressional Commission of National Defense held an investigation of the accusations. They interrogated current and former military officials about the alleged meeting with Maduro.

Christ, who was questioned on Monday, told the commission that the Venezuelan official pressured the military commanders to sign a document affirming their continued support of Lugo as the president.

Parliament member Hugo Veláquez stated that the committee concluded that Maduro “tried to persuade the military not to accept what the national Congress was doing”, in reference to the impeachment of Lugo.

His counterpart José López Chávez has called for the prosecution of Maduro, Prado and former president Lugo for inciting a military uprising.

García confirmed that the videos would be passed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, who she stated would be examining Maduro’s alleged interference with the Paraguayan military. Prosecutor Stella Mary Cano is charged with the case.

Last week, García first accused the Venezuelan government of asking the military to interfere in advance of the impeachment. Venezuela continues to deny the accusations.

The Paraguayan Minister of Defense also revealed that the Paraguayan president Federico Franco himself ordered that the video be released to the press.

In an interview with El Carabobeño, a Venezuelan website, Maduro responded that the accusations have “no grip on reality”.

Former president Lugo has also come out against the video; speaking through the website ‘Paraguay Resiste’, he stated that the video “futilely attempts to compromise foreign diplomats in maneuvers that never occurred” with the goal of “diverting attention” from the “paramilitary coup” that installed the new government.

Secretary General of the Organization of American States José Miguel Insulza stated that it was “strange” that Nicolás Maduro, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, would have met with military commanders during a political crisis.

Both Mercosur and Unasur have voted to suspend Paraguay’s membership after last week’s controversial impeachment of former President Fernando Lugo, but neither group will impose sanctions. Mercosur has also voted to grant full membership to Venezuela.

Paraguay was blocked from attending both the routine Mercosur summit held from 28th to 29th June and the emergency Unasur summit on 29th June.

Both organisations will suspend Paraguay until “the full reestablishment of democratic order can be verified,” with regional leaders looking to the country’s next scheduled elections on the 13th of April 2013.

Mercosur’s Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have deemed the impeachment of former Paraguayan president Lugo as a violation of the Ushuaia Protocol, the group’s so-called “democratic clause”. The suspension represents the first time that Mercosur has punished one of its member states in this way since the block’s creation in 1991.

Paraguay’s new government, headed by Federico Franco, has countered that the states failed to respect Article 4 of the Ushuaia Protocol because they did not consult with Paraguay on the matter.

Franco’s government has also promised that it will respect the next elections.

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, however, called for regional leaders to do all they can to ensure that the elections are “democratic, free and just”. Unasur announced the creation of a ‘high-level’ group to continue monitoring and evaluating the situation in Paraguay, with a special focus on the country’s next elections.

Mercosur also announced the admission of Venezuela as its fifth full member.

Venezuela signed a membership agreement in 2006, but Paraguay’s congress had not yet ratified the country’s membership. With Parguay’s suspension, remaining members Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – whose congresses had all ratified Venezuela’s membership – moved to admit Venezuela. The inauguration will take place on the 31st of July in Río de Janeiro.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez celebrated the news, declaring the moment a “defeat for imperialism”.

Mercosur’s rotating presidency was passed from Argentine President Christina Fernández de Kirchner to her Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff. Paraguay had been scheduled to assume this role until its suspension.

Unasur’s rotating presidency, meanwhile, was officially passed early to Peru. Until last week’s events, Paraguay had been president of the block and Peru was expected to take over in October; in light of the country’s suspension, however, the turnover was moved forward.

On 21^st June, the Paraguayan House of Deputies voted 73-1 to hold a hearing that would decide whether Fernando Lugo should be impeached from his position as president. One day later, on 22^nd June, the Senate voted and Lugo lost his job to his vice-president, current president Federico Franco.

Congress called it democratic impeachment. Lugo called it an “express coup d’état.”

Foreign media jumped on the words “coup d’état” and ran images of the protest in Asunción on Friday evening. Many countries took drastic diplomatic action, with Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner going as far as to pull its Paraguayan ambassador.

Local media reports, on the other hand, have varied. Along with cries of censorship regarding the country’s public television station, there have been reports of deep corruption in some of the nation’s newspapers.

The only time “Paraguay” has been googled more than now has been during major sports events, and the country’s internet presence is growing.

In this war of words, every newspaper line, television image, radio clip, tweet or blog post sharing a slogan or point of view can move the public and change the narrative.

And with so many voices crying to hijack the discourse in Paraguay, the truth of the situation is hard to discern.

