School of the Americas:
School of Assassins?
By Willhemina Wahlin
Pic: Fr Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch (SOA Watch)

The US military may have changed the name of the School of the Americas (SOA) to the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation' (WHINSEC) and added a few token human rights courses to the curriculum, but shedding the dark and bloody past of the institution responsible for training some of Latin America's most notorious human rights violators, murderers and dictators won't be as simple as a semantic differential. An investigation of the school's history has never been officially undertaken, despite the approximated deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of its graduates. Now, however, a bill has entered the congressional arena that hopes to shut down the institution dubbed the 'School of Assassins' - this time for good.

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This article was originally published in Cheers Magazine on Friday 2nd June, 2006.

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