Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced that his country’s military will gradually withdraw from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
Better known as the School of the Americas, the military school at Ft. Benning, Ga. received a cosmetic repackaging as the WHINSEC in 2001. This was an effort by supporters in the U.S. government to shed its reputation as the alma mater of some of Latin America’s most brutal military criminals.
“They are teaching high ranking officers to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their enemies,” Morales said. Former Bolivian military dictator Hugo Banzer Suarez is among the SOA’s alumni who went on to become faithful instruments of U.S. imperialism in the region.
