Unrest and violent fighting in El Salvador between pro-government forces and leftist guerilla groups and their revolutionary supporters in the late 1970s sparked the official beginnings of a Salvadoran Civil War by late 1980. The main battling groups officially involved in the war were the leftist guerilla group known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, and the government state military. However, many civilian communities associated with supporting the FMLN were deliberately massacred by government forces during the war. Women and children were not spared from this violence, as they were seen as threats to government power for merely existing within their communities. Between 1978 and 1991 an estimated 50,000 civilians were murdered in El Salvador by government forces and their allies supposedly for the state purpose of clearing communities of “subversives” (1).
Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa was a graduate of the School of the Americas and commander of the infamous Atlacatl Battalion, which existed during the 1980s as a part of the Salvadoran Army (2). Monterrosa and his battalion were involved in a military plan known as “Operation Rescue” which occurred between December 8th and 16th of 1981 in towns located in Northern Morazán, El Salvador. The Atlacatl Battalion, which had been created and trained by U.S. advisers shortly prior to the El Mozote Massacre, and other pro-government military forces killed at least 393 people in El Mozote and about 794 altogether during the multi-day massacre. Tutela Legal, the source providing this data, recognizes that it is likely the number is higher as a result of the children whose deaths may not have been recorded (3).
U.S. news sources got word of the incident in January and began reporting on details of the massacre, including the number of civilians who had been killed. The New York Times reported from a list of names recorded by surviving civilians 733 victims, 482 of which were from El Mozote. In response to this the U.S. Embassy stated that only 320 people lived in El Mozote, and that these recorded names were likely just lists stolen by the FMLN from the civil registry. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which frequently travelled to the area to provide supplies, had reported that there were about 1000 civilians living in El Mozote at the time (4).
The U.S. Embassy sent two embassy officers to investigate the massacre in El Salvador after the State Department requested more information. Some argue that the U.S. Embassy and other government officials in the Reagan Administration wanted to disprove the news articles that blamed a large number of civilian deaths on state-sponsored violence. The State Department used a single diplomatic cable from an informant for a basis of their denial in 1982, part of which stated, “Civilians did die during [the operation], but no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operation zone" (5). A cable released a few weeks later confirmed greater government involvement in the massacre of civilians, but the information from this cable was not released until 1988 (6).
The previous example is one specific event occurring in El Salvador involving a School of the Americas graduate and his U.S. trained battalion. However, similar acts of violence involving U.S. support and School of the Americas graduates occurred throughout South America. There are a number of other well-known graduates who committed human rights abuses in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, and Colombia, among others (7).
Some examples for further research include:
-General Roberto Viola from Argentina who was charged with kidnapping, murder, and torture
-Colonel Julio Alpirez from Guatemala, known for torturing and killing guerilla’s while employed by the CIA
-General Luis Alonso Discua from Honduras, known for commanding Battalion 3-16 which was referred to as a “death squad” (8).
While not all students of the SOA became dictators or violent military leaders, these are some of the graduates that activists point to when questioning the validity of the institution and noting the impact that American training and involvement had in Latin America throughout many of these conflicts (9).
Efforts have been made to add human rights training courses to the School of the Americas, but many question the purpose of the continued existence of the institution and whether it will ever truly “promote democracy” in South America with its violent training history and the general state of U.S. foreign policy in South America (10).