Protests and Local Reports

The night of the impeachment, thousands gathered in Plaza Independencia, in downtown Asunción, to protest Congress’ decision. In images circulated around the world, riot police and water cannons pushed people from the government offices after the decision.

By the 23^rd June, there were just a handful of protestors left in the plaza. Packing up their blankets and bags, the half-dozen youths occasionally shouted chants, calling for democracy in Paraguay.

Celso Velázquez and Concepción Oviedo were two of those protestors. Both are members of the student movement CREAR. Oviedo said although the movement started with students’ interests in mind, they found the situation too important not to protest.

“The parliamentarians – the senators and deputies – in one day decided the future of the country, and put in place a person who was not elected [as president] by the citizens in 2008,” she said. “And so, they cut the democratic process that started in 2008.”

Velázquez said he started protesting 21^stJune. He noted that although he does not support Lugo, he supports democracy and believes the process to remove him was undemocratic. “Now, Paraguay is under a dictator,” he said. “It was the opinion of Parliament, not the fruit of popular vote. The international community is not recognising this government, and there could be an economic decline and blockades against Paraguay.”

By 23^rd June, most protestors in favour of Lugo’s return to the Presidential Palace were in front of TV Pública, Paraguay’s public television station. There, hundreds of people took their turn in front of the camera during the station’s “Open Microphone” – a program which usually lasts two hours, that ran straight for a couple of days.

Rodrigo Tellez runs the new-media company SEO Paraguay. Soon after the Senate’s decision, he started the website Noticias Desde Paraguay to crowdsource information from various social media. From the site, he broadcast TV Pública’s continuous coverage of the protest.

“When it started, there was a little bit of repression of information,” he says. “[Citizens] were speaking what they were thinking, how they feel about the recent situation, and you couldn’t see that on TV or on any station. [Government] even tried to pull the plug on their energy – they sent the energy company to cut them out. But after a time – thanks to social media – everybody could see what was really happening in the country, and it forced the politicians to put that on air.”

José María Costa is a professor of journalism, information law, new technologies and cultural industries at the National University of Asunción. Now a columnist, Costa has decades of experience in the field as a journalist for the Paraguayan daily Última Hora and a voice on radio. Having reported in Paraguay during Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship, he says he thinks the media today is quite free to report what they want. He says the freedom of media to criticise Congress and the sequence of events is the “most palpable and most conclusive evidence that there is.”

“In the period of transition from 1989 to today, Paraguayan society has recuperated many freedoms,” he says. “One of the freedoms, obviously, is freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”

He says he believes TV Pública was practically in Lugo’s party’s hands, and did not permit opinions and visions contrary to his political thinking. “[It was] the state’s own television station, none other than its own voice criticising the [new] government,” he says. “I would find it difficult to find another situation like it in Latin America. The public television station of Argentina doing this – Cristina Kirchner allowing this at this time, or TeleSUR in Venezuela doing the same – it wouldn’t happen.”

As far as traditional forms of media are concerned, in Paraguay as around the world, the almighty dollar is a driving force in what makes it to the evening news. “What is emerging now is journalistic media that exploits sensationalism, as a mechanism to increase ratings,” Costa says. “They create journalism and communicate with a feeling that is much more sensational.”

The Growth of New Media

Paraguay is one of the continent’s least connected nations. When Lugo became president in 2008 Paraguay had 530,300 internet users – 7.8% of the population – according to the United Nations’ specialised agency for information and communication technologies. Costa says that in just four years, that number has risen to about 20% or 30% of the population.

“It’s a real growth,” he says. “I believe that accompanying this real growth of internet penetration, there was growth in the use of internet for freedom of speech and the expression of ideas, debates, criticisms – expressions in respect to issues of public interest.”

Tellez says there are both negative and positive aspects to more people using social networks for news. As one positive, he says the diversity of viewpoints increased as Paraguay increased its internet usage.

“Everyone was watching TV, and you can’t really watch what’s happening,” he says. “The owner of one channel wanted you to get his point of view, and the owner of the other channel – I say channel, but it’s networks. The same owner is the owner of one channel, one newspaper and many magazines, and they use it in the same way.”

Tellez – who had to study his trade in Buenos Aires due to the lack of available training in Paraguay – also says the internet helped people around the country understand what was going on despite not being in the capital. “They were watching TV and it was Popeye or some canned film, instead of what was going on,” he says.

Argentina’s Coverage

While representatives from many Latin American countries have been reacting to the impeachment, Argentines have been especially vocal.

Argentine political theorist and professor Atilio Boron said in a recent article that the president’s dismissal was “one of the most blatant acts of fraud in the political history of Latin America,” noting the power of agribusiness, its power in Paraguay and the role it played in Lugo’s impeachment.

