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Training Ground For Murderers Essay

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Training Ground For Murderers

Continued U.S. support for the School of the Americas, an institution that has trained dictators and political assassins, is completely unjustifiable.

At seven o’ clock in the morning on December 11, 1981 an evil force entered the small El Salvadorian village of El Mezote (School of Assasins). With painted faces and army fatigues, the guerillas carried machine guns and automatic rifles into the peaceful village. As survivor Rufina Amaya recounts, “At ten o’clock the soldiers began to kill the men who were in the church. First, they machine-gunned them and slit their throats” (“Country Sheets for Close it Down Fast!” 3). After the men, the women were placed face down in the dusty streets and shot to …show more content…

However, the school has been responsible for training dictators, assassins, and murderers like those at El Mezote. One would assume that the United States would discontinue support for an institution whose existence has escalated violence against civilians in Latin America. Yet, even in light of the massacres and dictators that have been directly linked to the school’s operation, nothing has swayed the government in its unyielding support for the school.

The United States established the School of the Americas in Panama in 1946, for the purpose training of Latin American military and police forces (“School of the Americas” 1, “Schools of the Americas; U.S. Military Training for Latin American Countries” 1). Prior to 1984, the United States had a network of schools in Peru and Panama that trained soldiers under CIA instruction (Buckley 5). Panamanian officials requested the U.S. to move the school out of the country, citing the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty giving Panama territorial control over the land the school occupied. In compliance, the United States withdrew the school’s operations in Panama and permanently moved the school to Fort Benning, Georgia (Buckley 5).

Training Latin Americans to protect their nation through strong-arm military tactics places an

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