Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) (School of the Americas (SOA)) is a US Army facility at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. It is a Spanish language training facility especially for Latin American military personnel. Around 60,000 people have taken courses, roughly 1,000 a year. The SOA was renamed to WHISC in January 2001 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The institute's remit is "to provide professional education and training" while "promoting democratic values, respect for human rights, and knowledge and understanding of United States customs and traditions."
WHISC's $10 million budget is funded by the Army and by tuition fees, usually paid through the International Military Education and Training (IMET) grants, the International Narcotics Control (INC) assistance programs, or through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
The SOA was established in Panama in 1946 as the Latin American Training Center - Ground Division. It was renamed the US Army School of the Americas in 1963. It relocated to Fort Benning in 1984 following the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty.
The SOA has been attacked for training members of governments guilty of serious human rights abuses and advocating techniques that violated accepted standards. Graduates of the SOA include men such as Leopoldo Galtieri, Efraín Ríos Montt, Manuel Noriega, Omar Torrijos, Roberto Viola, Guillermo Rodriguez, Juan Velasco Alvarado, and Hugo Banzer Suarez. For this reason, the school has been nicknamed "School of Assassins."
There is usually a demonstration at the gates of the SOA/WHISC in November around the time of the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
The November date for the annual demonstration actually commemorates the first Latin American massacre to be traced to the doors of the SOA. On November 16, 1989, six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter were murdered at the University of Central America (UCA). Of the 27 soldiers cited for that massacre by a 1993 UN Truth Commission, 19 were discovered to be SOA graduates. This would be only the first of many documented linkages between the School and atrocities.
Taking seriously the demand of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero that "We who have a voice must speak for the voiceless," Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters formed SOA Watch in 1990. They began to research the SOA, educate the public, lobby Congress, and practice creative, nonviolent resistance at Ft. Benning.
The November anniversary of the UCA massacre continues to be an important focus for the growing grassroots movement to close the SOA/WHISC. Indeed, the original band of ten resisters -- who gathered at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 1990 to commemorate the first anniversary of the UCA massacre -- has grown in recent Novembers to a teeming resistance community of 10,000. People come from all over the country and even the world to honor victims of the SOA -- as well as their survivors -- with music, words, puppets and theatre.
Traditionally the legal vigil and memorial service concludes with a mock funeral procession onto Ft. Benning, with all who choose to march onto the post technically at risk for arrest. Subsequent to 9/11 and the erecting of a security fence at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 2001, protesters who wish to take their mourning onto the post need to go over, under, or around that fence -- as opposed to the simple marching of the past. Over the years, hundreds and even thousands have chosen to risk arrest for criminal trespassing.
For a chronology of actions against the School of Americas which have resulted in prison witness, view http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=339. (HTML link to follow. Promise.)
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