He also talks about deep corruption in the newspaper industry, arguing that the nation’s biggest newspaper, ABC Color, among other things “launched an intense campaign prior to the coup d’etat, preparing a political climate that permitted Lugo’s express political hanging.”

“The US embassy, together with the agro-industrial transnationals and the oligarchy, made up the gang that dominated Congress,” he said in the article, published with the Latin American television station TeleSUR. “Lugo realised too late what little democracy there is in the institutions of the capitalist state, which removed him in a tragicomic political show trial, violating with impunity all standards of due process.”

The Argentine daily newspaper La Nación also wrote an editorial about the impeachment/coup on Tuesday, noting that the critical countries are also ones with their own issues regarding democracy. “There is thus an asymmetry between the way the almost unanimous decision of the Paraguayan Congress to displace Lugo was attacked, and the indifference with which the continuing constitutional violations of governments with legitimacy of origin are taken,” the article said.

Costa says he believes the transition from Lugo’s government to Franco’s was through “a democratic process,” and that members of Congress “were elected in the same election as Lugo, and with the same quantity of votes.”

Tellez says he believes international governments also have their own interests in mind when it comes to their coverage of the situation. He noted that Latin American countries with “left-leaning” governments would have a special interest in Lugo’s downfall as his party tends toward what is considered the “left” side of the political spectrum.

“Other countries are a bit worried, because they are run by social parties,” he says, bringing up Argentina as an example. “Now, with this happening here, Cristina Kirchner is afraid it could happen to her in her country. She has a lot of stuff that her politicians could say about her to get an impeachment – easy, easy, easy.”

As different forms of social media take hold in Paraguay, the country will be able to represent itself better in the future. Costa says while there is not yet the depth or power seen in Egypt or Tunisia, Paraguay is on its way.

“Obviously, it’s a process that is going to create force,” he says. “But yes, [the crisis] demonstrates that the seed is there, and the feeling is there, too.”

Unasur has scheduled an emergency presidential summit this Friday in Mendoza to generate a joint resolution in response to the political situation in Paraguay.

The meeting coincides with the routine Mercosur summit scheduled to take place this Thursday and Friday, 28th – 29^th of June.

Unasur Secretary General Alí Rodríguez Araque stated that heads of state “will analyse the situation, [and] will make decisions – which must be made in consensus and in light of corresponding actions,” as quoted by Radio Programas del Perú.

He added “the focus is on the reestablishment of democratic order in Paraguay” and classified the transition as “a coup.”

In official communication, leaders of both Mercosur and Unasur have condemned the impeachment, criticising the “rupture of democratic order” in Paraguay. Mercosur has already blocked Paraguay from participating in its upcoming summit, including the presidential summit and preliminary meetings.

Former Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, however, was invited with ‘testimonial’ status to the Mercorsur summit. He had previously stated he would attend the summit, and was expected to attend the Unasur summit.

Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Lugo declared that he would not be in attendance.

“I do not want to make the other presidents feel pressured in analysing the situation of the country,” Lugo stated, as quoted by La Voz del Interior.

Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa had announced plans for an extraordinary Unasur summit in Lima tomorrow, but official announcements today revealed that the summit would be held Friday in Argentina.

Until this weekend, Paraguay held the rotating presidency of Unasur. On Sunday, however, ousted president Lugo passed the leadership to Peru’s president Ollanta Humala.

Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and Brazil have all either recalled or withdrawn their ambassadors from Paraguay.

Venezuela is the only country to have taken concrete sanctions against Paraguay thus far; yesterday, President Hugo Chávez announced a block on exportations of oil to the country.

Some neighboring countries – including Ecuador and Bolivia – have called for sanctions, while others are calling for greater moderation; Brazil, Chile and Uruguay have stated that they are against sanctions.

Mercosur is comprised of member states Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and associate members Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Unasur is constituted by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The Organisation of American States also held an extraordinary meeting today in Washington, D.C. The meeting was originally scheduled for tomorrow but was moved forward.

The Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, emphasised that the organization has no intention of interfering in Paraguay.

“Torturers are not born that way: someone educates them, trains them and supports them.” This statement belongs to a report by Amnesty International as part of its campaign to eradicate torture. The same report states that there are over 150 military training centres in the world whose job it is to provide training to foreign armed forces. Protected by secrecy and without any independent control, these centres have the potential to “facilitate human rights violations”.

