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Stopping the torture trade
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subsequently established in Guatemala to investigate the human
rights abuses committed during the civil conflict, concluded:
“Whilst anti-communism, promoted by the United States
within the framework of its foreign policy, received firm
support from right-wing political parties and from various
other powerful actors in Guatemala, the United
States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support
for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard.
In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed
towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus
and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency
techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on
human rights violations during the armed confrontation.”
In a 1991 civil suit, a US court found former Guatemalan Defence
Minister General Héctor Gramajo responsible for the kidnap and
rape of Sister Ortiz. General Gramajo is one of literally hundreds
of graduates of the notorious School of the Americas (SOA) in
the USA who have been implicated in human rights violations in
various countries in Latin America.
The SOA, located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is the best known
US military training facility, but it is only one of more than 150
centres in the USA and abroad where foreign officers are
trained. In September 1996 the US Department of Defense
released evidence that the SOA had used so-called “intelligence
training manuals” between 1982 and 1991 that advocated
execution, torture, beatings and blackmail. The manuals, written
in Spanish, were used to train thousands of Latin American
security force agents. Copies of these manuals were distributed
in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru.
It appears that the manuals had belatedly been discovered
through internal review processes in 1991. Relevant
congressional committees were notified of the discovery in 1991,
but the manuals’ existence was not made public at that time. In
fact, when a campaign by US non-governmental organizations —
SOA Watch — publicized the existence of the manuals in July
1996, the official spokesman at the SOA denied that such
manuals had ever been used. The Pentagon released copies of
the manuals two months later, in September 1996.
Several governmental investigations have found that, while