On June 28th, the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown in a military coup.
General Romeo Velasquez, leader of the coup, is the latest in a long list of dictators, assassins, torturers, terrorists, and coup plotters trained by the U.S. Army School of the Americas, also known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains soldiers from Latin America to use kidnapping, torture, and assassination as weapons of political terror against their own people. For decades, SOA graduates across Latin America have used these techniques, as well as rape, against hundreds of thousands of victims.
At least 11 SOA graduates have gone on to careers as military dictators. As long as the SOA remains open, the United States cannot claim to be a friend of Latin American democracy.
It is past time for the U.S. to stop supporting dictators and death squads in Latin America. Tell President Obama and your Members of Congress to close the School of the Americas once and for all. Go to the Green Change website to send a message about American democracy . . . across the Americas.