Latin America and the SOA (image courtesy of N.ree.K)

Such is the case of the infamous School of the Americas, a US Army education facility aimed at training members of Latin American armed forces which has been operational since 1946. Many of its graduates have taken part in military dictatorships throughout the continent and have been accused of committing crimes against humanity using the counter-insurgency methods they were taught at the school. The School of the Americas is not an anomaly, but an integral part of US foreign policy that reached as far south as Argentina.

As we commemorate a new Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia (the anniversary of the 1976 coup d’etat) this Saturday 24th March, it is worth remembering the role the School of the Americas played in the country’s recent history.

The Cold War And The National Security Doctrine

“America for the Americans” is a phrase commonly used to summarise the so-called ‘Monroe doctrine’. In his State of the Union address in 1823, US president James Monroe set out what would become the US policy towards the rest of the American continent to this day: by rejecting the intervention of the European powers in the continent, America would become part of the US’s sphere of influence.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the political, cultural, economic, and military influence of the US on the continent expanded. The onset of World War II accelerated the process, already underway, of military cooperation, and favoured a common defence policy based on continental solidarity. Thus, the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance stated that any foreign attack on one of the signatory states would be deemed an attack on all of them.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Fostor Dulles, mastermind behind the 1954 coup d'etat in Guatemala (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1960s, US policy towards Latin America shifted as the Cold War intensified and the success of the Cuban revolution brought the communist threat to its backyard. The fight against communism -or any political movement identified as such- became the number one objective for the US. The role of the Latin American armed forces within the continent and even within their own countries was then redefined to achieve this objective: their main aim became to guarantee internal stability.

The National Security Doctrine, whilst not written down or systematised, is considered to be a military doctrine developed by the US government and instilled into Latin American soldiers through training centres such as the School of the Americas. Many trace its origins to the counter-insurgency teachings of the French military, who developed their own doctrine to fight against the resistance of the independence movements from their former colonies in Algeria and South East Asia.

The most important aspect of the National Security Doctrine, the one which shaped all the policies developed under it, was the idea that social conflict and armed struggle in Latin America (and the so-called Third World in general) was not the result of internal factors, but of communist infiltration by groups backed by the USSR. This way, all internal conflicts were redefined as being part of the bigger threat of the Soviet Union against the US, thus justifying US intervention. This intervention, however, was not direct. As military involvement by the US was generally not supported at home, especially after the Vietnam War, the training imparted to Latin American soldiers and the redefinition of the role of the armed forces sought to prepare them to carry out their job as regional ‘police’ within their own borders.

‘Torturers Are Not Born That Way…’

Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentina), Roberto Viola (Argentina), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Juan Velasco Alvarado (Peru), Omar Torrijos (Panama). What reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Latin American dictators is but a small fraction of the long list of graduates from the School of the Americas.

Leopoldo Galtieri, graduate of the School of the Americas and Argentine dictator during the Dirty War (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The School, ran by the US Army, first opened its doors in 1946 in Panama. Back then, it was called Latin American Training Center, Ground Division and its objective was to train Latin American soldiers in war and counter-insurgency techniques. In 1950 it was moved to its definite location in Panama, Fort Gulick, and Spanish was adopted as its official language. It would remain in Fort Gulick until 1984 when it was relocated to the US. In 1963 it was renamed United States Army School of the Americas, the name by which it would become internationally known.

According to the NGO SOA Watch, since 1946 the school “has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics”. Many of these were involved in military regimes across the continent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. More recently, graduates from the school participated in the attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the coup that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

What exactly did the soldiers learn in their visits to the School of the Americas? In 1991, seven Spanish-language Army manuals, based partly on lesson plans used by instructors since 1982, were released to the US Congress and in 1992 two CIA manuals used for training in Latin America were added. These texts included material from CIA and US Army manuals written in the 1950s and 1960s and had titles such as ‘Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology’, ‘Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla’, ‘Handling of Sources’, and ‘Interrogation’.

One of the most striking features of these texts is the lack of distinction between legitimate and legal opposition movements and armed guerrillas. The ‘Counterintelligence’ manual defines as potential counterinsurgency targets any groups or political parties “that have goals, beliefs or ideologies contrary or in opposition to the National Government” or the US. It then recommends the creation of black lists to include “enemy agents” and “subversive persons”, including political opposition leaders and “collaborators and sympathisers of the enemy”. The suggested solutions to the enemy presence include infiltrations into enemy groups and population control techniques such as curfews, military checkpoints, house searches, issuance of ID cards and rationing. Detention procedures compliant with the rule of law are ignored. According to the analysis carried out by NGO Latin American Working Group (LAWG), “throughout the manuals there is discussion of detaining suspects without mention of proper procedures for arrest, obtaining admissible evidence, trial and conviction. There is no mention of warrants or the right to contact an attorney or any comparable local laws. In fact, it is recommended throughout that detainees be kept in isolation and not be allowed to contact anyone.”

