Editing School of the Americas (section)

==History of the School of the Americas==
Founding and Purpose (1946): Established in 1946 as the Latin American Training Center–Ground Division at Fort Amador, Panama, the SOA aimed to strengthen U.S. military ties with Latin America amid post-World War II geopolitical shifts. Renamed the U.S. Army Caribbean School in 1949 and the School of the Americas in 1963, it trained Latin American military personnel in counterinsurgency, intelligence, and leadership to during the Cold War. By 2000, over 60,000 personnel from Latin America had graduated, including 743 U.S. and 251 Latin American students in 1949 alone.

Curriculum and Training: The SOA offered courses in Spanish (adopted as the official language in 1956) on topics like counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, interrogation techniques, and civic action. Training manuals, developed under Project X (1965–1966) and influenced by the CIA’s [[Phoenix Program]] in Vietnam, included controversial methods such as torture, assassination, and extortion, as noted by former instructor Major Joseph Blair. These manuals were suspended under President Jimmy Carter in 1976 due to human rights concerns but were later reinstated with revisions.

Relocation and Rebranding (1984–2001): Expelled from Panama in 1984, the SOA relocated to Fort Benning. Public outcry, led by groups like SOA Watch, highlighted graduates’ human rights abuses, prompting the 1993 release of a list confirming 60,000 graduates, including “dictators, death squad operatives, and assassins.” Bills to defund the school, introduced by Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II in 1993 and 1994, failed, but a 1996 House Appropriations Committee report criticized inadequate human rights screening. In 2001, the SOA was rebranded as WHINSEC to distance it from its controversial past, with a new curriculum emphasizing human rights and democracy, though critics argue it remains a continuation of the SOA.

Notable Graduates: The SOA’s “Hall of Fame” included figures like Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez, Panamanian drug lord Manuel Noriega, and Guatemalan General Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas, a fugitive wanted for war crimes. Other graduates, such as El Salvador’s Roberto D’Aubuisson (death squad leader) and Guatemala’s Julio Roberto Alpírez (implicated in assassinations), were linked to atrocities, fueling the “School of Assassins” moniker.