WHINSEC Change of command ceremony in 2010

The declassified CIA manuals are even more crude. Whilst the Army manuals try to keep up appearances by making references to documents such as the Geneva Convention, the CIA’s “Human Resource Exploitation Manual” has an entire chapter dedicated to coercive interrogation techniques. The aim of these techniques, they explain, is to induce psychological regression in the prisoner, defined as “a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioural level”. The “three major principles involved in the successful application of coercive techniques” are physical weakness, dependency and intense fear and anxiety. To achieve this, the manuals indicate that suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets. Causing fear by threatening the prisoner is included as a technique in this chapter, as the manual indicates that the threat to inflict pain is often more effective than the feeling of pain. Other coercive techniques discussed in the manual include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disruption of routines, solitary confinement, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos.

This type of training has had serious consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. US backing for Latin American dictatorships has been widely documented, but what the manuals from the School of the Americas show is the true and chilling extent of the intervention. It did not only consist of political support: it went as far as teaching the soldiers how to torture prisoners.

Even those who did not suffer the application of these ‘coercive techniques’ on themselves or their loved ones, those who were oblivious to it all or those who had not been born yet suffered the consequences of State-sponsored terrorism. The social and economic outcomes of the Latin American dictatorships are still being felt by many to this day. The techniques taught at the School of the Americas were but a means to an end: to subjugate the opposition to the massive social and economic changes introduced by the dictatorships from the 1970s onwards.

‘Different Name, Same Shame’

In 1984, Panamanian president Jorge Illueca denounced the School of the Americas as the biggest base for destabilisation in Latin America and evicted the US army from Fort Gulick, a step which was part of the broader process put in motion by the Panama Canal Treaty and which involved the progressive withdrawal of US forces from Panama.

Protesters hold up crosses with the names of the disappeared at SOA Watch's annual vigil. (Photo: Carolyn Scorpio)

The School of the Americas was then reopened in Fort Benning, in the US state of Georgia. In 2001, and after the public outcry caused by the release of the training manuals, the school closed down and was replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). SOA Watch and other human rights NGOs have been publicly denouncing WHINSEC ever since, as they consider it to be “the School of the Americas under a different name”. There has been no critical assessment of the way the school was conducted and therefore no real changes to its objectives, procedures and lack of independent control.

Many NGOs advocate for the closing of WHINSEC, with SOA Watch at the forefront of the struggle. The sole purpose of SOA Watch, based in Washington DC and with offices in Latin America, is to push for the closure of the School of the Americas, under whatever name it may be called. Founded in 1990 after the massacre of six priests and two women by School of the Americas graduates in El Salvador, this NGO has been working relentlessly through demonstrations and nonviolent protest to achieve their goal. Last November, during a yearly vigil, a SOA Watch activist was arrested for breaking into the grounds of WHINSEC in Fort Benning, and later condemned to six months in prison. Unlike the school educators, hundreds of anti-WHINSEC activists throughout the years have had to face justice and serve prison time.

Despite their efforts, an average of 1,000 students per year (mainly Latin American) continue to attend WHINSEC for training on counterdrug, urban terrain, major combat and joint operations. The school receives a budget of US$14m annually.

The most promising gesture regarding the School of the Americas has not come from the US, but from the Latin American governments. Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia have all decided in recent years to stop sending soldiers for training at Fort Benning. This goes to show that, whilst changing the 200-year long foreign policy of a world super power may not be easy, only the autonomous decisions of a strengthened and united continent can save millions from being at its mercy.

Vice President of AMARC Latin America and the Caribbean, Carlos Aparicio, said there had been reports that warned about the vulnerable status of communitarian communicators in Honduras. Nery Orellana is the third journalist murdered in Honduras 2011.

Aparicio said the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) has repeatedly denounced “the conditions of community aggression against journalists after the coup.”

In communication with Radio Earth in Chile, AMARC LAC Vice President said that “the authorities are ignored, deaf and unpunished responsibility for a life like Nery Orellana.”

The representative of the community radio stations complained that “there are no guarantees in Honduras despite the Covenant” concluded between the government of Honduras and Manuel Zelaya.

Geremias Orellana, 26, was director of community radio Joconguera in western Honduras.

He also was a correspondent for Radio Progreso, a member of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) and contributor to the Catholic Church in the town of Candelaria.

The journalist was killed last week in the village of San Lorenzo, western department of Lempira, Honduras.

It is worth remembering that since March 2010 14 Honduras communicators have been killed in Honduras.